Ingratitude

Pity the poor Chicago media.  They’ve abandoned all objectivity in covering the Bears—pages of space devoted to the opening of camp, film coverage that virtually leads on the early news broadcasts.  And how do the Bears react?  They announce new rules to limit media access to practice.  No filming of drills, no blogging or tweeting anything the team considers to be privileged information during practice.  Supposedly, everything goes back to normal come the second exhibition game.

“You might be shooting a specific guy, but perhaps there’s something [interesting] going on in the background,” a team official told the Trib this morning.  “There are tells [!] throughout the league, and the coaches and scouts are pretty savvy.  We want to make sure we protect ourselves.”

From what, exactly?  News of offensive schemes that don’t expose Jay Cutler’s weaknesses?  Defensive schemes that show an actual defense?   Somehow, I doubt Bill Belichick and the Patriots will go sneaking around Bears’ camp, unless they’re looking to post comedy shorts on YouTube.  Remember the old saying—sleep with dogs, and you wake up with fleas.   Rub up to the Bears, and they jerk your chain.         

Birthdays

About the same time that the number associated with a particular birthday becomes worrisome, you start to reminisce about earlier, more comfortable numbers, like the one five years ago today.  We had just finished Clare’s last summer of travel ball.

That she played at all was a surprise, but one of her new coaches at Elmhurst asked, and it was the kind of offer you don’t refuse.  In her first tournament, Clare hit a grand slam; the ball went so far Coach Mike had to wish it was spring already so he could watch the freshman face college pitching.  At nationals in Chattanooga, she whetted his appetite a little more by winning the homerun-hitting contest.  Once March arrived, the freshman would go about setting the school single-season record for home runs. 

Other birthdays come with other memories, one in particular when I turned nine; my sister Betty bought me a friction toy, an x-15 that sparked through openings in the middle.  A toy like that only comes around once in a life, as you can well imagine.  I’ve been looking for it on eBay since Betty died 5-1/2 years.

The cousins’ picnic on my father’s side of the family used to take place after my birthday, on the first weekend in August.  I hated having to make nice with people my dad grew up with; somehow, each one of them knew more about me than I did them.  The cousins are gone now, and I would give anything to have to endure another picnic.  At least Clare went often enough to grow fond of Bingo.

One time, a third cousin of mine showed up with her husband, a hotshot Chicago politician; his clout eventually went to jail, but he stayed free.  Anyhow, Mr. Alderman thought it would be fun to pitch to all the little kiddies, but he didn’t know about my 4-1/2 year old until she lined a ball into his stomach, twice.  Like they say in the commercial, How you like me now?

Some things you just can’t forget.

Me and My Schwinn

 What red-blooded American boy doesn’t want a motorcycle on his eighteenth birthday?  I did in July of 1970 and asked my parents.  When they finished laughing, I asked for a Schwinn ten-speed.  I still have it—a forest-green Varsity with chrome fenders—all these years later.

I’ve always loved riding a bike.  I’d set out from home and end up miles away in some other part of the city or a suburb.  There was no greater fun than tackling one of those massive overpasses that spanned a railroad yard, expressway or the Chicago River; the way up might have been hard, but look out below.  I never bothered to think what might happen if I needed to stop suddenly.  Oh, to be young again.

Two summers before the Schwinn, I convinced a friend to go with me on our bikes to Brookfield Zoo, ten miles from home, half of it on streets more familiar to trucks than bicycles; somehow, we survived.  With the Schwinn, I pedaled off to a date on the Northwest Side and commuted a few times to school (DePaul) in Lincoln Park.  The bike got stored away after the wedding but found the light of day after Clare learned to ride her bike.  Only Dad ended up a better peddler than his daughter.  The old man likes to do fifty miles or so on his birthday.

I once worked a summer camp where we took a tour of the Schwinn factory on the West Side; it was dark, noisy and smelled of fresh paint.  That plant helped make Schwinn king of the biking world, until cheap imports came along and turned the company into little more than a nameplate.  When the Schwinn family sold their interest in the company in the 1990s, some employees bought a satellite plant where they used to make the “Cadillac” Schwinn, viz. the Paramount, which now goes for $1000 and up—way up—on eBay. 

The plant, located in Waterford WI, still makes bikes.  If only I had the arm and the leg it costs to buy one, I might finally retire my trusty Varsity.  Then again, why would I ever do something so dumb? 

Third basemen

In the late 1960s I took solace in the play of a young White Sox third baseman by the name of Bill Melton; he was the only guy on the team who could hit with power.  At the fairly tender age of 26, Melton had amassed 91 homeruns for a team where the stolen base had always mattered more than the long ball.  Then Melton had to go fall off a roof one offseason and hurt his back; he was never the same.  Not that Harry Caray cared.  The Sox announcer turned on Melton the way he had Ken Boyer in St. Louis and would with Ron Cey on the North Side:  I don’t know why they throw [insert name here] a fastball….

Several years ago, Melton took the job of postgame analyst on Sox telecasts, and he’s actually good, what you might call a critical homer; he wants the team to win, but he’ll tell you all the reasons why they’re not.  Better yet, he never pretends to have been more of a player than he was.  Stacey King, take note.

Melton the announcer has had the good sense not to pull a Harry Caray with Sox rookie Tyler Saladino, a 26-year old who’s come out of nowhere to claim the starting job at third.  National Public Radio has been following Saladino through the minors over the past four years, and they seem to have gotten it right—Saladino doesn’t have an ounce of flash to him; rather, he’s a ballplayer who looks steady and projects smart.  I can live with that.  

Bear Down

On Saturday, the Cubs were no-hit for the first time in 49 years and 10 or so months, not that the Tribune seemed to notice.  No, the Sunday sports’ section was devoted to the Bears, and I do mean devoted, starting on page one.  New head coach John Fox got the full Andy Warhol treatment in a picture, with just enough room left for the first five paragraphs of a story on the Cubs.

The Trib devoted three—count ‘em, three—full pages to Fox’s career.  I learned that, as the stepson of a Navy SEAL, Fox values “discipline and mental toughness”; he believes “if players know you genuinely care about them and they know you can make them better, they’ll do anything for you”; his coaching mantra is “smart and tough”; as the Giants’ defensive coordinator “players came to detest and respect him for his want to always keep the pads on and the contact high”; and defensive end Michael Strahan thinks Fox’s “constant emphasis on being physical was crucial to his own development” into a Hall-of-Fame player.  You don’t say.

The above could be read as a level 5 hurricane warning, if hurricanes manifested themselves as questionable coaching philosophies leading to serious injury.  From everything I can see, John Fox wants his players to lead with their heads on a tackle and the leave the thinking to him, which makes sense given how often their heads will be ringing.  I wonder what the concussion count is for this guy.  Players beware, and reporters take a more critical look at what you write in praise.

Strange Luck

My friend Frank saw his first no-hitter in 1962, when he was 10; Bill Monbouquette of the Red Sox beat the White Sox 1-0 at Comiskey Park.  Yesterday, Frank was at Wrigley Field, where Cole Hamels no-hit the Cubs, 5-0.  I’m going to have to ask Frank if he believes in reincarnation.  If so, he may be the second coming of Albert Charles Dunn, who survived the Titanic and Lusitania sinkings, along with two others.  Talk about luck.   

Different Paths

Clare and her boyfriend Chris went exploring the Finger Lakes yesterday while we settled for nothing greater than a lagoon, the one in Humboldt Park to be exact.

Chicago’s park system is a wonder, second only to New York’s, and I’m not too sure about that qualifier.  What comes after Central Park?  If you have to pause, then the Big Apple may be trying to get by on reputation alone.  What comes after Lincoln Park?  Well, you can start with Humboldt Park, let alone Jackson and Washington, one of which will be home to the Obama Presidential Library.  And we don’t even need to consider the Garfield Park Conservatory here (although you might want to go anyhow).

Humboldt is the legacy of Jens Jensen, a Danish immigrant who fell in love with the Midwestern prairie.  As superintendent of the West Parks (don’t ask, it’s a long story), Jensen decided to bring the prairie to this park on the Near Nothwest Side.  Jensen arranged a river, lagoon and trees to invoke a sense of Illinois as it existed before the arrival of us European folk.  On top of that, Jensen happened to be buddies with a number of Prairie architects, so the park is filled with Prairie-designed planters and light fixtures as well as a boathouse, part of which has been converted into a café.  Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t design any of it, but I suspect he would’ve liked eating at the Boathouse Cafe.  I recommend the Monte Cristo sandwich and an umbrella table.  Consider the view of the park as dessert.

Jensen, like Frederick Law Olmsted, wanted city people to find nature in a park; we did that after lunch with a walk around the lagoon, which is bordered with a full array of prairie flowers.  The area used to be Polish, then Puerto Rican, and now it’s gentrifying, like the neighborhoods around the 606 Trail a little further north.  The park long has been a hotbed of baseball, though recently it’s had to yield some space to soccer.  Really, not all change is for the better.