Today’s Wisch List column from the Kankakee Daily Journal …

Sandusky’s Olympics career heads into thin air

The WISCH LIST

Jan. 30, 2010

COLORADO SPRINGS – It’s been four months since Chicago 2016 packed up its ball and trudged home from Copenhagen a stunned Olympics loser, but Pat Sandusky is still playing Games.

It’s just not the ones that he originally imagined.

“It was very disappointing,” Sandusky, a Bourbonnais native and the former spokesman for Chicago 2016, said about the city’s failed Summer Olympics bid, which in October finished a shocking fourth in IOC voting behind Madrid, Tokyo and winner Rio de Janeiro. “I think as I’ve had time to process it and look back on it, though, there’s nothing we could have done differently. It was just the time to go to South America.

“It was no shortfall of Chicago or the USOC. It was just a great bid and campaign by Rio. Once they proved their economy was strong enough and that they could pull it off, that was it. It’s a world-changing type of event, having the Games in South America [for the first time], like it was having the [2008 Summer] Games in China.

“I feel more comfortable now, looking back.”

In large part, that’s because Sandusky now has so much to look forward to.

Just two weeks after the IOC decision in Denmark, Sandusky was named the acting chief communications officer for the United States Olympic Committee and began focusing his energies on helping the USOC prep for next month’s 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

On Friday night, Sandusky informed me via text message that he is removing the “acting” from his job title and has accepted a full-time position as the USOC’s chief communications officer. Sandusky said he will be moving his family to Colorado Springs, were the USOC is based.

Last week, while out in Colorado on business, I got the opportunity to pop in on my former Pony League teammate at his office on the campus of the U.S. Olympic Complex, which once was the home of ENT Air Force Base and the North American Defense Command (NORAD) before being transformed into the USOC headquarters in 1978.

Tucked in the heart of Colorado Springs with a snow-capped Pikes Peak looming in the distance, the unassuming compound features a sports medicine and sport science center along with an athlete center that includes two residence halls and a dining hall, where “you’ll find a lot of carbs, a lot of protein,” Sandusky said with a chuckle.

On the menu last week: roast turkey, pasta with roasted winter squash and North Woods bean soup – all featuring detailed nutritional information for the calorie-conscious Olympian.

At the complex, the USOC is able to provide housing, dining, recreational facilities and other services for up to 557 coaches and athletes at one time. Sandusky said about 200 athletes – most of them Summer Olympians – are full-time residents at the training site.

Since assuming his role with the USOC, Sandusky has been busy helping the USOC buff a reputation that has long been hounded by accusations of being more interested in making money and winning medals than goodwill.

“So far, things have been good,” Sandusky said. “We’ve made positive headway on the media side of things … And, hopefully, we’ll do quite well and get that pride restored.”

He’s also been busy preparing for the Winter Games, which begin Feb. 12 when just over 200 American athletes will gather with thousands more from around the globe as the Opening Ceremonies kick off in British Columbia.

“It’s a different kind of busy,” Sandusky said, comparing his duties with Chicago 2016 to those with the USOC, where he oversees a media and public relations team of about 20. “It’s similar, but a slightly different pace because [with the USOC] it’s longer term and a broader organization.

“Even if Chicago had won the games, that would have ended in 2016. Here, we’re looking at the short-term and the long term, 25 to 35 years out.”

In Vancouver, Sandusky will fill the role of head communicator for the U.S. delegation, managing daily press conferences dealing with news and events on the fly.

“When things happen, whether positively or negatively, it’s my job to help massage the message,” he explained.

With the U.S. having finished behind only Germany in total medals won at both the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics, Sandusky hopes to have plenty of positive news to talk about. Considering that NBC is spreading 835 hours over coverage over five networks and its Olympic Web site – more broadcast hours than the last two Winter Games combined – there will certainly be no shortage of people watching.

From everywhere.

Consider this: On the promenade at the U.S. Olympic Complex, colorful flags line the sidewalk from all 205 Olympic member nations. That tally numbers 13 more than even the United Nations.

“That’s what’s so great about working with the Olympics,” Sandusky said. “It’s a global movement. And once you get down to the games, very little of it’s about politics. It’s all about focusing on sport.”

And with that, Game on.

Today’s Wisch List column from the Kankakee Daily Journal …

Why the Bears could use a shot of Champaign

The WISCH LIST

Jan. 23, 2010

Back in 2002, the Chicago Bears and Fighting Illini shared more than team colors, Dick Butkus bragging rights and cool logos.

They shared a playing field, as well.

While Soldier Field was undergoing its dramatic disfiguration, er … renovation up in Chicago, the Monsters of the Midway spent the season patrolling the prairie as they hosted NFL opponents at Memorial Stadium in Champaign. Eight years later, the Bears and U. of I. football again hold more in common than mere orange and blue.

They both have head coaches whose heads many fans would like to see roll.

Three seasons ago the Bears were in the Super Bowl versus the Indianapolis Colts, who find themselves back in the AFC Championship Game this weekend.

Meanwhile, the Bears are just trying to find themselves.

Illinois football, which has fallen hard since reaching the Rose Bowl two years ago, is trying to find itself, too. But, as it turns out, the Illini are doing a much better job of it.

Mainly because they’re at least trying.

When it comes to seeking out – and actually hiring – new coordinators, the folks in the Bears’ front office would have been wise to follow the game plan that Illinois athletic director Ron Guenther used to pluck his preferred choices off the job market.

Instead, though, the Bears are bumbling their way through a coordinator search that’s now on to, what, Plan C?

It’s no secret to anyone that neither lllinois head coach Ron Zook (8-19 record since the 2008 Rose Bowl) nor Bears head coach Lovie Smith (23-25 since Super Bowl XLI) should probably still have their jobs. And don’t be fooled, the main reason that they do is because it would require shelling out millions of dollars to buy out their current contracts.

In an economic climate where the budget-crunched University of Illinois is forcing faculty to take unpaid furloughs, while the labor contract-crunched NFL is facing a possible lockout in 2011, I understand that.

I might not like it, but I do understand it.

What I don’t understand, though, is why the Bears’ so-called brain trust of team president Ted Phillips and general manager Jerry Angelo is unable – or unwilling – to see the true flaws of the head coach that they’ve decided to retain and then do something proactive about it.

Ron Guenther did it.

With many Illinois fans howling for Zook to be fired following a dismal 3-9 season, Guenther made the unpopular decision to retain his head coach, instead opting to fire most of his staff. The move seemed to sentence Illinois to a 2010 season without any hope or even reason to watch.

Why, after all, would a legitimate coordinator decide to work with a head coach who has little job security?

Guenther, though, surprised everyone by hiring highly regarded offensive coordinator Paul Petrino from Arkansas and then swiping Kansas State defensive coordinator Vic Koenning, who was coveted by Georgia.

He did it by paying big bucks ($435,000 for Petrino and $325,000 for Koenning). But also by giving the new coordinators total control, while wisely stripping it from a head coach who had proved he no longer deserved it.

Gone from Illinois next season will be Zook’s preferred spread offense in favor of Petrino’s pro-style attack, while Zook’s porous defensive schemes will be replaced by Koenning’s new aggressive attack.

With a fierce schedule and questionable talent, it’s still unlikely that Illinois will reach a bowl next season, but at least there’s now a new reason to watch.

Guenther tried to do something different, unlike the Bears who instead are merely pretending to do so.

“To bring in two new coordinators is quite a massive change,” Ted Phillips said recently. “We’ll get the right people in here that can embrace the systems that Lovie wants to put together on both sides of the ball.”

But can’t Phillips see that’s the entire problem? It shouldn’t be who Smith wants on both sides of the ball. It should be who he needs.

Like Ron Zook, Lovie Smith has proved that his systems no longer work. They should be scrapped in favor of something new that’s imagined by dynamic coordinators looking to shake things up.

No dynamic coordinators, though, want to take a job where they’ll be stuck running the failed schemes of a head coach who’s a year away from being fired.

As a result, the Bears will most likely end up hiring third-tier coordinators willing to obey Smith. And what that means is that, next season, Bears fans will find themselves watching a team resembling Bill Murray in the movie honoring a holiday arriving soon.

You know, “Groundhog Day.”

I see 16 more weeks of mediocrity.

Massachusetts Attorney General and Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Martha Coakley fouled one off her foot — while it was in her mouth — last Friday when she referred to Boston Red Sox World Series hero Curt Schilling as a “Yankees fan” during a radio interview as she campaigned for the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Other little known fact: Derek Jeter actually sleeps in Red Sox pajamas.

Today’s Wisch List column from the Kankakee Daily Journal …

Anchors Aweigh at Sinatra’s favorite Chicago joint

The WISCH LIST

Jan. 16, 2010

One of the things I love most about living in Chicago is that so much history lives right there with you.

For example, just around the corner from my apartment is a hardware store that once was a billiards hall where John Dillinger was known to have shot pool.

When he wasn’t shooting a Tommy gun.

Down the street closer to Wrigley Field, sits an old hotel where showgirl Violet Valli put a bullet in Chicago Cub shortstop Billy Jurges in 1932 during an incident that’s believed to have formed the basis for parts of Bernard Malamud’s famous novel, “The Natural.”

And a few miles farther to the south, I once worked in a Loop skyscraper where during Prohibition Al Capone reportedly ran a speakeasy out of a restaurant on the building’s domed top floor.

Yes, as a history buff, Chicago is definitely my kind of town.

And as he once told us in song, it was Frank Sinatra’s too. Although, Ol’ Blue Eyes might have had different reasons beyond the city’s history.

Like its ribs. Specifically, the kind you find at Twin Anchors.

Sinatra may have never crooned about the rib joint in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood, but ever since I moved to the city 4½ years ago plenty of others have sung the praises of the cozy restaurant where the Chairman of the Board was a regular patron from the early 1950s well into the 1970s.

And as an aforementioned sucker for Windy City history, not to mention a great rack of ribs – “The best in the city,” more than one friend told me about Twin Anchors – I decided this week to finally visit Sinatra’s favorite Chicago haunt.

And scare up an appetite.

Established in 1932, Twin Anchors (1655 N. Sedgwick St.) is tucked beneath a green-and-white striped awning on a quiet corner just a few blocks off bustling North Avenue. As one of the oldest restaurants in Chicago, the building is filled with character (during Prohibition it, too, was a speakeasy known as “Tante Lee Soft Drinks” that provided refreshments with a bit more of a bite than a Nehi) and with characters (Jason Alexander, Chris Farley and Joan Cusack are among the celebrities whose autographed menus hang on the walls).

Chicago author Bill Zehme one wrote about Twin Anchors, “I love no place quite like I love this place. It is everything Chicago is supposed to be: Familiar, old, neighborhoody, friendly, and kind of an open secret, but one that requires some protecting.”

Some time during the early 1950s, Sinatra made his first visit to Twin Anchors, and after tasting the establishment’s baby-back pork ribs bathed in its zesty barbeque sauce, he kept coming back.

Whenever Sinatra did, legend has it that once his party was seated in the back of the restaurant near the pair of wooden anchors mounted on the wall, Sinatra would post one of his bodyguards at the pay phone to keep patrons from calling friends and causing a mob scene.

On Monday night, I entered Twin Anchors as a mob of one when I popped open the front door, shook off the January cold and snagged a seat at the bar beside a framed photo of Sinatra himself, clad in a fedora, a pinky ring and a big smile.

These days, first-person accounts of Sinatra – who passed away in 1998 at the age of 82 – are hard to come by at Twin Anchors, as the last waitress to serve the legend retired a decade ago. But, from his tunes softly wafting above the bar to the restaurant’s dimly lit, Sinatra-smooth vibe, Ol’ Blue Eyes’ presence can definitely be felt.

And his favorite rack of ribs, of course, can still be ordered.

So, naturally, I did it (my way: with the zesty sauce and a baked potato). What I received in return was a platter with enough ribs to make “Sue” the T-Rex at Field Museum envious.

And after just one bite into meat so tender that it didn’t fall off the bone, the bone fell off it, I instantly understood why Sinatra returned to Twin Anchors for so many encores.

It may indeed have the best babyback ribs in the city. I can’t say for sure. But I can tell you the restaurant’s backstory is as good as it gets.

That’s just me being frank.

Today’s Wisch List column from the Kankakee Daily Journal …

The Hawk, the HOF and Me

The WISCH LIST

Jan. 9, 2010

In 1987, I was short, the Cubs were awful and Andre Dawson was amazing.

That summer on the North Side of Chicago, the Lovable Losers were never more lovable as they dropped 85 games, canned sadsack manager Gene Michael and finished dead last in the National League East.

But, in spite of all that, the team still managed to leave me with one of the most enduring memories of my youth, which I vividly recalled once again this week when Dawson was finally named to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame after eight frustrating swings and misses.

On July 7, 1987, my father and I, along with my Little League manager and his son – who was a teammate of mine – made the trek from Bourbonnais to the corner of Clark and Addison to watch the Cubs take on the San Diego Padres in a matinee at the Friendly Confines.

I don’t believe the four of us were expecting much, since the Cubs had already been stinking up the joint for months. And the fact that star middle infielders Shawon Dunston and Ryne Sandberg were out with injuries and being replaced by the, ahem, immortal double-play tandem of Mike Brumley and Paul Noce didn’t particularly buoy our hopes for win.

But, whatever, I was 11. It was still Wrigley Field. It was still the Cubs. And Dawson, the dashing right fielder that the Tribune Company had signed for a song off the free-agent market the previous winter, was still in the lineup.

And he was hot.

That season, the “Hawk” would go on to bash 49 home runs, drive in 137 runs and so lap the offensive field in the National League that he managed, quite remarkably, to haul in MVP honors on a truly crummy team.

Unlike the Cubs themselves, Dawson had a lot of good days during the summer of ’87.

This, however, was not one of them.

For the Tuesday afternoon tilt, an erratic right-hander named Eric Show took the mound for the Padres against some Cubs rookie by the name of Greg Maddux. And by the third inning, the Cubs had already belted three home runs off Show – including a solo shot by Dawson – when the Hawk strolled back up to the plate.

With Dawson having hit homers in three of his last five at-bats, the volatile Show – who would pass away less than seven years later from a drug overdose – proceeded to fire a fastball directly at his head. It struck the Cubs slugger flush on the left cheek and sent Dawson down in a heap at home plate, sucking the collective breath out of Wrigley.

The next thing you knew, Cubs pitcher Rick Sutcliffe was barreling out of the dugout – his eyes as red as his beard – on a beeline for Show. A bench-clearing brouhaha was on. And in a surreal scene, players exchanged blows and shoves in the infield while Dawson lay prone at the plate.

Adding to the madness of the situation was that it was “Seat Cushion Day” at Wrigley. And not surprisingly once the brawl broke out, hundreds of the white cushions distributed among the Bleacher Bums were sent flipping and flying like Frisbees across the outfield grass.

Moments later, the crowd became only more vociferous when Dawson – now surrounded by teammates and trainers after the infield brawl had subsided – suddenly leapt to his feet and charged like a madman towards the Padres dugout, searching for Show.

Lucky for the San Diego headhunter, Show was a no-show on the field as he had already slipped into the safety of the clubhouse. Eventually tamed by his teammates, Dawson was finally escorted to the hospital where he required several stitches in his face, thus sewing the day into my permanent memory bank.

Now, that ballgame, of course, wasn’t the reason why I became such a big Andre Dawson fan during the six seasons that he spent patrolling right field for the Cubs.

No, his Tru-Link Fence commercial was.

I’m kidding.

(Well, sort of.)

Really, though, what I admired about Dawson was the way he carried himself off the field and the way he willed himself on it, fighting through a dozen knee surgeries to earn eight Gold Gloves and become only the third player in history to record 400 home runs and 300 steals.

Such is my admiration for the Hawk that on Wednesday, shortly learning he had been inducted into the Hall of Fame, I booked a hotel room so I can join Andre’s Army at his induction ceremony on July 25.

It’s been more than 20 years since I’ve been to Cooperstown and more than 20 years since that crazy afternoon at Wrigley in 1987.

But, come this summer, I get to be 11 years old all over again. I can’t wait.

Maybe I’ll even bring a seat cushion.

Today’s Wisch List column from the Kankakee Daily Journal …

Wisch Lists are for New Year’s

The WISCH LIST

Jan. 2, 2010

Wish Lists are for Christmas. But Wisch Lists? Well, they’re for New Year’s.

And with 2010 now upon us – I hope you had fun ringing it in, by the way — I’m sharing mine with you as we embark on this brand new year.

And brand new decade.

Speaking of which, never mind those who say that since there was no Year Zero (we know, we know …) the new decade doesn’t actually begin until 2011.

Trust me, it begins now.

And so begins my Wisch List for 2010 …

I Wisch that at some point we had managed to come up with an appropriate name for the past decade. After all, we had 10 years.

I Wisch, though, that I knew what that name should have been. “The ’Aughts,” for example, might have worked just fine for folks back in Nineteen-aught-eight. Not so much for us today.

I Wisch there were 28 hours in a day. I could get so much more accomplished – and so much more sleep – if noon was at 14 o’clock, rather than at 12.

I Wisch Michael Jordan still played basketball on Christmas Day.

I Wisch the Blue-Gray Football Classic was still held on Christmas Day.

And I Wisch I’d stop griping about sports on Christmas Day.

I Wisch that “Avatar” had been about 45 minutes shorter. Maybe 60. And I really Wisch that the precious mineral in the visually-dazzling, dialogue-challenged flick hadn’t been called Unobtainium. (C’mon, James Cameron, seriously?)

I Wisch that Ron Zook could serve as the University of Florida’s interim head coach during Urban Meyer’s leave of absence … rather than serving as the University of Illinois’ interim head coach instead.

I Wisch I was more interested in hockey. Because, right now for Chicago, the Blackhawks are the only game in town.

I Wisch the Bears would have played all season like they did on Monday night vs. the Vikings. Then there would be another game in town. For another week, at least.

I Wisch that every time Jay Cutler throws an interception, he throws four touchdowns as well.

I Wisch I could explain how it’s come to pass that, for 2010, I know a contestant on “The Bachelor” (Caitlyn from Chicago), a contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice” (Maria Kanellis of the WWE, originally from Ottawa, Ill.) and someone who might end up as a contestant on “The Bachelorette.”

I Wisch I could befriend someone from “Jersey Shore.” Then I’d pretty much have the entire Reality TV spectrum covered for 2010.

I Wisch you’d realize I’m kidding about that.

I Wisch the Ricketts family would just leave the Cubs’ spring training location in Arizona well enough alone.

I Wisch I was in Arizona.

I Wisch we had the Chicago Olympics to look forward to in 2016 instead of merely the 108th anniversary of the Chicago Cubs’ championship drought.

I Wish it hadn’t taken the Cubs until New Year’s Eve to realize that their hot stove wasn’t even turned on.

I Wisch I knew what conspiracy theory Milton Bradley will brew up with his coffee in Seattle.

I Wisch airline travel felt as safe today as it did at 10 years ago.

I Wisch I thought that it was every going to feel that way again.

I Wisch Chief Illiniwek still performed in Champaign. Halftimes simply are not the same without him. In fact, they’re downright boring.

I Wisch Illinois basketball could win on a neutral court. (Perhaps today against Gonzaga?)

I Wisch I wasn’t at the point where all I wanted for Christmas was a new vacuum cleaner and a microwave. It was more exciting when I wanted, say, a Nintendo and Transformers.

I Wisch for my new car to experience a better winter this year than my old car did during last, when Chicago-area potholes devoured two of its tires.

I Wisch Mayor Daley read that one. And cared.

I Wisch that what I know now I knew when we started the last decade. And I also Wisch I knew what we’re going to call this new decade. The teens, after all, don’t even begin for three years, so how can we call it that? This whole new century stuff is just too confusing.

I Wisch it was 2020 so things can just be simple again.