Profiles in Courage

Well, what goes around comes around. Now, Mickey Eberflus knows what it’s like to be blindsided, just like Caleb Williams has been game after game this season. Eberflus had a regularly scheduled, day-after-the-game Zoom call with reporters yesterday morning; said he was “confident” he’d be coaching the Bears’ next game against the 49ers. Then, Boom! A couple of hours later, he’s fired. At no time, though, did any of the Three Stooges show their faces. Not Moe, Curley or Larry, not McCaskey, Warren or Poles. Just some released statements. Talk about profiles in courage. Not.

Nowhere to Hide

“Completely botched,” said CBS announcer Jim Nantz, who called the Bears-Lions’ game; “In my 70 years of coaching, I’ve never seen dysfunction [as Bears’ coach Mickey Eberflus demonstrated at the end of his team’s 23-20 Thanksgiving Day loss] cost a team an opportunity to win the game,” offered ex-Cowboys coach and HOFer Jimmy Johnson afterwards; “How in the world can that happen?” asked Chicago’s own Jason Benetti, who called the game on national radio. Da Bears. With his team moving down the field in the closing minutes for what looked to be the most improbable of wins, the Bears suddenly went all Eberflus, with two penalties and a sack. Then, with 32 seconds left on third-and-26, it took Caleb Williams 26 seconds to get his offense organized and snap the ball, with a pass falling incomplete to end the game. Did I mention the Munsters had a timeout left? Or that Eberflus told reporters, “I think we handled it the right way”? The man is clueless. So, what does that say about GM Ryan Poles, team president Kevin Warren or team chairman George McCaskey? You tell me.

Penny-wise

Apparently, one of the reasons the Sad Sox parted ways with Gavin Sheets is they’re paring payroll and Sheets is now arbitration-eligible. I’m guessing this is the same reason they let Nicky Lopez go. I wonder, do Jerry Reinsdorf and Chris Getz think that fans pay to watch them watch games? And where’s the motivation for players to excel? I mean, other than to get traded or released? Talk about bush-league organizations.

Watchful Waiting

Garrett Crochet trade rumors are in the air, all day all the time at least through next week’s winter meetings. Tired of hearing where Crochet is going and for who(m)? Then check out these Luis Robert Jr. trade scenarios! I get it, more or less. This is exactly how the hot stove league has always operated, with one rumor topping the next and so on. It’s just that social media puts the rumors on steroids. I prefer that steroids and sports don’t mix. What really ticks me off is reading the various trade packages involving Crochet; never once do I see one chiefly from the White Sox perspective. No, it’s a Red Sox or Phillies or Yankees fan writing into The Athletic to propose these two broken bats and a prospect. Mlb.com ranks the White Sox with the eleventh-best minor league system; the Red Sox seventh; the Phillies sixteenth; and the Yankees eighteenth. Why would you want prospects from a system worse than yours? Supposedly, the Orioles with the third-best system are interested in Crochet. If he goes anywhere (and, really, why should he other than for the fact that Jerry Reinsdorf doesn’t want to pay him what he’s worth?), it’s there.

Tough Times

These are tough times for professional sports teams, and I’m not talking win-loss records. In a world gone upside down, local and state governments aren’t falling all over themselves to help build new stadiums the way they used to. In St. Petersburg, the city council hasn’t funded repairs to Tropicana Field, with its hurricane-damaged roof, possibly due in part to an impasse over a new Rays’ stadium; my guess is the Rays want more public funding than the $600 million offered to help cover a $1.9 billion project. Truly, my heart bleeds. Closer to home, the White Sox can’t drum up the mildest of interest in a publicly-funded (or -subsidized, it depends on the day of the week) stadium in the South Loop. And let’s not forget the Bears, who’ve been huffing and puffing for a new stadium since they bought land in Arlington Heights back in early 2023. Only the best-laid plans of mice and clueless team executives didn’t count on neighboring school districts refusing to play nice and let the Bears determine how much they’d pay every year in property taxes. Now, the team has reached a sort-of agreement with Arlington Heights and the affected school districts. I say “sort of” because nothing hasn’t been voted on yet, and, even if everybody signs on, it may not matter. Why? Because the Munsters want a ton of public funding, and the state of Illinois isn‘t interested. The McCaskeys are a sad lot, trying to shake down schools for money; then playing Chicago off against the suburbs; then saying they’ll look into an alternative lakefront site. They might even play on the moon, provided somebody else picks up the tab and they get to control the shuttle contract—and oxygen franchise. In Chicago at least, the teams may stink, but the politics behind them never ceases to amuse.

You Can Say That Again

Bears’ soon-to-be-ex head coach Mickey Eberflus told reporters after his team’s 30-27 loss to the Vikings in overtime yesterday, “We’ve got to coach better down the stretch. It’s an everybody thing.” [today’s Tribune] Eberflus is right on that, if nothing else. Forget about Cairo Santos having another long field goal blocked or a missed two-point conversion. Here’s the play that shows just how bad a coach Eberflus is. It happened with 6:32 left in the game and Minnesota up by eight. Vikings’ quarterback Sam Darnold went out of the game with a leg injury, to be replaced by backup Nick Mullens. Guess who hadn’t thrown a pass all season? Yup, Mullens, who faced third-and-thirteen at the Minnesota 27. Guess who completed a pass for fourteen yards and a first down? Darnold immediately returned and led the offense downfield for a field goal, a drive that took 5:26 off the clock. Where was the pass rush? As soon as I see the backup coming in for what’s an obvious passing situation, I’m throwing everything and everybody at him. Mickey and the boys apparently felt otherwise. With 1:56 remaining in the game and no timeouts left, qb Caleb Williams engineered a touchdown, two-point conversion and a field goal—after a successful onside kick, no less—to tie the game and send it into overtime. Williams is looking more and more like the future of the franchise. Mickey and the boys, not so much.

Penny Wise?

The White Sox declined to offer a contract to Gavin Sheets, ending the 28-year-old’s four-year run with the team. God forbid Sheets should win a raise in arbitration. According to Clare, who once saw him up-close, the lefthanded-hitting Sheets could’ve passed for a tight end in the NFL, at 6’5” and 235 pounds. Instead, Larry Sheets’ son tantalized with his power. I swear those 46 career homeruns should’ve been double that number. Now, we’ll see. Someone will take a chance on Sheets, his hometown Orioles, maybe, (he’s hit .328 against them) or the Yankees (.404). Whoever it is, Sheets will get to prove the problem was his old team, not him. Personally, I can’t wait.

Bob Love

I was a junior in high school when the Bulls acquired forward Bob Love and a whole bunch of things, including forklift driver and graduate student, when they traded Love to the Nets eight years later. He was part of a team that meant more to me than Michael Jordan ever would. Love teamed up with Chet Walker; Jerry Sloan; Norm Van Lier; and Tom Boerwinkle (plus Clifford Ray and Bob Weiss) for a run of successful, blue-collar ball the likes of which Chicago had never seen before and never since. Sorry, Tom Thibodeau is no Dick Motta. Every spring, my world teetered on some sort of brink, because of school or work or women or some combination of all three. Watching the Bulls grind out a win with their half-court offense and in-your-face defense provided a safe harbor. If they never won it all, they still kept me from losing it all. Love died on Monday, the last of the starting five. No more Jim Durham behind the mic, no more Butterbean of Chet the Jet. Just echoes, ever fainter.

Hey, Big Spender

This is all you need to know about the franchise known as the Chicago Sad Sox—on Wednesday, they signed outfielder Austin Slater to a one-year deal for $1.75 million. Over the course of an eight-year major-league career, Slater has hit .252 with 40 homeruns; 171 RBIs; and 210 runs scored. In comparison, free-agent Juan Soto last season hit .288 with 41 homers; 109 RBIs; and 128 runs scored. Slater has a 4.5 career WAR per baseball-reference.com to Soto’s 36.4 over seven seasons. These aren’t baby steps for the Sad Sox but more of a dead-cat bounce.

Speech Patterns

For someone who detests the way New Yorkers act like they invented the game of basketball, I admit to a bromance with Long Island native Billy Donovan. Why can’t all coaches, regardless the sport, talk like Donovan? Ever since Mike Ditka was fired, the McCaskeys have sought ought masters of word salad to coach the Bears, the only exception being Lovie Smith, who enjoyed letting the media know how much he detested them. Now, we have Mickey Eberflus. By this time next year, it’ll be another Eberflus. The White Sox had their Ditka in the person of Ozzie Guillen. No more of him for Jerry Reinsdorf, whose idea of the perfect manager was Mickey Mouse, except for his inability to win a game. As for Will Venable, we’ll see. As for Craig Counsell of the Cubs, yeah, he acknowledges his team’s faults, but that’s about it. Back to Donovan. This remark in yesterday’s Sun-Times, about his team’s defensive woes, was typical: “I always say it comes down to the physicality part, to loose basketballs, to taking a charge. I mean, we’ve taken two charges all season [over fourteen games]. For our team as small [as the Bulls are compared to the competition], somebody’s going to have to put their body” on the line. Well said, and more of it, please.

The Sounds of Silence

The recently-formed Women’s Professional Baseball League has announced plans for a six-team league starting in 2026. As the father of a female athlete who started in baseball before jumping—or being pushed—to softball, I can only wish them well, but… According to an AP story on the league that ran in the Sunday Sun-Times, stats for 2023-24 show some 473,000 girls playing high school softball vs. 1,300 in baseball. That gives you an idea as to the uphill climb the idea of women playing baseball faces. Here’s another—crickets from MLB. No mention of MLB on the WPBL website and no mention of the WPBL on mlb.com. What, Rob Manfred and friends are afraid of a little competition?

Help Wanted

Imagine this. Yesterday, the Bears were down by one point against the Packers, with 35 seconds left in the game and the home team on the opposition’s 30-yard line. They ran the ball for two yards, let the clock run down to three seconds and attempted a field goal. What would Tom Brady have done with those 35 seconds? I ask because Brady was part of the broadcast team. I’m pretty sure he said there was time for still another play after the run, but I really would’ve like to see was the look on his face and his body language as the Munsters decided to let the clock run down for a 46-yard field goal attempt by Cairo Santos. Guess who missed? Guess who lost, 20-19? Forget Brady. What would any good team have done? Do you think Joe Burrow or Josh Allen would’ve handed the ball off? Matt Stafford or Jared Goff? No, but the Munsters did because, as soon-to-be ex-coach Mickey Eberflus put it in the postgame press conference, something bad could’ve happened if they had run another play. Play not to lose, and odds are you’ll lose. Which brings me to one of my favorite quotes, that the Bourbons of France learned nothing in exile and forgot nothing when restored to the throne. Same goes for Eberflus and the people who hired him.

Bush League

MLB still likes to refer to itself as “the national pastime.” I wonder why. The Rays have announced they’ll play next season at Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees spring-training site, while repairs are made to the roof at Tropicana Field. Hurricane Milton did a number on it back in October. Meanwhile, the A’s will play the next three seasons at Sutter Health Park in suburban Sacramento while their new home is being built in Las Vegas. Capacity at Steinbrenner Field will be 11,000 and 14,000 at Sutter Health Park. The mind boggles. Games 3-5 for the 1959 World Series between the White Sox and Dodgers drew 276,750, or over 90,000 a game. On three separate occasions during the regular season, the original Yankee Stadium drew crowds in excess of 80,000. But that was then, and this is now. Act bush league, be bush league.

Like Father, Like Son

We were a family of White Sox fans, passing on the pain from one generation to the next. So, when the Sox decided to leave WGN Ch. 9 after the 1967 season, my dad went out and bought a converter box so we could watch our heroes on UHF station Ch.32. A clear picture was beside the point. Then-owner Arthur Allyn thought that by moving the games to a new station, he could get his team more exposure. That worked in so far as the broadcast schedule increased (I think), but not that many fans went out and bought converters. From then on, the Sox wandered through a broadcast desert while the crosstown-rival Cubs had WGN all to themselves. And when WGN went to cable, the Cubs went nationwide. You’d think Jerry Reinsdorf would follow the adage of “Once burned, twice wary,” but, No. Reinsdorf took the Sox and Bulls to a new regional sports network with Danny Wirtz bringing the Hawks along because he doesn’t know any better, I guess. Only Comcast, the biggest cable provider in these parts, can’t agree with the Chicago Sports Network on the carriage fee. So, rather than stream CHSN at $19.99 a month per team (or $29.99 a month for all three), I went out today and bought an indoor antenna that will allow me to pick up CHSN from WJYS-Ch. 62, a UHF station. Here’s looking at you, Dad.

Don't Come Crying

Baseball franchises are divided between the haves and have-nots, real and pretend. You can put the Yankees; Mets; Red Sox; and Dodgers in the former and most everybody else in the latter. How to explain mlb.com, then? Go on the website, and it’s Juan Soto, all day every day, just like it was Shohei Ohtani last offseason. If not Soto, then the next top-rated free agent. Scott Boras and his fellow agents must love how the daily barrage of stories creates a fan frenzy to sign their clients, yesterday if not sooner. Fast-forward to the end of the next collective bargaining agreement, and you can bet ownership will be crying poor, even though its publicity machine—and mlb.com is nothing if not a publicity machine—treats free-agent signings like an auctioneer working a gullible crowd with money to burn. So, if Soto gets his $700 million-plus contract, don’t come crying to me, and be careful about passing the cost onto your fan base. The peasants are grumpy these days.

What a Coincidence

Wow. On the same day the Bears did something they hate to do—fire a coach in-season—they did something they love to do. The Munsters showed offensive coordinator Shane Waldron the door at the same time it was reported the team is reconsidering a site just south of Soldier Field for their new stadium. In other words, they were willing to let go of someone who showed he was absolutely clueless about to build an offense around rookie quarterback Caleb Williams, and this after only nine games. In McCaskey Land, that qualifies as the speed of light. But, again, what a coincidence that move happened on the same day as those reports about the old Michael Reese hospital site suddenly looking pretty good to the Munsters. If true, that would be the second city site to go with the original Arlington Heights site. Of course, any such interest is predicated on government ponying up $2.5 billion, give or take, for the project. Only in Chicago, only with the Bears.

Peat and Repeat

Bears’ head coach Matt Eberflus addressed the media yesterday and showed the world who he is—a human-resources’ guy in way over his head on the sidelines. Eberflus used terms like “temperature”; “chemistry”; “relationships.” Add “process,” maybe his favorite word of all, and you can see what I mean. Who hired this guy, Rick Hahn? No, wait, it was Ryan Poles, and who hired him, Jerry Reinsdorf? No, the McCaskeys. And there you have “distinction without a difference” in action. By the way, have Eberflus and ex-Sox manager Mickey Mouse ever been spotted in the same room at the same time? I doubt it.

Best-laid Plans

Oh, this is rich in a karmic sort of way. Over the last two years or so, the White Sox and Bears have looked to maximize leverage against city and state in pursuit of public subsidies for a new stadium, all of which depended on team performance. Did I mention that Reinsdorf’s Sad Sox went 41-121 or that ex-player Dave Stewart was said to be heading a group interested in taking the Sox off of Reinsdorf’s hands and nobody seemed to care? Wet noodles make for weak leverage. Your Chicago Bears are a tub of wet noodles right now. General manager Ryan Poles went out and selected Caleb Williams with the first pick of the draft and surrounded him with receiving talent. Team president and CEO Kevin Warren then went on the offensive on how the Chicago lakefront is crying for new, domed stadium to be subsidized by the likes of me and run by the likes of Warren. Up until fifteen days ago, the plan was working swimmingly. Then came Tyrique Stevenson making possible a Hail-Mary win for the Commanders followed by a loss to the Cardinals followed by yesterday’s stinker of a 19-3 loss to the previously 2-7 Patriots. No touchdowns for straight games; fifteen sacks of Williams over those games, including nine yesterday by a team that had only sixteen coming into game; absolutely no game plan to go with absolutely no offensive line. Oh, and crickets from Poles and Warren. Chicago is facing a deficit in the neighborhood of $1 billion while Illinois is looking at a $3 billion hole. And the owners of two dysfunctional franchises want money to build new facilities. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s karma.

Fall Back, Crying

We arrived early for babysitting duty yesterday, which meant I was there for my grandson’s arrival home from preschool. “I want to play sports,” were the first words out of his mouth before he even walked through the front door. When Clare noted the lack of sunlight necessary for throwing, hitting, and catching, Leo responded with a flood of tears. Welcome to standard time, my boy. Figuring this might happen, I cleared a plan of action, for the two of us to have the back room to ourselves; you don’t want to hit a six-week old sister/granddaughter with one of those palm-sized footballs. Maeve stayed with Michele in the living room while the boys worked their mischief in back. It was about 45 minutes of mayhem, grandson standing two feet away from Grandpa to throw a ball and the old man fearing for his sight if not his life. When I threw the ball, he mostly caught it and then ran for a touchdown. Unlike other times, there was no “Touchdown, Packers!” shouted on crossing the imaginary goal line. Eventually, the football gave way to a book on Thomas the Tank Engine, and, by bedtime, we were that much closer to a return of daylight savings time.

Waste of Time?

I see in the Sun-Times today that White Sox GM Chris Getz hired a director of hitting. Both the position and its initial occupant are mysteries to me. Getz went on to say, “We’ve tasked our analysts to be more specialized, and we’re beginning to build some really cool stuff that’s going to help create competitive advantages in a lot of areas.” Oh, boy. Kids and their gizmos. The thing I like about Will Venable, Getz’s new hire for manager, is that he was a nine-year MLB veteran. A successful manager doesn’t have to have played in the big leagues, but it helps. For every Joe Maddon and Earl Weaver, there seem to be a whole lot more Mickey-Mouse types. I don’t want to see an organizational approach to hitting based on tech alone. For the umpteenth time, let me offer the best approach to hitting, as articulated by hitting coach extraordinaire—and sixteen-year MLB vet—Bill Robinson: “A good hitting instructor is able to mold his teachings to the individual. If a guy stands on his head, you perfect that.” Anything else is a waste of time.

He Gone Soon

The NFL has created this 24/7/365 behemoth that keeps football on every fan’s mind, which is a great thing for any team .500 or above. But it gets dicey when a team stinks. All the NFL hype-cycle does then is to remind people just how bad their team is, and the Bears are stinky bad. They showed it again yesterday with a 29-9 loss to the Cardinals. The Munsters have no offensive line and, basically, haven’t had one for the past five seasons. Stick a rookie quarterback like Caleb Williams behind a bunch of doormen who make way for the opponent’s pass rush, and you’ve got trouble. The Chicago media keeps reminding people 24/7 that Williams has been regressing the past two weeks and losses. Not so head coach Matt “Mickey” Eberflus; there’s no there there, no demonstration of talent from which to recede. Mickey’s record in two-plus seasons is a woeful 14-28, and a pathetically woeful 3-18 on the road. Veterans went public last week with doubts about coaching decisions made in the 18-15 “Hail Mary” debacle against the Commanders while 24/7 coverage stoked speculation over how or if Eberflus would discipline Tyrique Stevenson for being out of position on the Hail Mary. The answer to that question is Mickey held out Stevenson for the first two defensive series and then brought him in. The Munsters are all about pride in legacy—Halas, Ditka, Butkus, etc. The slap on the wrist is not going to play well in Soldier Field come Sunday when the Bears face the Patriots. If Eberflus and co. can’t beat a 2-7 team, it’s going to get really ugly. And it may get ugly because of another bonehead decision by the coach, to keep his quarterback in for the entire game even when he was down by twenty points late in the game. With the clock winding down and Williams scrambling to avoid a seventh sack, an Arizona defender landed on his ankle. After the game, Coach Mickey said he had Williams in to work on the two-minute drill. Right. Thanks to the NFL creation of an all-football, all-the-time environment, Bears’ fans will be reminded again and again just how bad their head coach is. He gone soon.

Stupid Is...

Has anyone seen a Bulls’ or Blackhawks’ game recently? Odds are, No, unless you’ve got the right streaming service or, get this, an antenna to pick up the TV signal. Welcome to Jerry Reinsdorf’s latest genius idea, the Chicago Sports Network. Just try finding it. Reinsdorf walked away from NBC Spors Chicago, taking not only the Sad Sox and Bulls with him, but getting Danny Wirtz to follow along with the Blackhawks. Only the greatest mind ever in all Chicago sports didn’t bother securing a carrying agreement with Comcast, with its 4.7 million Chicago-area subscribers. Oops. So, no facetime via Comcast with new Sox manager Will Venable to go with no games for Blackhawks’ and Bulls’ fans. I can’t speak about the Hawks, but at least the 3-3 Bulls look interesting—in the box scores, that is—with a run-and-gun offense made possible by the team moving on from DeMar DeRozan and Alex Caruso. Rumor has it that any agreement between Reinsdorf’s Folly and Comcast will involve putting the sports’ channel in a more expensive package. No, thanks. If and when it comes time to watch baseball come spring, I’ll go buy an antenna. Thanks, Jerry.

Tiny, Baby Steps

The White Sox hired a new manager yesterday in the person of Will Venable, a nine-year major league veteran and Princeton graduate with a degree in anthropology. I’m guessing Mickey Mouse didn’t do his senior thesis comparing baseball in the U.S. and Japan. Right now, the only certain positive here is that the odds are Venable won’t be Mouse 2.0. What will he be? We’re about to find out. I’m guessing GM Chris Getz wants to keep pitching coach Ethan Katz. We’ll get a better sense of who Venable is and wants to be when the rest of the coaching staff is announced.