Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
It Feels So Good to Be Back
It’s great to be back.
Take 10-15 minutes to kick off the weekend today with some Chicago sports talk.
I hope you’ll read it in its entirety, but if you feel like skipping to certain sections, here they are:
-You Still Do Gotta Come Through Chicago (Hiatus Explained)
-The Hole That Sports Left
-Trivia
-Baseball’s return
-A Defense of Derrick Rose’s 2011 MVP
-Mitch Trubisky’s Press Conference
-SGCTC Quick Hits
-Closing Gratitude
Thanks for opening this, and thanks for welcoming me back.
Let’s get others back on the bandwagon. Do me a favor and tell your friends that the newsletter is back, and tell another to subscribe:
You Still Do Gotta Come Through Chicago
Summer vacation is over.
A random month off from the newsletter with no announcement wasn’t planned, and I apologize for that.
Having said that, I pick my nose when I sleep. (Just hang on, I’ll arrive at the point.) It’s quite embarrassing. I do it less now than I used to, but sometimes I wake up and there’s blood on my finger and on my pillow case and the whole situation requires a clean up before 7am.
Once, when it got really bad, I went on the internet to see if this was something that happened to a lot of people. Had to be, right? Turns out that, no, not a lot of people pick their noses while sleeping.
After a pretty extensive search, I arrived at an old-fashioned message board with about four weirdos discussing the problem, which they’d also had. If I remember correctly, the best answer the internet had for me on the topic of picking your nose in your sleep was something along the lines of:
Yeah, there’s no real solution. The only way I was able to stop it was by wearing mittens to bed.
Fucking mittens. That was the best the internet could do for me that day.
Well, that’s generally how I feel my return on investment in regards to the internet has been recently. I started thinking of getting rid of social media around the time I wrote the last newsletter in mid-May. That was before, of course, the protests broke out over George Floyd’s death.
Before then, I had been hopping on social media or the internet and been immediately slammed with COVID-19 death numbers and people making bad-faith arguments related to them.
Outside of that, I realized that sitting, idly scrolling through my phone — my brain working at 40% of its capabilities, if that — looking at comments from a post on Bleacher Report asking who would get a hypothetical rebound between five random NBA players, wasn’t the best use of my time.
The only time I’ve been on Twitter during this hiatus was because I heard people were posting black squares on social media to signify a time of reflection: a time where we all thought critically about the problems our communities were facing, and how we could make them better.
Having been offline, it seems I may have misjudged the exercise, or at least how people were using it. The first post I saw when I logged on through my computer said something to the effect of:
Posting a black square won’t do shit!!
… As I had my black square all ready to go.
Hey, I posted it anyway, and to hell with the reaction to it because I at least know my heart was in the right place. Either way, that sort of reaffirmed the idea that online was not the best place to be for me at that time, and that more meaningful critical thinking and outreach could be done outside of the 280-character zone.
For the first time in a long time, I accepted the fact that it was okay that I wouldn’t be one of the first people to know that the Cubs draft pick went to Mount Carmel. And thank God I stopped reading every story about the MLB’s potential return over the last month, that saved me a lot of time.
(In fact, I’m back just in time.)
So why did I think it was time to come back? Well this newsletter is undoubtedly one of the best places — at least for me — online. There was no reason to stop writing and sending emails just because I was offline elsewhere.
Plus, things needed to be talked about.
Kyrie Irving is starting his own basketball league.
Mitch Trubisky had a press conference for some reason, and the guy that writes a blog dubbed “Still Gotta Come Through Chicago” didn’t know about it for an entire day (maybe not the worst thing, after watching it).
The NBA is planning on returning, the Bulls didn’t make it.
People are talking about Derrick Rose’s MVP in asinine ways again.
The NHL is planning on returning, the Blackhawks did make it.
I watched an entire documentary about the 1998 home run race between Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa and the filmmakers had full access to Sosa, a guy who rarely speaks publicly, and he said, like, 75 words total over two hours.
Weirdly enough, I sort of enjoyed that documentary, and I think I did solely because it reminded me of a time when baseball seemed to matter. A few days later, I realized that the documentary was actually pretty awful.
Bottom line, there’s shit to talk about. So I’m back to talk about it.
I’m aware that it’s not as if any of you were waiting with bated breath for the SGCTC return, but I thought it would be weird to just pop back into the mix after a month of radio silence — a month that was one of the more turbulent ones in recent memory from the country’s perspective — and just launch into criticisms of a Mitch Trubisky press conference.
But without further ado, let’s go — you still do gotta come through Chicago.
Trivia
Joakim Noah has officially signed with the Los Angeles Clippers for the rest of the season. In the 2013-2014 season, he finished fourth in MVP voting behind Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and Blake Griffin.
Which Chicago sports team has the most top-5 MVP finishes since 2010? The second most? Third? The least? Rank them — 1 through 5. Answer at bottom.
The Hole That Sports Left
Normally, by this time in the summer, the baseball season would be about halfway through, meaning my father would’ve declared the Cubs season “done” at least four times — twice if they were 20 games over .500 but had blown two games all season, three times if they had blown three games, four times if Joe Maddon was still the coach, no matter their record, and many times more than that if their record was even close to .500 at all.
Instead, he’s recycling through the Ken Burns Vietnam special about five times. He’s watched it full through each time (it’s about a dozen hours).
One thing I’ve realized about most Dads throughout the pandemic is that if nothing horrible ever happened, they wouldn’t have shit to do.
There’d be no 9/11 specials, no WW2 movies or documentaries and no books on disasters generally, which would amount to the biggest disaster of all: Dads having nothing to do.
I’m sure Ken Burns has got some good documentaries. But sports has spoiled me throughout my life. I grew so accustomed to them being there every night.
Baseball naysayers (best time ever to be one of those) always rag on the lengthy nature of the MLB season. That’s one of the things I missed most about it. I daydream about driving in the car (having somewhere to go), with the windows down on a beautiful Chicago summer night, with baseball pumping through the stereo.
Pat Hughes: One out, Anthony Rizzo up at the plate…
The game’s outcome always mattered to me, probably much more than it it should have, but being able to maintain the macro, ‘We’ll get ‘em tomorrow’ outlook is something I cherished.
No matter what happened each summer day, baseball would be on that night. No matter what happened each summer night, baseball would be on the next day.
Amid a run-of-the-mill Wednesday, being able to check up on a baseball game midday always felt like a privilege. A lesser version of the NCAA tournament, having sports on at 1 p.m. is just awesome.
The ‘woe is me’ shtick from fans of successful franchises grows tired at points, but I always missed June baseball desperately when every pitch would make your heart skip a beat in October.
Playoff baseball is breathtaking in a figurative, beautiful way if your team isn’t playing. It’s literally breathtaking if your team is playing.
Now, I miss June baseball more than I did when I yearned for it during October baseball.
Now, it looks like the entire season will be pretty high-stakes. But hey, I’ll take it. (More on this later.)
I’ve also missed October baseball, because I’ve missed caring so much about something that now seems trivial, and — at times — borderline unobtainable, like it was never going to come back, despite all logic suggesting it eventually would.
My bank account doesn’t, but I personally am overriding here to tell you I desperately miss paying $10+ for a beer. I miss paying for a ticket to a game, then reminiscing with buddies at the game about former teams, even though a likely better one was playing in front of us.
I’d donate an entire paycheck to Yak-Zies in Wrigleyville right now for a communal plate of 100 hot wings, the meal spiced up further by the complimentary trivia being served up around the table.
I could go for some curly fries on the South Side too, and a debate with my White Sox- inclined friends about six players that have yet to set foot in the major league ballpark.
Michael Reinsdorf’s ass probably feels looser than it has in damn near a decade! I’ve been on that thing for years and now haven’t thought of that dork for a month. Hell, John Paxson is probably sitting in his house, stress-free, for the first time in years, wondering where we’ve all gone. That’s a damn shame. We’re back, buddy.
I really miss the NBA, man. I miss gambling too. God do I miss gambling. I’ll never call you a bad habit again, I swear! You know that line about why break-ups hurt? It’s about losing that person in your everyday life more than anything else? That’s how I feel about gambling!
Nothing like unwinding from a long day’s work by getting absolutely fucking furious that the Toronto Raptors won by 6 and not 7.
If you get us out of this, Gambling Gods, I’ll never say I was screwed again! I’ll take every loss on the chin.
I even miss arguing with people about the NBA who don’t watch it. The kind of people who don’t know how to roll after setting a pick in a pick-up game, but somehow have gathered that defense is less intense these days because they watched the All-Star Game for 10 minutes two years ago.
I remember the summer after I graduated college, in the dog days of summer, my friends and I would be trying so hard to hang out to distract us from our suddenly routine, boring lives that we made “Wednesday Night Baseball” on ESPN out to be the Super Bowl every week.
‘Who we got this week?’
If two pitchers with below a 4.0 ERA were facing off, it may as well have been Greg Maddux-Randy Johnson in our eyes.
That reminds me, was there anything better than checking the sports lineup for the week and planning a day with friends around a game? ‘Hawks play the Blues on Friday, should we all meet?’
Holy shit do I miss the Blackhawks in the playoffs. Vegas wise, they have about the worst odds to do anything in the proposed plan to resume the season, but even seeing their name in a bracket sends shivers down my spine.
If you don’t have unbelievable memories from the Hawks’ playoff runs over the years — whether you are a hockey fan at all — then boy, you missed out. You could actually not know who the fuck Jonathan Toews was and still remember the 2010’s Hawks run like it was Woodstock and you were in the front row every night.
‘Gotta Get Some Pucks on Net!’
‘Power Play!’
‘Kaner is sick!’
That’s all you needed. That and 10 bucks would buy you the meanest hangover you’ve ever asked for from a basement watch party where you really didn’t watch anything.
‘Da Da Da, Da Da Da’
The Hawks throwing some magic pixie dust on this COVID-19 season would be the greatest final gift of the last ten years they could ever give us. Just one series win. Just one, fellas. Circle the puck and lets get back to playing hockey.
The first day I’m driving in a car again, though, and I hear baseball on the radio — that’s when I’ll let one tear run down my cheek. Yeah, that’s the stuff.
Believe it! Baseball Is Back
If you are still yelling at the MLB for screwing this up colossally, by all means keep going. If you are yelling about the 60-game season, though, and how it’s not enough games, just please stop talking.
The idea that you would be deprived of sports for four months, then complain about the sample size of the regular season when it did come back — smack-dab in the middle of a pandemic — just lets me know that you are the kind of person who lets someone bumping into you at a bar ruin your entire night.
You have a right to be mad at the MLB. Cubs fans have a right to be mad that after three months of a public health emergency, they still couldn’t get their dumb network on Comcast, which half of their fanbase has.
But beggars can’t be choosers, and thinking that major sports leagues were just going to have a regular ol’ seasons this year makes you sound stupid.
Enjoy the weirdness of this year. If there’s a silver lining to the sports experience during COVID-19, it’s that you’ll see seasons unlike any that came before them, or any that will come after them.
60 games.
In 2012, Bryan LaHair was slashing .290/ .373/ .554 after 60 games. He was playing in Japan a year later.
In 2016, through 45 games, the White Sox were 9 games over .500 and in first in the AL Central. They finished the season 6 games under and out of the playoffs.
Will this season be the same as the rest of them, and count like the rest of them? Absolutely not. Will it be weird, and pretty exhilarating? I sure think so.
If Aramis Ramirez was judged on his first 60 games of a season, I think he would’ve been out of the league in like three years. Instead, he’s one of the best Cubs in the 21st century.
It’s going to be weird. But it’s going to be fun.
For the Cubs and the Sox, training camp starts in Chicago on July 1. The regular season will start, if all goes as planned, just three weeks after that.
Each team will primarily play their own division and the division in the opposite league in the same geographic area.
That means the Cubs and Sox will be playing each other in extremely high-stakes games throughout 2020. Each will account for 10% of the other team’s games.
Additionally, here are new rules for the 2020 season:
The implementation of a universal designated hitter, meaning Kyle Schwarber will be more valuable than he has ever been.
A new extra innings rule: Each inning after the ninth will start with a runner on second base. That runner will be the batter in the lineup immediately preceding that inning's leadoff hitter. (This is some 4th-game-on-a-Saturday-in-a-10-year-old-tournament-in-Schaumburg type shit.) This also means that a pitcher could theoretically throw a perfect game and still lose.
Pitchers can use a "wet rag" to keep their fingers moist in lieu of licking their fingers. (Who gives a shit.)
The new "three-batter minimum" rule remains intact: each relief pitcher must face at least three batters. (I like this rule. Joe Maddon is going to drive himself insane.)
The biggest gripe of them all should be from Dodgers fans, who have been heartbroken time and time again with one of the best teams in the league (while being cheated against). Now, they have by far the best team in the league, and could feasibly miss the playoffs barring a strange 60-game scenario, or win it and have everyone say it doesn’t count.
But I don’t care about LA sports fans.
The other wrinkle to keep an eye on is fan attendance. Apparently, both the Cubs and the Sox are vying to have 20% capacity in their stadiums this year. No White Sox attendance jokes here, but seriously, that’ll be a good mix-up of the supply and demand situation on the South Side.
I still doubt Mayor Lightfoot is ready to allow fans in off the bat, despite extremely low positivity rates in Chicago and Illinois at large. Regardless, the rooftops may be open, and that would make for a cool scene/ make it a little less weird for the players.
Not-So-Rosy Revisionist History
It’s time to address this ‘well, actually’, bullshit idea that Derrick Rose didn’t deserve the 2010-2011 MVP award.
The fact of the matter is that Rose, in the moment, was undoubtedly the MVP. That’s first and foremost. To act as if there was even a coalition of people who thought otherwise in 2011 is intellectually dishonest.
The amnesia is stunning. How quickly they forgot.
The only reason it is being reconsidered now is because our memories of Rose as the most explosive and exciting player in the league have waned and Basketball Reference hasn’t changed a bit.
Rose won 113 first place votes out of 121 that year. In fact, it was Dwight Howard — not LeBron James — who came in second. The value of re-evaluating MVPs years later is only useful as an exercise to detach the narrative from the award. But you shouldn’t detach yourself from the season entirely.
If you lived that season, you should know Rose deserved the MVP.
LeBron James, in case you forgot, joined two of the best ten players in the league the previous summer. Dwyane Wade was one year removed from his best year as a professional basketball player, averaging, oh, a cool 30.2 PPG/ 7.5 APG/ 5.0 RPG/ 2.2 SPG/1.3 BPG. He averaged more blocks and steals that year than he did turnovers, and was arguably the single best player in the NBA. He was the scoring champion.
Chris Bosh, in the previous year, had averaged 24 PPG and nearly 11 RPG. Each were the leaders of their respective teams. Something that can be said about none of the 2010-2011 Bulls except — maybe — Joakim Noah through sheer will a few years later, with Rose sidelined.
Deciding to join forces with Wade and Bosh alone could be grounds for disqualification for MVP. But I won’t even subscribe to that school of thought. I don’t need to.
Instead, let’s put our common sense hats on and consider why it may have been possible for LeBron to have a better fucking shooting percentage than Rose that year.
Any guesses?
Three of the best players in the league join forces, win less games than a team led by Rose, and still, you think that one of those three should be considered the MVP because he was able to score 25+ points at a higher percentage?
Go outside and play 3-on-3 this weekend. First, play with two competent basketball players. Guys who know how to run the pick and roll, can hit a jumper, and play help defense, and are significantly better than the three players you’re facing. Then, do me a favor, and play with two of your youngest cousins who don’t even like basketball, and tell me which situation you find easier to play in.
Because if your disinterested younger cousin were an NBA player, that would be Keith Bogans. The starting shooting guard for your Chicago Bulls in the same year Rose won MVP, a man who played just 85 more games in his entire career after that season.
Okay, but what about the back-up shooting guard? Ah, that was just Ronnie Brewer, who averaged nearly 8 PPG for his career!
For the love of god, the 5th highest player on the Bulls roster in terms of minutes per game that year was a 38-year-old Kurt Thomas, who had a visible muffin top poking out of his elastic shorts.
Despite all of that, the Bulls had the best record in the league. And guess what, that was before all the “Rose’s knees” jokes. He played all but one game that year, and played all but about 10 minutes in each of them.
Congratulations to those of you who have figured out how to look up statistics over the past few years, and congratulations for those of you who live in Chicago and think it’s a basketball-savvy, cool, contrarian thing to say that it was LeBron — not Rose — who deserved the MVP that year.
I now await your take that, actually, it was Karl Malone who should’ve been the star of the ‘90s. After all, he was pretty efficient.
The fact of the matter is that Rose, now, is still undoubtedly the MVP.
What are we doing here?
Here we go. Again — it feels goooood to be back!
What in good God’s name is this? Who thought this was a good idea?
He came out of the gate hot (I’m sure after he was told his mic was muted like three times.) On Foles being signed:
“Yeah, it was kind of interesting to me…”
Interesting, huh?
Interesting, like a head-scratcher, like when I had 3 Ds and 2 Fs on a report card in high school, stole the report card out of the mail, hid it in my room before my parents could see, then assured them I had no idea why the report card wouldn’t have arrived yet. “No clue. Interesting.” That kind of interesting.
Retrace your steps, buddy, and things won’t be as “interesting.”
“I still feel like this is my team.”
WHY are the Bears posting this? Is a conference call mandated by the league? What is up with this guilt-fueled need for the Bears to answer questions over Trubisky? He’s the back-up quarterback. Move on.
This will only make the situation more difficult for everyone. Stop texting your ex late at night and stop broadcasting your back-up QB’s conference calls. That’s just ridiculous.
This press conference becomes feels even more like parody when you identify the “Man In the Arena” Theodore Roosevelt quote in the background. No doubt it was purchased through an Instagram ad, and there’s no doubt that Mitch sees himself as a warrior unfairly maligned by critics, marred by dust, sweat and blood while his team signs a competent QB.
Look, I like Mitch. I’ve defended him time and time again from the unfair attacks — the ones that go beyond his below-average, on-field play. But man, the Bears PR is doing him no favors. Stop drawing this out. Stop parading around a QB trying to save face, one whose fifth-year option you did not even pick up.
SGCTC Quick Hits
Marian Hossa, widely considered one of the top free agent signings in Chicago sports history, is officially in the Hall of Fame, elected as part of the 2020 class. Hossa is undoubtedly also one of the top-20 athletes of this past decade in Chicago.
Patrick Beverley, from Chicago and the definition of a SGCTC-certified fellow, had one of the best tweets of all time this week.
I’m sympathetic to all of the quirks and challenges of resuming a season. But if you’re a goddamn NBA player with access to literally any gym you want within 10 miles of you and you’re not in shape, that’s your problem. Check Ball.
Trivia answer:
The Cubs with three top-5 finishes. Kris Bryant won it in 2016, Javier Baez came in second in 2018, and Anthony Rizzo came 4th in voting in 2015
Three teams are tied for second, but the Blackhawks get the nod here because of how close they were to top-5 finishes elsewhere. They have two — Kane won in 2016 and Toews came in 4th in 2013. Kane was 6th in voting in 2017, Toews was 6th in 2011, and Kane was also 7th in 2010.
The Bulls also have two, getting the nod over the Sox because they have a winner in 2011 with Rose, in addition to Noah’s 4th place finish.
The White Sox have two as well — Jose Abreu came 4th in voting in 2014 and Pauly Konerko finished 5th in 2010.
The NFL does not keep top-5 voting records, but considering that the Bears have 1. only made the playoffs twice since 2010 (2010 and 2018) and 2. a QB has one every year except when Adrian Peterson won in 2012, and the Bears have never had a top-5 QB during that period — they are rewarded no points, and may God have mercy on their souls.
To my commenters — I’ve missed you! If you want to heckle me about my absence or comment on any of the conversation above, please do so!
To the rest of the readers (who should be commenters too), thanks for coming back. The schedule will be a little tricky here with the 4th coming up, but there won’t be any long hiatuses again.
Thanks for reading, as always. Still Gotta Come Through Chicago.
Much love and enjoy your weekends. We’re back.
It feels fantastic to be back! Fuck the Dodgers but I do really agree that they are the biggest losers with the shortened season.
I was unaware of that Trubisky press conference and couldn’t watch more than 3 minutes of it. Also, no wonder that guy can’t read defense because he can’t watch film with that Walmart WiFi connection.
Wow does it feel good to be back and have a place to project my feelings about Mitch Trubisky. I think that it was wrong of the Bears PR team to make him do that interview. I think it was wrong that they made us, the 4th phase, listen to that moron try to put a coherent thought together. That might've been the hardest 20 minutes of my life, honestly. I mean what the fuck was that guy trying to say? I actually had to rewind the video a few times when I initially watched it because I couldn't make sense of any of the shit he was saying.
Do I feel bad that I make fun of this guy's intelligence and underbite? Absolutely not. Is it fair? Probably not. Life's not fair buddy! Yeah, it's not great that I take all of the anger of work and other things out on a guy I've never met, but it feels good. He sucks, and I will not allow him to ruin another year of the Bears while I sit in silence. I love Nick Foles. Go Bears.
Go Cubs.