Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Sunshine Behind the Curtains

Happy Friday Chicago!

When I was a youngin’, the best harbinger for spring was the first baseball practice appearing on the schedule.

And in a good year, there were meaningful Bulls games as the playoff race heated up.

Disengaged with the NBA season, the news cycle, and team sports, there are less telltales that winter will be over soon. It can’t just be the sun, which can be unreliable.

Last weekend went as expected. I launched into Friday a broad-shouldered, strong man standing on top of what he thought was a week full of accomplishments. I left the weekend fat (Home Run Inn, Girl Scout Cookies, and what so have you), sick (twice already in one year, shameful), and nearly dead (tired).

A Home Run Inn pizza may sound sacrilegious to some in the great City of Chicago, but its consistency and convenience hits the spot every time.

Then there’s the Girl Scout Cookies, which are now an embodiment of deteriorating American society, where the girls don’t even make eye contact with me during my charity purchase of Samoas, and where their mothers whip out a phone, point it at me, and demand I tap my card.

Get that out of my face. I’ll pay cash and you’ll turn right now, to that ingrate daughter of yours, and tell her to smile and wave at me. Tell her to tell me I’m changing the world, and I’ll put the gun down.

When I stop at a Girl Scout or Lemonade Stand, I expect to be treated like Mother Teresa, not a patron buying cigarettes at the gas station.

I was so turned off by that experience that I had to erase both boxes of cookies immediately, but it would have been a shame just to throw them out. So instead, as last week’s newsletter’s prophecy told, I sat and watched the Sopranos on Sunday with my hairy belly out, sweating, wondering why my head was throbbing.

Buying Girl Scout Cookies should not be capitalistic transaction, but an exchange of goodwill!

Some things don’t belong with others, for eternity. Last weekend, my mom said she was listening to XRT, which was playing oldie hits. They wrapped up one song by letting the listeners know that the artist now required around-the-clock care.

Stop it!

Revisiting the oldies should be completely separated from current reality, just as the selling of Girl Scout cookies should involve innocent smiles and Thank Yous! instead of tap-to-pay technology and assembly lines.

Other things do belong together. This time of year should not be dubbed “the most miserable time of the sports calendar.” It has become that in Chicago, no doubt, but it isn’t so when everyone is doing their jobs.

Playoff basketball and regular season baseball nearing should bring joy to those of us who have dug our heels into this winter. They should be showing us a curtain to the other side.

I’ve done my job, I need everyone else to do theirs around here.

My hibernation period has shown no signs of letting up.

But, left without a small ball to throw around the still-brown grass, or a basketball team to care about, nature has begun to send me other signs.

It’s not just the Bulls, or the Cubs, that have characterized my spring obsessions for the last two decades.

If the Bulls are out of the picture, there’s another way to ready my body clock for the time change in the near-term future. And that, since I can remember, has been LeBron James’ antics.

Hate does have a home here, and it especially does when LeBron is building up his facade again, both on and off the basketball court. Good men need to take a stand on LeBron Watch, watching late night games and perusing through court documents to ensure he’s not pulling fast ones (he always is).

I’ve shied away from a lot of the news this winter, burying my head underground and hoping to come up to sunshine and a better place on the other side. For the most part, it has worked.

But every now and then I’m inevitably broken off a piece of the outside world.

On Tuesday, that came from my building’s elevator, which feeds you news tidbits as you ride to your floor. While I am currently fat, sick, and nearly dead, I still hold onto my dignity in those moments, and don’t find myself feverishly scrolling through my phone out of habit in the 10 seconds it takes to get up 14 floors.

And there I saw the headline: Bronny, LeBron James deny allegations made in 2024 lawsuit

Now what do we have here?

LeBron Watch is for men (and women) of principle only. Right now, I haven’t been fulfilling my duties. I’m in bed by 9:30 p.m. and haven’t been passing out verbal flyers like I used to, containing information on why he’s not who he says he is.

If I want to get back in, I have to do it right. I’m an absolute sucker for chiropractor videos, for instance. The large cracks and the (sometimes fake) after effects are borderline erotic to me. But I exclusively watch videos with gross old men getting cracked up, not these new-age ones where some voluptuous woman in yoga attire is moaning on the table. Yuck.

Real Chiro heads don’t fall for that pervert nonsense. Real Chiro heads are in it for the right reasons, just like real LeBron Haters aren’t in the game only every four years when he endorses a presidential candidate they don’t like.

Real LeBron Watch heads know when they can give 100%. I’m the founder, but like Steve Jobs, I’ve been outed from my role in my own enterprise. Like Jobs, I’ll return triumphantly.

I haven’t been able to keep watch for a while. And with the cat away, the mice have been playing. But the God of Springtime is trying to send a message to me.

On the elevator, it felt like it may be time to listen.

LeBron Watch, and the hatred that it brings, is the best stimulant I’ve ever come across. And it seems to naturally occur — especially — as the Chicago winter wanes.

And, as I did read that headline on the elevator, without any knowledge of the morally reprehensible behavior and the subsequent denials that may be included within, I heard voices in my head.

To get ready for March Madness. To Gear Up for Cubs and Sox baseball. To Hate watch the Los Angeles Lakers.

Those voices in my head, as the Memphis rapper Key Glock says, they keep on saying, ‘boy let’s get it.’

And who am I to ignore those voices, or to ignore Key Glock’s following, directional line?

So you know I’ma go get it.

It’s near time to lift my head up, smell the blooming flowers, and find a way to keep LeBron James from another championship. It’s time for baseball, and maybe a new White Sox owner. It’s time for spring.

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While the Bears have taken a new turn from a football operations perspective, and while Virginia McCaskey is no longer with us, the same people — more or less — remain in charge.

But it feels different.

The Bulls are stuck in the mud for the 26th straight year. The Cubs, who ought to be good this year, are crushing themselves with a self-imposed budget. The Blackhawks lost Rocky Wirtz and have not been to the real playoffs since 2017.

But the White Sox are somehow worse off than anyone (although I’d argue the Bulls are close).

I generally ignore any and all Jerry Reinsdorf-and-the-Sox news, as he’s a man full of many tricks and few solutions.

This past week, though, my Sox fan brethren may have gotten a glimpse of the light — of the proverbial springtime — for the first time in a long time.

Justin Ishbia, a founding partner of the Chicago-based private equity firm Shore Capital Partners, dropped out of the running for the Minnesota Twins ownership.

He then turned around and entered into a deal to acquire more shares of the White Sox from limited partners. Importantly, The Athletic reported that the Reinsdorfs actually approached him about doing so.

If Ishbia was in the running to buy the Twins — he has the money to do so — and decided against it, only to buy more shares in the White Sox, there’s fire to this smoke.

Ishbia wants to own a professional sports team like his brother Mat Ishbia, who is the owner of the Phoenix Suns. Mat is a total douche bag and immediately directed the Suns to make two to three awful moves that haven’t worked out. But that’s besides the point.

The Ishbias spend money. Mat, upon agreeing to buy the Suns with Justin, immediately traded for Kevin Durant and then Bradley Beal, destroying a good team in an attempt to make it great and skyrocketing its salary sheet.

But he also maintained the Suns would always spend money to compete for championships, that he’d even put the team on public access television in lieu of starting his own TV network or grabbing money from a carrier to broadcast the games.

The point is that the Ishbias are independently wealthy, and run sports teams like they are supposed to be run — to win, not to make money.

After reading everything about this story I could, it seems likely that Ishbia will eventually become the owner. Or else he wouldn’t have cut bait with the Twins pursuit, and reinvested in the White Sox.

This would not be Reinsdorf selling to a buddy of his, someone with similar spending goals who thinks they know baseball better than anybody else. This would be selling to a guy who immediately would throw his hat in the ring for the top free agents of that offseason.

Ishbia is exactly what the White Sox need.

Outside of the fact that the Sox would immediately have a far better owner, and immediately start handing out contracts far higher than anything they’ve handed out before, this would be great for Chicago.

For one, I can’t even make fun of my White Sox friends anymore. It’ll be far more fun to beat the Sox and make fun of their free agent signings when there’s a threat that they could actually make the playoffs, or actually get the next big free agent.

White Sox fans are dormant right now. It’s no fun to kick a dog while it’s down.

I want to see my friends smile again, I want to see them sing White Sox, White Sox, Go, Go White Sox with glee.

This will also be good for Chicago. If Ishbia comes in and starts handing out checks, the pressure immediately gets turned up on everyone else.

That would mean no more time for the Ricketts to be the best owners in the city by default. It would draw a clear line between the Bulls (who will still be a Reinsdorf enterprise), and the Sox (a former Reinsdorf enterprise).

If the Bears and the Sox get their shit together, everyone else will at least have to think about doing the same.

A rising tide, hopefully, will lift all boats.

But for now, the focus remains on our South Siders, who have been beaten and battered and haven’t even been given a chance to stand up. Here’s a hand. Take it.

I expect this to move quickly, as there’s been more murmurs about Jerry’s future with the club than ever over the last two years. And now there’s bonafide prospective buyer.

So start watching those games again, Sox fans (if you can get your satellite to work). Start paging through those farm rankings. Start sucking down those lukewarm Modelos at Guaranteed Rate if you so choose.

The winter may actually be coming to a close.

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Sammy Sosa is at Cubs Spring Training.

That is an awesome sight to see.

How do I feel about Sosa, one of the greatest Cubs players of all time, being shunned by the organization for so long? It’s complicated.

The Cubs’ self-aggrandizing on some moral high ground about Sosa, and his need to apologize to the organization, was always way too much. It felt performative, and the end goal was never entirely clear.

At the same time, I am not one of these people (and find myself in the minority here) who believes that the Steroid Era in baseball should be celebrated, and that no one should be punished for their violations.

‘90s and early 2000s baseball was far better, and a much bigger part of the national consciousness. Some of that has to do with the body builders hitting home runs every game, but not all of it. It’s not as simple as it’s made out to be.

And when there’s rules in place, and some players are breaking those rules to gain an advantage, yes, it is a problem. Yes, it is morally questionable, as players who played by the rules had their careers hurt over it.

The argument that “everyone was doing it” is a convenient and oversimplified argument. It’s also just not true. There is no evidence pointing to everyone breaking the rules, and if there are still rule followers, then rule breakers should be punished.

That somehow has become a controversial stance. I think Sammy Sosa should have been punished because of his breaking the rules. I’m not sure sitting in front of Congress was necessary, but some course correcting was.

It doesn’t completely take away from what he did for the Cubs, however, nor does it justify him being made a pariah for two decades.

I’m happy to have him back, and I’m happy he wanted to come back.

He’s already making a mark, as he reportedly noticed that Vidal Bruján, a Cubs offseason acquisition, was unnecessarily lunging in the batter’s box. After Sosa talked to him, Bruján promptly homered.

Some things just feel right, and one of those things is Sosa being with the Cubs in some capacity.

Elsewhere, Nico Hoerner is going to miss the start of the season in Japan after having surgery on his forearm this offseason. He’ll be ready for the start of the season stateside.

Alexander Canario — the prize of the Kris Bryant trade — was also cut after the Justin Turner signing. Canario was out of options and never really hit his stride with the Cubs. Injuries played a part in that. But this also lends a glimpse into the potential that lies waiting in the Cubs system. At this point, some ties to have to be cut.

“At this point in my career, I just want to win,” Turner said when he arrived at Spring Training. “I want to make a playoff run. For me, this was the best fit, the best team, the best org to win a division and make that deep playoff run and win another World Series.”

Let’s go get it.

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