Lee Elia’s Rant: 30 Bleepin’ Years Later

WARNING: ADULT CONTENT BELOW (SERIOUSLY) For those who are not familiar with the history of Chicago baseball it will likely come as a surprise to learn that there was a time when Wrigley Field was not so cool, fun, and controversial. Thirty years ago Wrigley was considered by most to be a baseball cemetery.  The [...]

Ebbets Field 100

The move of the NBA’s Nets this season has allowed fans and journalists to speak a magical word that had disappeared from the lexicon of major sports leagues for more than 50 years: “Brooklyn.” Brooklyn is probably New York City’s most beloved and, possibly, provincial borough and the relocation of the New Jersey Nets to [...]

Rose & Reggie: 40 Years Later

Rose & Reggie: 40 Years Later Reggie Jackson and Pete Rose are two of baseball’s all-time iconic figures, having put together nearly unparalleled careers in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Jackson and Rose played on piles of All-Star teams, won multiple World Series, earned millions on and off the field and were often loved and [...]

White Sox Opening Day: 39 Degrees and Billion-Dollar Burgers

The Chicago White Sox opened the 2013 season on Monday by beating the Kansas City Royals, 1-0, at U. S. Cellular Field in front of an announced crowd of 39,000 people. In other words, there were one thousand people in the ballpark for every degree in the air. The high temperature in Chicago for the [...]

Damn (For All Time) Yankees

There are trailers running on the Internet for the upcoming Tom Cruise movie “Oblivion.”  Cruise plays a tough guy named Jack Harper which is quite a departure from Cruise’s previous film in which he played a tough guy named Jack Reacher. “Oblivion” is set in the dystopian future in which very little is left of [...]

White Sox Sweep Yankees (Yes, Really)

August 22, 2012 South Side Sweep Last weekend in Kansas City the Chicago White Sox were error-prone, timid, unlucky, and uncomfortable to watch.  It was sort of like witnessing Henry Kissinger do karaoke for a Jay-Z song.  But not as funny. The Sox were swept away by the Royals on the road, making Bruce Chen [...]

First Pitch

July 3, 2012 In October, 1995 the musical farce Zombies From The Beyond opened to critical praise and joyous audiences off-Broadway in New York City. Zombies is the fantastically silly story of a Rubenesque alien named Zombina who has come from the deep reaches of space to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to steal men to be slave [...]

White Sox Rising

May 31, 2012 When the Chicago White Sox swept the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field two weeks ago it was fun but, really, can’t an old person with a fly swatter beat the Cubs? The Sox, however, were apparently emboldened by that three-game ear-gouge of their crosstown rivals because now the Pale Hose are taking [...]

All For Paul

May 27, 2012 Jimi Hendrix, Albert Einstein, Prince Planet, Julie Christie, Harper Lee and Joan of Arc.  What do they all have in common?  They’re about half as cool as Paul Konerko. Konerko, the venerable Chicago White Sox first baseman, is swinging the bat like a honey badger hocked up on Cherry Coke trapped inside [...]

Crosstown Crosshairs

  May 20, 2012 Sox, Cubs,  NATO   The whole world is watching.  And now it knows how bad the Cubs really are. And how good the White Sox could be. If they keep playing the Cubs. On a hot spring weekend in Chicago when world leaders and angry protesters came to town for the [...]

Remembering An Angel

  May 4, 2012 Fifty years ago a skinny left-hander with a sneaky smile made history.  And started a party. On May 5, 1962 Robert “Bo” Belinsky threw a no-hitter for the Los Angeles Angels in a 2-0 victory over the Baltimore Orioles and became Hollywood’s star attraction for a summer and one of baseball’s [...]

Humble Phil, Powerful Paul

April 26, 2012 Philip Humber will always be associated with perfection. He just won’t always pitch that way. One start after throwing a perfect game against the Seattle Mariners, the White Sox right-hander plummeted back to reality Thursday night at Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field, surrendering nine earned runs in a 10-3 loss to the Boston [...]

Chicago White Sox Opening Day: Irish Nachos and the Baroque Batter’s Box

April 13, 2012 Not everyone loves baseball but all people, (except, perhaps, Angelina Jolie) love food and while our national pastime isn’t always played at the highest level at Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field, there is always copious amounts of unique and satisfying sustenance. Luckily, on Opening Day on Friday, the White Sox were as enticing [...]

2012 Chicago White Sox: Ozzie’s Out, Robin’s In, Are We Ready?

The Chicago White Sox had a prodigious payroll and high hopes in 2011 but crashed and burned quickly as some of their best, or at least highest paid, players had miserable campaigns.  The Sox finished 79-83, which was good for third place in the American League Central, 16 games behind the division champion Detroit Tigers [...]

Gaylord Perry: Moon Man

This year is the 40th anniversary of the last time human beings set foot on the moon.  Why haven’t we been back since?  Maybe we should blame Gaylord Perry. One of baseball’s great urban legends is that Perry, a Hall of Fame pitcher from 1962 to 1983, once said a man would walk on the [...]

Here Come the Miami White Sox

Mark Buehrle has long been the best pitcher in the National League and that distinction will likely grow more evident now that he’s actually going to be pitching in the National League. After 12 seasons, 161 victories, four All-Star games, three gold gloves, one no-hitter, a perfect game, a World Series victory and the coolest [...]

Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Good Fries

When the team you root for is left home during October the true frustration of a sub-par season begins to painfully nip at your toes and whisper profanities into your ear.  That’s because watching good teams fight for the crown in the playoffs makes one realize just how bad – and uncontending – your team [...]

Robin White Sox Redux

On Thursday afternoon I received a text message from my cousin and fellow die-hard White Sox fan, Owen, and it contained just one word: Robin? Naturally, I replied with the first word that came to my mind: Batman? Just kidding.  The word I actually replied with was Ventura?  As I honestly wondered whether Owen’s single-word [...]

Adios, Ozzie

  September 26, 2011 Adios, Ozzie When the Chicago Bears fired Mike Ditka 19 years ago many Chicagoans were crushed.  How can you get rid of an iconoclastic icon who finally brought us a championship?  Simple: it’s time. Now the situation is the same on Chicago’s South Side where the White Sox have released Ozzie [...]

South Side Surrender

The Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers are in a fight to the finish in the American League Central.  Unfortunately for the White Sox, the finish happened more than a week ago. With Monday’s 14-4 bloodbath of a victory by the Tigers at U.S. Cellular Field, the Sox have now lost their last two games [...]

Slugger Jim

Anyone who isn’t happy for Jim Thome probably also hates ice cream and loves velour. OK, I like the way velour looks on some people but it’s not in my wardrobe. What I do have in my closet is an abundance of Chicago White Sox items and one of the reasons I’m proud to wear [...]

Cubs, White Sox, Paul for the Hall…Or At Least Phoenix

The Cubs are the darlings of Chicago but the White Sox are the better baseball team. The Sox took two-of-three from the Cubs at Wrigley Field over the weekend and four-of-six this season, gracefully allowing the North Siders one victory on the South Side a few weeks ago and then also a triumph on Sunday, [...]

Crosstown Crisis?

Not A Crowded House Normally the annual “Crosstown Classic” series between Chicago’s Cubs and White Sox are an automatic sellout at U.S. Cellular Field as Sox fans love nothing more than to see their team whip up on the Cubs and also impugn the testosterone of all Cubs fans who dare to wander down to [...]

A Good Pitcher, Even Better Writer

Pitching in the Promised Land Where would you go to follow your dream?  Wouldn’t it be nice if the journey took you far away and, at the same time, back home? That’s what happened to Aaron Pribble, a lifelong baseball habitué whom, by the summer of 2007, realized that having reached the age of 27 [...]

Opening Day – The Great South Side Nacho Helmet Inauguration

Life is Good: Nachos in a White Sox Helmet The only thing better than seeing the Chicago White Sox christen their home schedule in person at cozy and getting-better-with-each year U.S. Cellular Field was seeing the 5-1 opening triumph over the Tampa Bay Rays with the accompaniment and nourishment of a nacho helmet. The White [...]

Spring Into Winter

The problem with starting the baseball season in March is that we haven’t had enough time to digest spring training.  Or at least, to write about it. I spent the final weekend of spring play in Arizona and caught games at Camelback Ranch – the home of the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers [...]

Baseball Isn’t Cool?

When I saw that “GQ” was publishing an article proclaiming the “25 Coolest Athletes of All Time” I knew two guys would top the list: Joe Namath and Mario Andretti.  Putting Namath on a list of cool athletes is like putting Bill Gates on a roster of rich people.  It’s just instant.  No thought required.  [...]

It Fell From Somewhere

January 27, 2011 Somewhere in Chicago’s western suburbs there is a very unhappy Curt Schilling fan.  And they might be looking for me.  While on a recent walk I found a Schilling baseball card but it took me a moment to recognize it because while Schilling’s name certainly erupts from the card the uniform he [...]

The Song Doesn’t Always Remain The Same

Baseball history, as far as I’m concerned, was made during Tuesday night’s 10-3 victory for the Texas Rangers over the New York Yankees in Game Four of the American League Championship Series.  In the bottom of the 7th inning actor Patrick Wilson came out to perform “God Bless America,” the singing of which has become [...]

The Late, Great Triple

Former Los Angeles Dodgers Executive Fresco Thompson is credited with saying that Willie Mays’ glove was where “triples go to die.”  Variations of the same quote have been attributed to other sources, talking about other players including Joe Jackson and Tris Speaker.  Mays hasn’t played since 1973.  Speaker last played in 1928 and Jackson’s last [...]