Chicago Sun-Times

TELANDER: Ricketts has moving speech

Thu, 02 May 2013 02:32:37 -0500

On Wednesday morning, Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts took off one of his chain-metal gauntlets and dropped it with a clank to the floor. “The fact is that if we don’t have the ability to generate revenue in our own outfield, we’ll have to take a look at moving,’’ Ricketts told the audience at the City Club of Chicago. “No question.” When you say, “No question,’’ that means, well, no question. Like, you’ll do it. That is, you’ll leave antique Wrigley Field to the preservationists, let the rooftop owners view weeds inside a crumbling brick mess and head for the suburbs. …

TELANDER: Game 6 is ailing Bulls’ last, best chance to advance

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:40:21 -0500

NEW YORK — Here at the ‘‘Rusty Tug’’ — also known as the Barclays Center — we had another Blackout Night for Brooklyn Nets fans. For Bulls fans, it was pretty much Blot-Out Night. They might as well forget the 110-91 loss Monday in Game 5 of the first-round Eastern Conference playoff matchup. The Bulls still lead the series 3-2, so all is not gloom. Plus, you have to tip your hat to the fans who started ‘‘ooh’’-ing while Nate Robinson was in the midst of an ankle-breaking drive in the second quarter. The play ended in a layup and …

TELANDER: Payton Prep parents’ apparent overreaction only costs sons a chance to play

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:15:18 -0500

Oh, boy, this is one of those rolling hand grenades. Some parents of baseball players from Payton College Prep on the Near North Side didn’t want their sons traveling to Brooks College Prep on 111th Street between Michigan and King Drive for a 7 p.m. game Saturday. Their alleged reasons: fear about safety. Payton baseball coach William Wittleder told the Sun-Times he was flabbergasted after having to forfeit the game because not enough players would show up. ‘‘This is probably one of the most embarrassing moments I’ve had,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s very heartbreaking.’’ Heartbreaking, for him, at least, because parental …

TELANDER: Derrick Rose should return for the playoffs, where anything can happen

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:14:24 -0500

For everybody who loudly proclaims that knee-rehabbing Derrick Rose should not even consider coming back this postseason, I offer some nuggets of differing thought: Sunday marks exactly one year since he tore his left anterior cruciate ligament, and improvement in strength, agility and confidence should mean Rose is closer to fit every day. The season is so long that most players are hurting by May, forget June. The Los Angeles Lakers’ battered Steve Nash gets epidurals just to play. Oh, and have you seen his Hall of Fame teammate, Kobe Bryant? Not since Bryant’s Achilles tendon snapped two weeks ago …

Bears ‘100 percent yes’ for lineman Kyle Long

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:26:51 -0500

RICK TELANDER: The Bears did it. They took somebody you’ve never heard of, never watched, have no opinion about. That is, unless you view a lot of Pac-12 teams and you focus on in-close offensive line play. Which you don’t.

Why is Derrick Rose held to a different standard than Jay Cutler?

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:56:06 -0500

RICK TELANDER: He comes out before the game, sits on the Bulls’ bench and starts to lace up his new Adidas D Rose 3.5s. Derrick Rose is ever friendly, ever courteous, so you ask him, ‘‘When are you going to play?’’ He doesn’t say anything, just smiles. Not a happy smile. Not a sarcastic smile.

TELANDER: Derrick Rose’s absence doesn’t make sense, leaving many questions lingering

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:48:22 -0500

NEW YORK — There he was on the bench Saturday night at the Barclays Center with his teammates as they were demolished by the Nets 106-89. The only difference was that he was dressed in a gray, tailored business suit, and they were dressed in basketball sweats and uniforms. It can’t be fun for Derrick Rose to sit impotently and watch such blowouts. It can’t be easy to fidget and stand up at every timeout and take a place behind sweating, panting, lesser guards Kirk Hinrich and Nate Robinson. It can’t be pleasant to hear the yells from the crowd …

TELANDER: Nets’ win a feel-great story for Brooklyn

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 02:58:07 -0500

NEW YORK — The best, simple, on-key rendition of the national anthem I’ve heard in years came Saturday night from Nets guard/forward Jerry Stackhouse. The 38-year-old vet wore his sweatsuit and held the mic close, and with eyes closed, sang the tricky song at halfcourt of the Barclays Center before the Bulls-Nets playoff game. I made a mental note to ask him how much he got paid. ◆ It was “Blackout in Brooklyn’’ night, and a number of fans wore the handout T-shirts, which were so dark that, naturally, they could barely be seen. And, of course, they couldn’t be …

Bears ‘100 percent yes’ for lineman Kyle Long

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:26:51 -0500

Terror invades the Boston Marathon and our freedom along with it

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:19:30 -0500

RICK TELANDER: Sometimes social change creeps up on us. Sometimes it comes with a boom. This was a boom. The terrorist bombs that exploded near the finish line of Monday’s Boston Marathon did more than kill and injure people. They told us something we don’t want to know, certainly something we don’t want to think about

Wrigley Field improvements great but what about the team?

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:26:35 -0500

RICK TELANDER: Whew! I’m exhausted just from reading the early details of the Cubs-Wrigleyville agreement. Not only did this thing take about four years to come together, but its glacial formation helped provide an excellent smokescreen for a team that is about as bad as they come in the major leagues.

TELANDER: Do it, Derrick Rose, even if it’s just a drop

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:30:30 -0500

We’ve been talking about Derrick Rose’s return to the Bulls for almost three months now. And it’s not that we’ve been wondering when he’ll be 100 percent healed from that knee injury, but, rather, why he isn’t healed from it? And most of that speculation centers on the mental wounding Rose has undergone from the first major injury of his star-filled career. The man who once was considered a fearsome warrior is now seen by some as a slackard. If Rose came back Sunday and played against the Miami Heat, he could play in the final three regular-season games and …

TELANDER: Goat’s head delivered to Wrigley bizarre enough to be part of Cubs lore

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 02:27:28 -0500

How Cubs lore grows! You might think that lore would have to do with baseball. But it doesn’t, really. It has to do with patience, futility, low-grade humor, improbable coincidence, primitive symbolism, stupidity, horrendous planning and, above all, human suffering. Now we have a goat head to add to the mix. Not a whole goat. Just the head, stuck in a box — according to reports — delivered to (well, dropped in front of) Wrigley Field on Wednesday, addressed to chairman Tom Ricketts. The meaning? God knows. But it’s not something cheery. Of course, everyone knows the story of the …

TELANDER: Cubs can’t escape their history

Thu, 02 May 2013 06:35:57 -0500

The Cubs are such a remarkable franchise that they approach the benchmark known as mind- boggling. Back in the early 2000s, as they zeroed in on 100 years without winning the World Series, they prompted a bunch of creative, mostly lighthearted T-shirts to be made, with mottos such as ‘‘Party Like It’s 1908’’ and ‘‘Anybody Can Have a Bad Century.’’ There were no embarrassing ‘‘Cubs Suck’’ or ‘‘The Hell With This Team’’ T-shirts because that’s not how Cubs fans thought — or think — about their long-suffering club. Indeed, as the 21st century began, the Cubs had company with the Red …

TELANDER: Wrigley can still entertain

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 02:25:45 -0500

There it flew for the first time this year. Like a windsock on the prow of a steamer headed over the falls — a big white ‘‘L’’ on the flapping blue flag. How many times have we seen the Loser flag at Cubs home games, flying above the ancient scoreboard? How many times will we see it before October? Monday it signified the Cubs’ 7-4 home-opening loss to the Brewers. ‘‘It blew both ways,’’ said Cubs manager Dale Sveum, speaking of the wind on this blustery day. It blew out, and then it blew in. It swirled and it curled. …

TELANDER’S SUNDAY STEW: Several NFL players might come out as gay

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 02:40:39 -0500

This whole gay thing in sports and society is an interesting phenomenon. As more gay, lesbian and transgendered people come out from their previously closeted lives, the attitude straight people have about them is changing proportionately. Indeed, it has been noted that nothing makes one as tolerant of homosexuality as learning one’s brother, sister, cousin, uncle, aunt, child, co-worker, best friend, favorite entertainer, boss or teammate is gay. Why, even conservatives Bill O’Reilly and Sen. Mark Kirk have come out in favor of same-sex marriage, based largely on the principles — freedom and the Constitution — they once felt condemned …

TELANDER: Money before morals is Mark Emmert’s way

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 20:30:13 -0500

Someday the kettle’s going to blow. Someday the intricate Rube Goldberg machine that is the NCAA will spring a leak, and no amount of Band-Aids, glue, fingers in holes, rules, sleight of hand, PR or gibberish will hold the mess together. Oh, there’s tons of money rolling around in our nation’s sports coffers. Witness the multimillion-dollar salaries given to all but the lamest men’s football and basketball coaches. Witness the billion-dollar TV contracts to broadcast college sports, the crazy advertising, the 100,000-seat cathedrals of entertainment where unpaid workers perform for the raging masses. But that money — which leaps from …

TELANDER: At Northwestern, Collins can create a throne all his own

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 23:46:01 -0500

‘I’m a basketball junkie,’’ Chris Collins said Tuesday, his first official day as Northwestern’s basketball coach. I can vouch for that junkie-dom. I remember when little Chris was running around at the Multiplex gym in Deerfield, where his dad coached the Bulls, playing against mean old lunch-timers like me and my pals Ed Murphy, Mark Chrislip and Dave Mills, and periodically little Chris would get his little lunch handed to him on a tray. But the kid always came back against the big, hairy gang, and he always was cocky-confident. He developed a three-pointer and a handle, and he started …