Wisch List

My Friday, Nov. 8, column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) It’s not just a new season for the Fighting Illini basketball team.

It’s a different world.

A year ago, with Illinois fans down in the dumps over football and basketball programs that had devolved into twin disasters, John Groce managed to flip the Illini’s fortunes.

In his debut campaign, he knocked off the nation’s No. 1 team and guided the Illini to Round 2 of the NCAA Tournament. Not bad for the perceived No. 3 choice for the job. Today, Groce has Illinois basketball on such a recruiting roll that he just might end up snaring the program’s biggest fish in a generation with Chicago Curie’s Cliff Alexander.

But in between last season’s success and Alexander’s anticipated college decision one week from today, Groce & the Illini have a basketball opener to play at 7 p.m. tonight against Alabama State at the State Farm Center. And much like last year, they’re again facing a season filled with big question marks, even if they are different ones this time around.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

This weekend’s Wisch List newspaper column from The Daily Journal (Kankakee, Ill.) and The Times (Ottawa, Ill.) …

The WISCH LIST

By Dave Wischnowsky

The Chicago Cubs have a new boss (same as the old boss?).

Derrick Rose is back (sort of). The Bears still have groin groans (but someone’s got their back). The White Sox might have a future star (but what about their past?). And the Blackhawks are definitely generating a buzz (perhaps a bit too much).

Now that you’ve got all that straight, I’ll actually explain.

Cubs

On Thursday, I tried to check if “Rick Renteria” translated as “Dale Sveum,” but I couldn’t find my Spanish-to-Swedish dictionary.

In all seriousness, the Chicago Cubs’ new manager will indeed be resigned to the same fate as their old manager if the team doesn’t provide him with far better rosters.

For all I know, Renteria could be great. But considering it took almost six weeks to hire him, I can’t help but suspect that he wasn’t Theo Epstein’s No. 1 choice behind Joe Girardi. And if he wasn’t even the No. 2 guy in 2013, is he really better than the Cubs’ No. 1 choice two years ago?

Continue reading “Taking the temperature of Chicago’s sports teams”

Today’s column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) Back during the summer of 2005, I started work as a rookie Metro reporter at the Chicago Tribune. And about a month into my tenure, I was hazed.

No, not in the ways you might imagine. I wasn’t duct taped to a buttress atop the Tribune Tower. My head wasn’t shaved by WGN into a Bozo haircut. And I wasn’t ordered to pick up the tab for some veteran reporter’s dinner at Charlie Trotter’s.

As if I could have even afforded an appetizer at the joint.

However, on a slow weekday afternoon in early August, a notoriously mercurial news editor did indeed march up to my desk at the Tribune Tower and order me to hightail it up to North Avenue Beach.

“There’s been a report of a shark sighting,” she barked.

“A shark sighting?” I said in a voice as dry as beach sand.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

Tuesday’s column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) The Cubs still don’t have a manager.

They apparently might not have Jeff Samardzija for much longer. And rumor also has it that the organization could part ways with Starlin Castro some time soon, too.

Personally, I’m not terribly worked up about any of that.

While the team’s managerial search has indeed become terribly tiresome, the fact is that Cubs’ skipper simply doesn’t matter much until the talent on the big league roster does. With Samardzija, for all his hype and hair, he’s never been as good as he’s been cracked up to be. He might make sense as valuable trade bait.

And then there’s Castro. Well, if the team’s supposed “cornerstone” can help bring an actual championship-caliber pitching arm to Chicago’s North Side, I’d likely be on board with trading him.

But not to the St. Louis Cardinals.

In the name of Lou Brock, the Cubs can’t do that.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

This weekend’s Wisch List newspaper column from The Daily Journal (Kankakee, Ill.) and The Times (Ottawa, Ill.) …

The WISCH LIST

By Dave Wischnowsky

Now that you’ve recovered from your Halloween sugar coma – or perhaps are still caught up in the throes of it – it’s time to start planning for your Thanksgiving turkey coma.

And your Christmas cookie coma after that.

Welcome to November, when the holidays come fast and furious and seem to be everywhere all at once. That goes double in Chicago, where the city this month offers a full array of revelry designed to instill with the holiday spirit – or, in some cases, holiday spirits.

Nov. 8-9: Beer Hoptacular in Pilsen

Craft breweries hailing from Lousiana (Abita) to Boston (Angry Orchard) and from Michigan (Bell’s) to Colorado (Left Hand) along with many points both between and beyond will descend upon Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood next weekend for the fourth annual Beer Hoptacular.

Plenty of local breweries will be present, too, including BrickStone in Bourbonnais. This year’s Hoptacular is held at Lacuna Artist Loft Studios at 2150 S. Canalport Ave. For tickets and more information, visit beerhoptacular.com.

Continue reading “Holidays Happen Early During November in Chicago”

Friday’s column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) I’ve criticized him for his questionable SAT test score.

I’ve felt bad for him when he missed free throws late in the NCAA Championship game. And I’ve been pumped for him when the Bulls won the top pick in his draft.

I’ve cheered him when he earned an MVP award. I’ve felt awful for him when he crumpled to the court with a torn ACL. And I’ve supported him when many fans ripped him for not returning before he felt ready.

Over the years, I’ve found a lot of the things that have happened to Derrick Rose interesting, and I’ve found him to be a fascinating basketball talent. But, with all that said, I’ve never really found the intensely reserved, painfully quiet and humble-to-a-fault Rose to be a particularly intriguing person.

Until now.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

Tuesday’s column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) As an Illini football season ticket holder, I received an email survey from the University of Illinois Athletics Department on Monday afternoon.

My alma mater wanted to know about my expectations and overall experience at Illini games, and asked me to provide numerical ratings for a series of related questions. The final one, however, required an actual typed response when I was asked, “What is the one thing that the Illinois football organization can do to ensure you will remain a happy season ticket holder?”

My answer: “Win.”

It’s that simple. Yet, of course, for the Fighting Illini, it isn’t at all.

And the problem – one of them, at least – that second-year Illinois coach Tim Beckman is facing is that he simply hasn’t won. Not much, and not at all in the Big Ten. So, really, how can he convince his players that they can?

This past Saturday, Illinois’ Big Ten losing streak hit 17 games as the team was embarrassed in a Homecoming debacle against Michigan State that prompted Chicago Sun-Times reporter Herb Gould to tweet afterward, “Illini blow lead, lose 42-3. How many teams can say that?”

Not many. But, hey, that’s Illinois football for you.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

From the Saturday, Oct. 26, editions of The Daily Journal (Kankakee, Ill.) and The Times (Ottawa, Ill.) …

The WISCH LIST

By Dave Wischnowsky

Over the decades, Chicago has been home to a lot of people.

So it serves to notice that the city would be home to a lot of graveyards, too.

Although, earlier this month, a crew of construction workers didn’t realize that one of Chicago’s largest cemeteries still exists beneath one of its toniest neighborhoods. During the first week of October, the men were digging near a garden apartment in the Gold Coast when just six inches beneath loose soil they unearthed a bone, which they initially thought belonged to an animal.

“We kept digging, and it was more bones and more bones,” Gerardo Munoz told the Chicago news website DNAinfo.com. “Human bones – it was the ribs and the leg bones. I thought, ‘Now this looks a little weird.’”

The police were called and the medical examiner alerted, but it wasn’t weird enough for them to open an investigation. After all, since the late 1800s when the public Chicago City Cemetery was transformed into Lincoln Park, Lake Shore Drive and residential areas – such as the ritzy Gold Coast – human bones have regularly popped up during construction.

Northwestern University researcher Pamela Bannos estimates that more than 35,000 people were buried in the area up through the mid-1880s, and that the bones of 10,000 to 12,000 bodies still remain there.

“It’s almost safe to say that if you dig on Dearborn or State Street, you’ll find something,” she told DNAinfo.com.

With those haunting thoughts – and with Halloween looming – I thought I’d share with you details about those buried in two of Chicago’s most famous existing cemeteries and the ghost stories that also live there.

Continue reading “Graves, Ghosts and Chicago’s most famous cemeteries”

My Saturday, Oct. 26, column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) My, what a difference five years can make.

Back in 2008 before the first-place Chicago White Sox (the what?) took on the first-place Chicago Cubs (the who?) during a highly anticipated interleague series on the North Side, Sox manager Ozzie Guillen set venerable Wrigley Field up on a tee.

And then he took his cuts.

“What’s wrong with saying I don’t like this ballpark?” Guillen told reporters after joking about seeing rats as big as bodybuilders beneath Wrigley’s right-field bleachers. “You ask any player which one they like less and they might throw in some names. Ask me about it, and this is the one I pick.

“It’s a museum. They like to come to Wrigley Field. I don’t say people don’t like to come here. I say Ozzie don’t like to come here. But, hey, you have to do what you have to do. Wake up in the morning and go to Wrigley Field is not a good thing. But it’s fun to play against them.”

In Ozzie’s world, that apparently was then. And this is now. Because since Guillen can no longer play against Cubs since he was fired by the Miami Marlins last year, he’s now saying that he wants to join them instead.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

My Friday, Oct. 25, column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) There may be plenty of fish in the sea, but when it comes to the pool of high school basketball recruits, there simply aren’t many 6-foot-8, 225-pound marlins out swimming around in the waters.

Cliff Alexander, however, would fit that gill, er, bill.

And beginning today, Alexander – the consensus national Top 5 recruit from Chicago Curie – will be on campus in Champaign-Urbana this weekend for an official visit during University of Illinois Homecoming.

The attendance of such a highly touted athlete is a big deal for the Illini of course, and the coaching staff is expected to pull out all the stops. But the arrival of an in-state recruit with Alexander’s pedigree is hardly unprecedented in Champaign.

After all, the program has gone fishing for the big local catch before.

It did it 15 years ago with Corey Maggette (who committed to Duke). It did it 10 years ago with Shaun Livingston (who committed to Duke before choosing the NBA). It did it six years ago with Derrick Rose (who committed to Memphis). And during that same year it did it with Eric Gordon, who former Illini coach Bruce Weber had on the hook only to see him wriggle off it and land with the Hoosiers at the last minute.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …