Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
The Way Things Used To Be!
Happy Friday Chicago!
After the MLB rolled out awful turquoise All-Star jerseys Tuesday, it got me thinking about what used to be better in sports.
And in life, too.
I try hard not to say everything was better 10 or 20 years ago. I liked a lot of things a lot more back then, but I also was living in a safe home with loving parents, with no job, no discernible responsibilities, and a full head of hair.
Those factors probably have more to do with my viewpoint on that time period than the things that made up that time period themselves. That’s why pointing to the past and saying, “Let’s go back to that!” can be such a strong political message, I presume. People like the past better because they’re not there anymore.
For this week’s newsletter, I’ve deliberately sifted through everything that I think used to be better and have tried to challenge myself on it. Was it really better?
A new trend in online commentary is telling people not to eat this, or do that, because humans “didn’t do that” thousands of years ago. It makes you think, then once you think, you realize it’s brain-numbingly stupid.
Yeah, people didn’t take pills, receive shots, eat every three hours or sit in chairs for extended periods of time back in the day. They also died at 38. If we didn’t have clear data sitting in front our faces that suggested — no, proved — that we’re living in the easiest time period ever, I may buy it. Good thing we do have that data.
Your favorite song coming on the radio was awesome 15 years ago. It was delayed gratification. You know what’s even cooler? Listening to 100,000 minutes of your favorite music all year whenever you want to.
But not everything is better now. Back in the day, you hosted a party and bought some cases of beer and some liquor. Now, you’ve got to buy 17 different types of alcohol — all of which have different sub-types — for guests that will leave an hour later anyway with a headache that may or may not exist.
The MLB All-Star Game, though, was better when everyone wore their own jerseys. It was even cooler when the game decided whether the AL or NL got home-field advantage in the playoffs, though I’ll admit that was completely illogical. It stopped being cool for me in 2016, for some reason.
You’re eight years old. Your dad tells you the Cubs and the Yankees are playing at Wrigley Field, a series we need to watch because the Cubs and the Yankees never play. Both teams are good. Kerry Wood and Mark Prior are starters for two of the three games, and you remember those games 19 years later.
Fast forward to 2023. The Cubs played the Yankees. Up next: The Red Sox. What the fuck is this?
It’s cool to play the Yankees and the Red Sox as a Cubs fan, but it won’t be cool in two years. It’s only cool now because it used to rarely happen. When it happens enough times, it won’t be cool anymore.
The theory that something is cool once every 10 years and therefore it will be cool once per year is a dumb one. Every major sport now is succumbing to this. We should give the people what they want, not what they think they want.
It’s why the College Football Playoff started. It’s why it’s going from four to 12 teams. And why it will go from 12 to 16 teams. The Rose Bowl will be rendered meaningless soon, so that my Iowa Hawkeyes can get their brains beat in at Bryant-Denny Stadium in 2026.
We need to be saved from ourselves, and we don’t need a Red Sox-Cubs series to just be any old series in the middle of July. We need novelty, if that’s still attainable.
(Somehow this will relate back to people requesting obscure, specific drinks for parties, but I’m not sure how to get there right now.)
Mark Prior… vs. the Yankees! Cubs win 8-7. What was cooler than that? Was it the Cubs winning their first game ever in Yankee stadium last week after a Jameson Taillon gem? No, because they’ll win 5-10 more there over the next decade.
The NBA jerseys, too. My God, the new NBA jerseys. They were awesome in the ‘90s. I liked them in the 2010s.
But, if you don’t follow the NBA much, it’s likely you’ve turned a game on over the last couple of years and taken 2-3 minutes to figure out who is playing. The Bucks are wearing baby blue and playing the Jazz, who are wearing red and orange jerseys on a red and orange court for some reason. The next game is the Heat, donning yellow jerseys against the Celtics, who have ruined an all-time sports jersey.
It’s all about the money. That’s the reason the All-Star game now has specific jerseys and why each NBA team has 19 jersey alternates. But please, etch “Home Team Wears White, Away Team Wears Color” on my gravestone.
Societal structure and decency should take hold over unmitigated capitalism in such instances.
What’s more, my children will never understand the beauty of early 2000s college football. And no, this has nothing to do with kids getting paid. In fact, keeping kids from getting paid in the first place is probably what has led us to the mess we’re in now.
The conferences — get this — were based on where each team played! We didn’t have shitty East Coast teams in the Big Ten. Texas and Texas A&M played every year and the Red River Rivalry was the biggest Big 12 game of the year. The ACC and the Big East had the best postseason basketball tournaments, and so it was fun to stomp them during the football season. The SEC was comprised of Southeastern teams, and all the rednecks could beat their chests about their football superiority as we funneled federal aid down there to help them through the winter, spring and summer.
PAC-12 after dark was special.
Each conference played differently because they only rarely played each other, and they all generally recruited from the areas around them, which meant different athletes for different teams.
If I was told as a young buck that UCLA and USC would one day be in the Big Ten some day I would’ve thrown a temper tantrum. Well, I also did that when I was 26.
But the point stands. The TV money pouring into college football has completely disrupted what was once a beautiful, pure sport. It will look unrecognizable five years from now, not for the better.
Now, we need everything, everywhere, all at once. Everyone needs their own special drink at the party, and they need it now. Eventually, nothing will be special because we’ve tried to make everything that — a Yankees-Cubs series in July, new NBA uniforms in November, and a USC-Iowa game in September (I will be there).
My grandchildren will laugh at me for these takes someday. I am prepared for it. But I’ll take solace in the fact that, 10 years after I’m gone, they’ll be livid at the fact that things aren’t like they used to be.
I’ll take the modern medicine, seamless transportation and Spotify, though. Everything else — particularly in sports — is becoming rotten.
I’m not even going to delve into the NBA’s “Midseason Tournament.” Someone help us.
P.S. If you’re drunk trying to get a tattoo, they’ll turn you away. For athletes, if they come in and ask for a superhero or villain to be tattoo’d on their bodies, they should be required to think about that decision for three years before going through it. It’s an epidemic at this point.
There is a non-zero chance that I will solely blame Trey Mancini if the Cubs ultimately decide to sell.
But solely blaming him would deflect blame from David Ross, who played him that day in lieu of an available Cody Bellinger, and the front office, which has left the Ross to scramble for first and third basemen options for the greater part of the season.
They finally found a decent option at third base in Nick Madrigal, and now he has re-injured his hamstring, with no real concrete timetable for his return.
After kicking the shit out of the Cardinals in Game 1 of London — meaning they had won 11 of 13 — the Cubs jumped out to a 4-0 lead in Game 2 with Stroman on the bump. Mancini makes an error at first base, where he’s been dreadful all year, and everything goes to shit.
The Cubs then returned home from London and were promptly swept by the Phillies, and then lost a series to the Guardians. Their momentum evaporated.
Mancini is a good dude, and I think a pretty good player. But he has no business being out there fielding right now. He’s incapable, for now, and basically admitted as much. He said he had been “slowing things down” too much.
In a season where one or two games could be the difference between selling or staying, making the playoffs or not, those sorts of negative game-changing moments in winnable games cannot happen.
I’m not going to complain about taking two of three from the Yankees and two of four from the Brewers on the road. But the Cubs are now 5 games under .500 — they haven’t been above .500 since May 6th — and their chances of convincing the front office to stand pat are wilting.
The worst part is that I feel like the front office actually wants the team on the field to stumble so they can justify selling for the third year in a row.
I know this team isn’t great — I know. But you have good, young players that enjoy being part of a team together. You have enough to make a run at postseason contention. You have a top-5 to top-10 farm system that you can finally bank on, and some really special players that will be up in a few years. Is selling worth it?
Or — is signing Marcus Stroman to a longer-term deal and riding this momentum more worth it? Is locking a versatile, revitalized player like Cody Bellinger worth it? Eventually, you’re going to have to sign guys like Stroman and Bellinger to become contenders. Why not streamline that process?
Bellinger is slashing .436/.467/.600 over the last 15 games. He can play a solid first and a great center field. Even if you’re banking on Pete Crowe-Armstrong to be the future in center, Bellinger is a worthwhile piece to have on the roster — even if it’s as expensive insurance.
Stroman is a quality start machine and has a 2.96 ERA, only outdone by his teammate Justin Steele, Blake Snell and Clayton Kershaw.
That Stroman-Steele-Hendricks series start lineup looks pretty damn good right now.
But then there’s Jameson Taillon. Taillon, before his revenge game that gave the Cubs their first win at Yankee Stadium ever, had been one of the Cubs’ biggest problems. In fact, prior to that game, the Cubs were 2-12 when he pitched. Five games over .500 otherwise.
Taillon has essentially turned a fantastic starting pitching unit into just a good one, all by himself. And he’s owed $54 million more dollars after this year.
We are two weeks away from the trade deadline. I need the Cubs to throw a last-ditch, 5-game winning streak effort at this season before it’s too late. Otherwise, I’ll have to find a TV show to watch or something — and I don’t want to do that.
Given the Bulls ethos, they are having an incredible offseason.
The only problem with that is the Bulls ethos is their own, and not the fans’. Arturas Karnisovas wants the Bulls to be a “tough out” — he literally said that during a summer league broadcast — proving further that he’s a seamless fit in the Reinsdorf factory.
Bulls fans want their first contender in over a decade. The people making the decisions saw a first-round out as a step in the right direction, and somehow, found a play-in loss to be palatable the next year.
I’ve argued in the past for a deconstruction of this roster, which would likely include a Zach LaVine trade. It seems the Bulls asking price is too high — it should be high — but I also don’t fully believe that they are willing to pull the trigger.
The Bulls were granted a $10.2 million disabled player exception for Lonzo Ball last night, which is good news. The bad news is the Bulls likely won’t use it — they have virtually never taken advantage of exceptions.
In this case specifically, the Bulls could use that exception to take on an expiring contract in a trade or sign someone to a one-year deal. Not much shooting is left out there, but I wouldn’t mind seeing them use it on Javonte Green, who I love dearly.
Speaking of shooting, it was all over the place in the trade market. The Nets traded Joe Harris for second round picks to the Pistons. The Bulls traded second-round picks to get a second-round pick, one they used to draft a guy who couldn’t shoot.
I’m going to give Julian Phillips the benefit of the doubt. It’s not his fault the Bulls drafted him.
But he is emblematic of everything that’s wrong with this specific front office.
This front office is hasty and unorganized. They give players more money than their market value. They give player options on contracts when they don’t need to. They use picks to draft a guy who won’t be an impact player in his first year, while also asserting that they are going for it.
It’s their fault they didn’t have a pick in the second round — or first round — in the first place. But they could have deployed those picks elsewhere. Even with the Bulls marquee signings, which we’ll get to, they still lack shooting.
I saw no less than a dozen trades being made this offseason where I thought “the Bulls could have done that.”
Let’s say the Bulls strategy of being average was a fine one. Even if that were the case, they’re still not doing a good job of that. Did the Bulls get better this offseason? Maybe?
If your goal is to be good, not great, at least be good. Right now, the Bulls look a lot like the team they’ve been for the last year and a half — decent, bad at shooting, and likely a play-in contender.
I have no doubt in my mind the Bulls will have me in Las Vegas in December losing my mind over a Midseason tournament championship, though. The NBA gave the Bulls an absolute gift with that one.
“Well, we didn’t make the playoffs, but we took some steps forward. We competed in the inaugural midseason tournament and almost won that.”
With all that said… let’s get to the actual signings — which were good ones!
Chicago’s own Jevon Carter! I love it! Carter is one of the best defending point guards in the entire league, and man do I love a point guard that can defend. Last year, he also shot 42% on threes. And, he shot 4.2 per game, a pretty decent number.
If DeRozan, LaVine and Vuc are all on the floor together, there is always a chance now for the Bulls to put two good defensive guard/forwards out there, whether it be Carter and Caruso (hell yes), Ayo and Caruso, Ayo and Carter, Patrick Williams and Carter, etcetera. Hopefully you’ll have Javonte Green in that mix as well.
The Bulls were 5th in defensive rating last year, with their three “best” players all being poor defenders. That’s a testament to good coaching and, well, Alex Caruso. Adding Carter ensures the Bulls can stay in that top-5, which automatically makes you competitive.
The next signing was Torrey Craig, another really solid role player that will get plenty of minutes next year. He’s a great defender also, and a decent three-point shooter also. He shot nearly 40% from three on over three attempts per game.
I would have liked the Bulls to get more shooting, but I also would have liked them to go a completely different direction.
Given that they are going this direction, though, Craig and Carter are both solid additions.
If a team is going to be just OK, I’d much rather watch one that defends than one that scores 120 per game and gives up 121.
LETS GO BULLS!
The Sox only good player got hurt during the Home-Run Derby! See everyone next week!
Good stuff as always! Will miss those Grant Hill area Pistons uniforms, even if the color scheme doesn’t make any sense