Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Swashbuckle, and Wipe Ya Nose

Happy Friday Chicago!

The NFL banned the “Wipe Ya Nose” celebration this week due to its “gang connotations.”

But they can’t stop me from wiping my motherfuckin’ nose. Nothing hits quite like a big play and wiping ya nose slowly before giving the first down signal. My audience: a couple financial analysts, a teacher, and a few salespeople. That’s gang, alright.

Uh yuh. First down.

The Bears are down 14-0 in the first quarter of Week 1 for seemingly the fourth year in a row, people are starting to groan and go silent, but I’ve got a nose wipe in the back pocket to get the juices flowing again.

Banning the nose wipe is funny in its own right, but it’s hilarious in the context of what is going on in the MLB. Once every few years, an MLB team or player does something that seems demonstrably unfair, and the league’s leadership just has no answer for it.

Banging on trash cans to signal what pitch is coming? Long investigation, a shrug of the shoulders, and zero suspensions. Cartoonishly large men hitting more homers than ever? A decade of investigations that lead to nothing more than fans being turned off to baseball. Apple watches while playing? Confusion and a stern letter to teams about respecting the game.

The latest? The Yankees’ “Torpedo bats,” developed by an MIT physicist, which seem to be obviously creating an advantage for the hitters using them.

While football legislates what you can do with your fingers after getting a first down, the MLB can’t figure out how to handle its third “scandal” in less than a decade.

“Everybody has to use the same bats” and “everyone has to use the same balls” seems like a clear path forward, but I’d never be qualified to join the prestigious upper ranks of Major League Baseball.

All the while, they’re about to trot out these as the White Sox “City Connect” jerseys.

I don’t care how old I sound, there needs to be less jerseys, not more. A good way to connect to a city is to win, not mix up the jerseys of two bad teams owned by the same bad guy.

I’ll volunteer to read aloud Oh The Things You Can Think! By Dr. Seuss to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred this week. That may help.

“Oh The Things You Can Think, If Only You Try!”

Speaking of simple and aspirational thoughts, some cold water has landed on our Chicago Bulls, as they lost to the Dallas Mavericks inexplicably and then got trounced by the Oklahoma City Thunder (what?).

I went into the weekend Gung Ho about the Bulls climbing up in those play-in rankings — simple and aspirational — until those two losses.

In middle school, we played a 6’6, future Division 1 college basketball player in a championship game. My Dad told us before tip to not be afraid, to go right at him.

I came around a pick-and-roll on the first offensive possession of the game, grimaced, and went right at the big fella. Shoulder contact first, of course, then a nice little lay up off the glas— and he swatted my shit off the backboard so hard it went back to half court.

That’s how the Bulls loss to the Mavericks felt on Saturday, as the fellas and I had one TV in the entire bar tuned into your Chicago Bulls (the rest were on the Elite 8).

It became apparent on Monday that the Bulls do not yet belong to the league’s upper class, losing by 30 to the Thundr.

But then they rebounded with a big win on Tuesday against the Raptors, and now we’re back into it. Oh the Things You Can Think! Let’s go right at ‘em!

It’s possible, anything’s possible… ♫♫♫

For now, though, it’s time to head into a weekend of swashbuckling. I just learned what that word means (engaging in daring and romantic adventures with bravado or flamboyance) and I plan to respond to anyone who asks what I’m doing Saturday with just that: “swashbuckling. And you?”

But I really will be swashbuckling. I really do this shit.

I’ll be at the Cubs home opening series this weekend, and the weather forecast looks perfect: 40 degrees and raining with 15 mph winds.

There’s an odd joy in the misery of early season baseball games, one I can’t quite put my finger on. Similar to going to Bears games in December and January when they are eliminated from playoff contention, I love getting into the nitty gritty with the real fans in the colder months outdoors.

We’ll be swashbuckling in and out of Wrigley Field on Saturday, and I plan to swash beers around in my gloved hand until me knees buckle.

Did anyone laugh?

Anyone can enjoy a September Bears game, a Bears playoff game, a July or August day at the Friendly Confines. Only true SGCTChicagoans can last the distance in the unforgiving conditions that spring brings in the early aughts of the MLB season.

I hope the forecast brings more cold and more rain between now and tomorrow.

But before then, we’ve got a lot to get into.

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There have already been peaks and valleys to the 2025 Cubs season, but as the first West Coast trip comes to a close, we’re on a peak.

Given the start times of the last few games, I’ve been digesting a lot of these innings through the radio.

The Cubs radio color guy, Ron Coomer, continues to be a subject of my thoughts.

He talks about the game like a drunk friend of my dad’s explaining a 2-on-2 alley way basketball game that was played in 1981. That’s entertaining if I’m drunk (the Cubs are winning), but not as much if I’m sober (the Cubs are losing).

Coomer reads the ads for Yuengling beer (now in Illinois) much more enthusiastically than he does the other ads, and those take notably longer.

But in Sacramento’s series against the Athletics, I had my arm around ol’ Coom, and we laughed and hollered through the Cubs offensive onslaught. A series sweep and 35 runs scored in just three games.

Seiya Suzuki seemed lost in his first couple of plate appearances in Arizona, but now he’s found. He had three homers in the series, each to a different place of the field.

Kyle Tucker also found his groove, and then some. He homered in four straight games, and was frustratingly robbed of another double on Wednesday. Tucker is now slashing .353/.450/.853 on the season. At the plate, and around the base paths, he looks like the guy the Cubs thought they were getting, and more.

Tucker and Suzuki at the top of the lineup looks like an ironclad tandem right now. So long as Ian Happ keeps up his OBP, the Cubs are going to score a lot of runs in the first inning. They didn’t do so at all up until the series opener in Sacramento, and then they exploded in the first inning twice in a row. Even on Wednesday, when they did not score, Happ and Suzuki reached before a 1-2-3 sequence.

The Cubs were so good the past few days — now 5-4 heading into their home opener Friday — that we’ve gotten this far without mentioning that the backup catcher, Carson Kelly, hit for the cycle on Monday. It’s the first time a Cub has hit for the cycle since Mark Grace did in 1993.

Every Cub hit in the series. Matt Shaw and Pete Crow-Armstrong joined the party, and they also made great plays on the base paths.

What is exciting me most about the Cubs through nine games is not just the obvious improvements to the lineup, it’s how Jed Hoyer set up the team. The pitching right now is a question mark, but the lineup is so solid defensively that a lot of that will be made up for. Almost every player can defend and run the bases well.

It’s an approach to roster building that I think will pay off, and more than that, it’s exciting to watch. You don’t need fangraphs to tell you when Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner are saving runs up the middle — it’s obvious and, frankly, exhilarating.

Swanson is obviously stronger this year than he was the previous two years. After this offseason’s surgery, he has hit multiple bombs to center field. One was 417 feet and the other 418 feet.

Those are both no doubters, and for context, Swanson hit 16 home runs last year — and only one of them was a “no doubter,” according to Baseball Savant.

The Cubs are now over .500 heading back to Chicago, a solid outcome given the quirks of their early season schedule. It doesn’t get easier from here, but at least they will not have to face Eugenio Suarez for another two weeks. I hope the nightmares subside until then.

I wrote about this at some point last year, but Suarez is one the all-time Cubs killers. That’s not hyperbole. His stats facing the Cubs over the last decade (playing with the Reds, Mariners, and now Diamondbacks) are up there with the likes of Albert Pujols and Ryan Braun.

In over 500 plate appearances against the Cubs, he has a .893 OPS and a staggering 35 home runs. In 2019, he had a 1.233 OPS against the Cubs in 85 plate appearances. If you take out his early years as a Red, he’s basically Ted Williams when facing the Cubs.

He continued his success against the Cubs in the four-game series in Arizona. Against pitching, I may add, that has been less than spectacular thus far outside of a few names, and particularly the rock-solid Shota Imanaga.

Justin Steele hasn’t extinguished my preseason fears. Even in the Cubs 7-4 win on Tuesday, Steele gave up two homers and four runs in the first few innings. He battled back, and eventually turned in a fine start.

But he’s still without a good start on the year, and he’s been bad since the beginning of Spring Training. He’s given up five homers in just three starts thus far. He gave up 12 homers total all of last year.

The Cubs bats have been good enough to push down the pitching woes thus far, but the bullpen has already blown leads.

Ryan Pressly, who the Cubs traded for to be their closer, has been dreadful thus far. He’s given up three runs in four innings, and he looks old, not just as in he looks like he has lost his fastball — but like, life old.

It’s worth noting that Pressly was awful in his first few outings last year, too, and then was a very reliable arm for the Astros for the rest of the season. But it’s my hunch that he won’t end up as the closer later in the year.

Porter Hodge, who was successful in that role late last year, may supplant him. It may be someone else, too, potentially even an arm that’s not currently on the Cubs.

I’ll give Pressly another two months before I slam the door shut on his season and maybe his career.

The Cubs bats won’t be as good as they have been in every series, though, and that’s when the pitching holes will become more glaring.

They need to keep winning series they are supposed to win. They look more than capable. But a sweep of the Athletics is the exact kind of resounding outcome they’ll need against lesser teams early on in the season.

The Cubs get a much needed off day today, but tomorrow, the Padres are coming into town at 7-0.

Forbes dove into MLB valuations this past week, and noted that — unlike a lot of the best teams in baseball — the Cubs actually have an operating income, and it totals $81 million. The Cubs bring in the third-most revenue in all of baseball (behind the Dodgers and Yankees), but they are regularly outspent by their similarly rich peers.

If they reach their potential, let’s hope that the team inspires ownership as much as it will the fans.

Right now, Kyle Tucker is the Cubs best player, on a lame-duck deal, and the Cubs return for Cody Bellinger has been shipped out of town — rendering his departure a salary dump and a cash grab.

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Load up the clips, grenades, and missiles for April 15 and April 18. Your Chicago Bulls are careening toward the NBA’s play-in tournament for the third straight year, where they’ll likely face off against the Miami Heat — again.

If they win, which they will, they’ll play for a playoff spot on April 18. Between April 15 and 18, I’ll begin phoning in bomb threats to the Cleveland Cavalier facilities, and then we’ll see what happens when the hottest team in the Eastern Conference (sort of) faces the Eastern Conference’s top seed.

As mentioned above, after that thrilling Lakers win — which made this season worth something, on its own — the Bulls came back down to earth with an awful loss to the decrepit Mavericks and a sobering blowout loss to the Thunder.

On Wednesday, they bounced back with a win over the Raptors, and Coby White had another great showing with 28 points. Talen Horton-Tucker also had 27 points, which made a friend ask the question: How many times has Patrick Williams scored 25+ points in his career?

Great question. The answer? Twice. 25 once, and 35 once (in a meaningless game at the end of the season against Brooklyn years ago).

The $100 million man.

In the backdrop of the Josh Giddey and Coby White craze are the Bulls bad decisions still. (Giddey averaged 20.3, 9.6, and 9.0 in March, just short of a triple-double).

Nikola Vucevic is unplayable (but still plays) toward the end of games, as every opposing offensive player has their way with him.

Once again, it’s worth mentioning that the Bulls could have traded him for something worthwhile at the deadline. They also could have traded Lonzo Ball for a first-round pick, but instead extended him. Ball has played 35 total games this year, and 35 games total since 2022. Remember, it’s 2025.

But it’s time to put the blinders back on and gear up for the play-in tournament. Load up the Uzis and wipe ya nose.

The Bulls will showcase their true talent to a national audience in mid-April, and we may even get a playoff series out of it. Good for the long term? Certainly not. The long term, though, went out the window a while ago.

LETS GO BULLS!

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The Bears signed the 37-year-old Case Keenum to a 1-year, $3 million deal Thursday. Only a few years ago, we would have been happy to have had him as our starter.

But now the Bears are in a very different position, and building up… the best quarterback room in the NFL?

I kid, sort of.

The Bears now have their quarterback of the future in Caleb Williams, and behind him, a very capable backup in Tyson Bagent. Behind Bagent they have Keenum, who is as veteran as veteran gets. Keenum’s no. 1 job will be to mentor Williams.

They will pay those three, in total, $13 million this year — another good indicator that it’s time to get the competitive show on the road.

Keenum is about as good of a candidate for “mentor” as exists in the NFL. Don’t forget that he is college football’s all-time passing yards leader. But since then, he has played for eight different NFL teams. He’s been the starter at multiple spots, namely in Minnesota, where he took a team to the NFC Championship.

In Houston, where Keenum played last year, they’re sorry to see him go.

Based on some thorough research on Reddit, fans thought his influence on C.J. Stroud was significant, and that he was like “another coach on the field.” Williams is in a similar situation now to Stroud, and he seems receptive to feedback.

Williams was often lost and without direction last year. That won’t be an issue this year.

When he inevitably faces problems in 2025-2026, it will be because of his youth, or his own doing. It won’t be because of mentorship or the lack of good voices around him.

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Thanks for reading another edition of Still Gotta Come Through Chicago. If you enjoy the newsletter, send it along to someone today. And comment below. See you next week!