Today’s column from the Kankakee Daily Journal and The (Ottawa, Ill.) Times …

If the Bears leave Bourbonnais, then what?

The WISCH LIST

May 29, 2010

GREELEY – At the University of Northern Colorado, the berms still loom.

It’s just that, these days, the football practice fields below them on the campus of the one-time summer home of the Denver Broncos are a little bare.

Or, perhaps, a little “Bear.”

If you’re into potential foreshadowing.

Earlier this month, while on vacation in Colorado, I took a jaunt up to Greeley, a city of more than 90,000 located about 50 miles north of Denver that spent 21 summers hosting an NFL training camp that attracted hordes of football-mad visitors and, in many ways, put the town on the map. In 2003, though, the Broncos ended their lengthy tenure in Greeley and opted to relocate camp to the team’s Dove Valley headquarters, just outside Denver.

With Olivet Nazarene University, summer home of the Chicago Bears since 2002, currently without an agreement to host the team’s training camp in Bourbonnais beyond 2010 (talks continue for a return in 2011) and with the Bears openly examining other camp options, including Lewis University in Romeoville, I thought it would be interesting to chat up the Greeley locals about life now that the Broncos, their fans and the media aren’t stampeding their way into town each summer.

What I discovered is that Greeley does miss the Broncos.

And also that it doesn’t.

“It’s interesting,” explained Sarah MacQuiddy, the longtime president of the Greeley Chamber of Commerce. “At first, the community was devastated [when the Broncos left]. We enjoyed having the team. And any time you’re having all these people in town buying your gas and eating at your restaurants, that’s a good thing …

“But hosting the Broncos also brought challenges. We always had a lot of media taking shots about Greeley being a cow town. The joke is that to get to Greeley you just go to Denver, head north and follow your nose. And we love Greeley, so a lot of people resented that.”

On a mid-May afternoon, the aroma from Greeley’s notorious feedlots can still occasionally be detected wafting through town. But, eight years removed from the Broncos’ Last Stand, there are few signs downtown that this was once the land where Elway roamed.

Besides a cartoonish inflatable Broncos figure blown over by the wind outside a discount store, there’s little orange or blue to be found anywhere. And, curiously, inside the Greeley History Museum downtown, only one sentence of a display is devoted to the town’s two-decade relationship with Colorado’s most popular sports franchise.

In the post-training-camp era in Greeley, the Broncos seem in some ways to be a Horse with No Name.

“It used to be that a lot of people in Greeley would say during the summer, ‘This is the time when training camp should be starting.’ But you don’t hear that much anymore,” longtime resident Tybert Wartrip, 48, said while working a hot dog stand along Greeley’s 9th Street Plaza. “I kinda miss the Broncos, and I imagine Greeley does. More than anything, probably the revenue.”

MacQuiddy said the economic impact that Broncos Camp provided Greeley was never formally measured, but that “it wasn’t huge.” In latter years, revenue decreased significantly after training camp was cut from six weeks to three.

A couple miles from downtown, near the UNC campus, sits The Dugout, a popular sports bar where 72-year-old Robbie Johnson is the former owner and current manager. A die-hard Green Bay Packers fan who ironically “detests the Broncos,” Johnson said the loss of the team’s training camp hasn’t had a huge impact on The Dugout’s business.

“Although, with the economic situation and the way things are today, we could take anything in town,” Johnson said, chuckling before he added, “Even the Broncos.”

While recalling the nights when Broncos would roam the city’s bars, attracting girls and vice versa, Johnson then went on to admit, “No, but we really do miss the Broncos. They have a great fan base in the state of Colorado and having camp here really helped Greeley. It was of the best things the town ever received.”

Even if that receipt can be easily quantified. MacQuiddy added that more than money, what Greeley truly lost when the Broncos bolted town was their NFL cachet.

“It was more the prestige you lose, being the training camp for the Broncos,” she said. “You can’t put a price tag on all that free advertising, with news reports always saying, ‘Live from Greeley.’

“So, yes, we lost our celebrity, but that’s OK … There are probably a couple of diehards out there flying their Broncos flags and wishing camp was still here. But we’ve basically moved on. And I can honestly say, there is life after Broncos Camp.”

Today’s column from the Kankakee Daily Journal and The (Ottawa, Ill.) Times …

Virgin considers Highland Park boycott an Olympic-sized mistake

The WISCH LIST

May 22, 2010

Craig Virgin has a 30-year itch.

And, right now, Highland Park High School is irritating it.

“I’m uncomfortable because this is way too close to the 1980 Olympic boycott,” the Illinois distance running legend said when asked about Highland Park High’s recent decision to cancel a girls’ basketball trip to Arizona because of the state’s crackdown on illegal immigrants – a controversy that has sparked a firestorm of debate throughout Chicagoland and beyond this month.

Sports, like most things in life, are political. And, for many, politics is sport. But it’s when the two become one in the same that big problems can be created.

Politics, of course, have a time and a place, but is it on an athletic field or a basketball court? This week, in an attempt to answer that question and gain a deeper understanding of the impact of politics on athletes, I sought out Virgin for his expert take on the Highland Park dispute.

“It smells like that [1980],” explained the 54-year-old Lebanon, Ill., native, a three-time Olympic qualifier – but only a two-time Olympic competitor – who knows perhaps better than anyone the scent that can be created when politics and sports are mixed.

Here’s a hint: It stinks.

“And I learned that the painful way,” Virgin said.

Earlier this month, Highland Park Superintendent George Fornero and his fellow administrators rejected the request of the school’s girls’ basketball team – coming off its best season in 26 years – to compete in a tournament in Scottsdale, Ariz., in late December. An assistant superintendent initially explained the reason for the cancellation was because the trip “would not be aligned with our beliefs and values.”

However, after several parents questioned if the school was using students to make a political statement opposing the Arizona law, Fornero & Co. attempted damage control and issued a letter to parents that instead emphasized concerns about safety. It stated: “We cannot commit at this time to playing at a venue where some of our students’ safety or liberty might be placed at risk because of a state immigration law.”

The North Shore spat then became national news when former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, speaking last week in Rosemont, accused the school district of using the students as political pawns and urged the team members to “go rogue, girls.”

From his home in downstate Lebanon, Virgin followed the drama and found it to be a disturbing reminder of the 1980 Olympics boycott that altered the course of his career, robbed him of potential glory and countless memories and still chafes him even today.

As a schoolboy star in Lebanon during the early 1970s, Virgin set the national outdoor high school two-mile record of 8:40.9 (breaking the legendary Steve Prefontaine’s record) before enrolling at the University of Illinois, for which won the 1975 NCAA Cross Country championship and then became an Olympic qualifier for the 1976 Montreal Games.

Four years later, in March 1980, the 24-year-old Virgin was at the peak of his career when he became the first (and still only) American man to win the IAAF World Cross Country Championships. Later that month, though, President Jimmy Carter announced that the U.S. would boycott the 1980 Moscow Games because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Just 10 days before the Olympics began, Virgin ran the second-fastest 10,000-meter race in history, but was unable to compete in the Summer Games.

“I still hope to some day have lunch with Carter and find out exactly what he was thinking,” Virgin said, still fiery. “We could have some sweet tea with lemon and talk about it.”

As for the Highland Park controversy, Virgin said: “This isn’t even a boycott of another country, it’s one of our sister states. I don’t agree with all of what (the legislators) did [in Arizona], but it came through a democratic process. And one hundred some years ago, a lot of our Illinois brothers battled to preserve the Union. Our greatest president from Illinois was Abraham Lincoln and he fought to preserve the Union. I think we need to remember that …

“I think boycotts send the wrong message. It’s not mature. It’s a rash decision, and [in Highland Park] the athletes are paying the price. That’s what makes me uncomfortable. I feel that there’s a time and a place for things and as a leader you have to make tough decisions, but the administration has overstepped their bounds. And, with all due respect, they need to reconsider their decision.

“I believe in taking a stand, and I believe in principles. But we also have a Constitution, and soldiers have died to protect that Constitution and our Union.”

In my book, that’s an opinion you can run with.

Today’s column from the Kankakee Daily Journal and The (Ottawa, Ill.) Times …

In Chicago, phenoms come — and they go

The WISCH LIST

May 15, 2010

Chicago is called the Windy City for good reason.

It’s no stranger to bluster.

From its architecture (The Spire) to its quarterbacks (Cade McNown, Rex Grossman … Jay Cutler?) to its political clout (The 2016 Olympics), Chicago likes its hype and loves its “Next Big Thing.”

No matter if it actually materializes.

And, today, even with the tantalizing specter of a free agent LeBron James looming over the city, there’s still nothing that can compare to Chicago’s hype of its Major League Baseball phenoms.

It’s our natural pastime.

This spring, as one side of Chicago stresses over its struggling youngster (the White Sox’s Gordon Beckham), while the other celebrates its latest great hope (the Cubs’ Starlin Castro) that ritual is again in full bloom.

Over the years, with disappointments such as Joe Borchard, Mike Caruso and Bourbonnais native Kris Honel, White Sox fans have certainly had their let-downs. But perhaps no organization has quite the history of busts as the Cubs, whose remarkable list of phenom failures can fill out an entire starting lineup card.

It remains to be seen if Castro lives up to the “Star” in his name or devolves into the Starlin “Can’t-Throw” of his Wrigley debut, but the fates of many of his once-celebrated Cubs contemporaries were long ago sealed.

First Base: Hee Sop Choi

The first Korean-born position player to play in the majors, Choi began 2003 as a celebrated starter for the Cubs. In 80 career games, however, he hit just .218 and left his only mark on Wrigley Field – quite literally – when he smacked his head along the first base line following a collision with teammate Kerry Wood and was carted off by ambulance.

Second Base: Ty Griffin

Perhaps the biggest Cubs bust of all-time, Griffin was an amateur superstar in the late 1980s for Georgia Tech and the USA National Team, a squad he headlined even with future MLB standouts Robin Ventura and Tino Martinez on the roster.

Selected by the Cubs with the ninth overall pick of the 1988 MLB Draft, Griffin was considered so good he was expected to eventually force Ryne Sandberg to third base. Instead, he never made it past Class AA, and by 1992 was out of Major League-affiliated baseball.

Shortstop: Luis Montanez

A multi-talented shortstop out of Miami’s Coral Park High School, Montanez was the third player picked in the 2000 MLB Draft and signed for a $2.75M bonus. But after seven lackluster seasons in the Cubs’ minor league system, he was released in 2007.

Montanez, though, did go on to win a Triple Crown in ’08 – for the Bowie Baysox of the Class AA Eastern League.

Third Base: Gary Scott (see also: Orie, Kevin)

The Cubs’ Opening Day starter at third in both 1991 and ’92, Scott was supposed to be the next Ron Santo. He wasn’t.

In ’91, Scott batted .165 through May 14, when the Cubs sent him to the minors. Then, on April 20, 1992, Scott was batting a sickly .103 when he managed to crack a grand slam at Wrigley Field. The success didn’t stick, though. Three games later, he was demoted again.

Catcher: Rick Wilkins

Not exactly a phenom, but in 1993 at the age of 25, the lightly considered Wilkins became the first Cubs catcher to hit 30 home runs in a season since Gabby Hartnett in 1930.

Wilkins then hit just 37 more homers over the final eight seasons of his career.

Left Field: Earl Cunningham

Selected No. 8 overall in the 1989 MLB Draft – one pick behind Frank Thomas – the 6-foot-2, 225-pound Cunningham hit .419 with 12 homers and 15 steals in just 86 at-bats as a high school senior in Lancaster, S.C.
Then, in seven seasons with the Cubs, he never made it out of Class A ball.

Center Field: Corey Patterson (see also: Pie, Felix)

With the third pick of the 1998 MLB Draft, the Cubs took Patterson, a supposed can’t-miss All-Everything out of Harrison High School in Kennesaw, Ga.

Turned out, he missed.

By 2002, Patterson was a full-time starter with the Cubs and then was back in the minors by 2005.

Right Field: Ryan Harvey

In 2003, the Cubs plucked the strapping 6-foot-5, 240-pound Harvey – a slugging revelation from Dunedin High School in Clearwater, Fla. – with the sixth pick of the MLB Draft. He signed for a $2.4M bonus and then promptly spent five seasons compiling a .246 career average in the Cubs’ farm system, never rising above Class AA before his release in 2008.

Pitchers: Kerry Wood and Mark Prior

Really, need I say more?

Today’s column from the Kankakee Daily Journal and The (Ottawa, Ill.) Times …

In 100 years, my grandma’s seen (almost) everything

The WISCH LIST

May 8, 2010

Mother’s Day won the race.

But just barely.

One hundred years ago today, on May 8, 1910, the state of West Virginia became the first to officially declare the second Sunday in May as an annual Mother’s Day holiday. Six days later – and more than a thousand miles to the west – my grandmother, Irma Lucille McCart, was born on a farm in Boone County, Neb.

So on Sunday, Mother’s Day will celebrate its 100th year of official existence (the first local service was held in Grafton, W.V., in 1908, and Congress declared it a national holiday in 1914). But my grandma, now Irma Bledsoe, will stand just a few steps behind in the marathon to the century mark.

And when she does cross the 100-year mark on May 14, I think we’ll christen it a “Grand” Mother’s Day.

Come next week, my extended family will gather in Longmont, Colo., to celebrate my grandma’s milestone. But during this month’s build-up to the big day, I’ve found myself thinking about everything that’s happened – both in Chicago and around the globe – during a life that’s spanned two centuries, 18 U.S. presidencies and more than 36,500 days.

Ponder this: When my grandmother was born, the Titanic had yet to sink (1912), the zipper hadn’t yet been patented (1914) and the pop-up toaster (1919) was still nothing but a pipe dream.

Crossword puzzles (1913) didn’t exist, Mother Teresa wasn’t yet born (Aug. 26, 1910) and Albert Einstein was still pondering his theory of relativity (1915).

As of May 14, 1910, Mark Twain had just recently passed away (April 21), while O. Henry (June 5) and Florence Nightingale (Aug. 13) were soon to follow. New Mexico and Arizona were still territories (each received statehood in 1912), whereas Alaska and Hawaii (1959 statehood for both) barely even registered on the U.S. radar.

In Sweden in 1910, they were still using guillotines to execute murderers.

Seriously.

Back here in the Land of Lincoln, Chicago’s 1910 population stood at 2,185,283, establishing the Second City as just that – only New York City had more U.S. residents with 4,766,883. Philadelphia (1,549,008), meanwhile, was the nation’s third most populous city, while St. Louis (687,029) and Boston (670,585) ranked Nos. 4 and 5.

Out on the West Coast, Los Angeles, with its 319,198 residents, checked in as only the country’s 17th largest city and found itself behind the less-flashy likes of No. 14 Newark (347,469), No. 12 Milwaukee (373,857) and No. 9 Buffalo (423,715).

In 1910, President William Howard Taft – our nation’s heaviest president, tipping the scales at 300 pounds, and also the last to have facial hair – made the unfortunate mistake of calling baseball “a clean, straight game.”

Nine years later, of course, the sport would be rocked by the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, while eight decades after that, steroids would shake baseball to its core.

During 1910, however, the Windy City was joyously caught up in the throes of baseball fever. On the South Side, White Sox fans celebrated the July 1 opening of Comiskey Park, which at the time was considered the finest baseball facility in the world with its then jaw-dropping capacity of 48,600.

The Sox would go on to finish a disappointing 68-85 during the 1910 season, but Comiskey – along with Washington’s Griffith Park and Cleveland’s League Park, which also opened that year – was credited with helping usher in the rise of modern, home-run baseball thanks in part to such enclosed, steel and concrete stadiums.

Elsewhere in the city, Chicago’s hottest baseball team during the Summer of ’10 might have been the Leland Giants of the Negro League. Owner-player-manager Rube Foster called the Giants the greatest team of all-time with a roster boasting Hall of Famers or All-Stars at almost every position. Considering Foster’s squad posted a staggering record of 101-4-1, it’s hard to argue with him.

The Giants, though, weren’t Chicago’s only 100-win ballclub in 1910, as the Cubs – then playing ball at West Side Park (Wrigley Field’s construction was four years away) – piled up a 104-50 record to capture their fourth National League pennant in five years.

In the World Series, though, the Cubs saw their pitching staff crumble and their bats go silent as the Philadelphia Athletics easily rolled to a 4-1 Series win.

You know, you’d think that when someone lives to be 100 that they would have seen everything. But even my grandma, bless her heart, hasn’t seen the Cubs win a World Series.

Perhaps, if I live until 2076 – when I would turn 100 – I’ll get to see it happen. Although, I’m not counting on that, not just the mother of all baseball dreams.

But the grandmother of them.

Today’s column from the Kankakee Daily Journal and The (Ottawa, Ill.) Times …

Cross-checking in with the Hawks, Bears and more

The WISCH LIST

May 1, 2010

It’s been a busy week up in Hawkeytown, USA, what with Chicago overflowing with chatter about cups good (Lord Stanley’s), goofy (the new BP Crosstown Cup to mark the Cubs-White Sox series) and half-empty (Vinny Del Negro’s).

In honor of it all, I thought today we’d take a quick skate through the sports week that was …

On a (Blackhawk) wing and a prayer

Last Monday afternoon, several hours before the Blackhawks vanquished Nashville in the first round of the NHL playoffs, a clever play on the Lord’s Prayer started making the rounds among Hawks fans on Facebook. It read:

“Our father, who art in Chicago, hockey be thy name. Thy will be done, the Cup will be won, on ice, as well as in the stands. Give us this day, our hockey sticks, and forgive us our penalties, as we forgive those who cross-check against us. Lead us not, into elimination, but deliver us to victory. In the name of the fans, Lord Stanley, and in the name of Da Hawks, Amen.”

What’s a Canuck?

With the Blackhawks set to meet Vancouver in Round 2 of the playoffs tonight, I found myself wondering this week, what exactly is a Canuck anyway?

Turns out, not even the franchise itself seems to know as it’s had a whopping 13 different logo and jersey changes since joining the NHL in 1970. Iterations have included a Flying Skate, an Orca and the current logo: a bearded guy with a stocking cap named Johnny Canuck.

As for the word “Canuck,” it’s a term used to describe Canadians in the same way Americans are called “Yankees.” According to Bart Bandy’s Lexicon of Canadian Etymology, “Canuck” likely evolved from the French word canule around the time of the American Revolution, although it’s unclear exactly how. One popular theory claims it was derived from a mispronunciation among Benedict Arnold’s forces during their siege of Quebec in the winter of 1776.

Bandy writes that the Americans picked up the common French phrase “Quelle canule” (translated: “What a bore”) but were usually shivering so hard when they said it that “canule” came out as “canuck.”

Get loose, Juice

With most Bears fans’ attention focused on the quarterback the team already has (Jay Cutler) and the one it just drafted (Downers Grove native Dan LeFevour of Central Michigan), many might have missed the news that former University of Illinois QB Juice Williams was among the players invited this week to Bears rookie minicamp on a tryout basis.

If Williams makes the Bears’ practice squad – I’d suggest a switch to fullback – he can expect to earn at least $88,400 for 17 weeks of work. That’s well below the NFL rookie minimum salary of $285,000, but still a wage most 2010 college grads would envy, don’t you think?

Speaking of football …

As announced last weekend, Illinois and Northwestern will play a football game at Wrigley Field on Nov. 20, which reminded me of one of my favorite bits of Chicago sports trivia: Wrigley Field – the Bears’ home from 1921 to 1970 – has still hosted more Bears games than Soldier Field.

In fact, Wrigley formerly held the record for the most NFL games played in a single stadium with 365 regular-season contests. In September 2003, Giants Stadium in New Jersey finally broke that record – although it needed the dual-occupancy of both the Giants and the Jets to do it.

… And speaking of the Illini

Last week, I filled you in on the latest twists in the decades-old Chief Illiniwek controversy at the University of Illinois. And now there’s another one.

Last Monday, during its final meeting of the semester, the Urbana-Champaign Senate – a legislative body comprised of 200 faculty and 50 students – voted in favor of a resolution that calls for the assembly of a campus mascot search committee.

The vote, done in response to the similar resolution passed in March by the Illinois Student Senate, called upon interim Chancellor Robert Easter to assemble a “diverse committee of campus community members responsible for proposing a campus mascot not affiliated with American Indian heritage or imagery.”

So diverse, apparently, that it won’t even consider the opinions of Chief supporters.

U of I sophomore Samantha Uher, president of Students for Chief Illiniwek – the school’s largest registered student organization – told the Daily Illini that she thought the resolution was unfair, adding that her organization would only support a committee that includes both pro-Chief and anti-Chief representation.

“It seems like they’re disregarding what the students want,” she said.

When it comes to this issue at U of I, it wouldn’t be the first time.