Wisch List

My Aug. 2 column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) Northern Illinois is busy pumping up its star QB as a Heisman Trophy candidate. Northwestern is basking in the glow of a No. 22 ranking in the USA Today preseason coaches poll. And over in South Bend, Notre Dame is even higher up the college football ladder, peering down from a lofty No. 11 perch.

Illinois, meanwhile?

Well … it starts training camp next week, too.

You’d barely know it, however, based on the level of excitement – or dearth of it, rather – that’s emanating out of Champaign. Case in point: So slim are the compelling storylines leading up to Tim Beckman’s second season as head coach of the Fighting Illini that on Friday, Champaign News-Gazette columnist Loren Tate wrote a piece entitled, “For starters, here’s my hoops lineup.”

Basketball season doesn’t start until November.

Elsewhere, Decatur Herald-Review columnist Mark Tupper wrote earlier this week that his “Goal is to be fair on the Illini football program.” (Not exactly billboard material.) And the football season appears so bleak that it even scared veteran Illini scribe Herb Gould of the Chicago Sun-Times into retirement.

I’m kidding.

I think.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

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The email was addressed, “Dear Andrew.”

But, hey, they said they knew the feeling.

Today’s column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) The Baseball Hall of Fame held its annual induction ceremony this past weekend. But if you happened to miss it, well, you didn’t miss much.

That’s because no one got in.

No one living at least, as for the first time since 1965, there wasn’t a single breathing inductee on stage in Cooperstown, N.Y., to bask in applause and share inspiring tales from his glory days on the diamond.

“Instead,” the New York Times wrote on Monday, “in a rain-delayed and sparsely attended ceremony that underscored the lingering damage that performance-enhancing drugs have inflicted on America’s national pastime, the three men who were enshrined have been dead since the 1930s.”

And Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa – the trio of steroid-tainted superstars who were in their first year of eligibility, but shut out from the Hall – might as well be in the eyes of most baseball fans.

One year ago, I wrote that I wanted to see baseball’s Hall of Fame voters impose a one-year ban on inductions as a nod to the integrity of the game – or what’s left of it, at least.

In turn, I was satisfied back in January when the Hall announced that not only had Bonds, Clemens and Sosa failed to make the cut, but so too had new HOF hopefuls Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza and Curt Schilling, along with everyone else still on the ballot from Mark McGwire to Jack Morris.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

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

The WISCH LIST

By Dave Wischnowsky

As the calendar winds down on July, Major League Baseball finds itself standing at a PED crossroads – yet again – following the season-ending suspension of Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun and the ongoing Biogenesis investigation.

The Cubs and White Sox, meanwhile, are at a crossroads too – although, thankfully, that has nothing to do with illegal drugs. And with baseball weighing heavily on my summertime mind, I wanted to weigh in all three topics and see where the road leads us.

Brains over Braun

Four summers ago, Bud Selig actually – and ironically – invoked Ryan Braun’s name as a poster boy for the baseball’s testing policy.

“Our minor league testing program is in its ninth year, and that means all the great young players in baseball, from Ryan Howard to Ryan Braun, have all been tested for nine years,” the MLB commissioner preached. “There’s a system in place, and it’s working. We know we have the toughest testing program in major league sports.”

Selig now knows better. And we should too about Braun, who was asked during that same 2009 season by MLB.com if he was surprised that Alex Rodriguez had been exposed for having used steroids in 2003.

Continue reading “Taking a few swings at Braun, Cubs and White Sox”

Saturday’s column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) With two Stanley Cup championships in four years, Chicago has been transformed into a Blackhawks city. But could the Midwest actually be transformed into “Blackhawks Country”?

This week, Chicago’s NHL franchise announced that it will be taking its title-winning show on the road later this summer when it opens training camp Sept. 12 on the campus of Notre Dame.

According to the team, the Hawks will train for four days (Sept. 12-15) at the Compton Family Ice Arena in South Bend – selling tickets for just $5 a pop – before returning home to the United Center on Sept. 16 for their annual training camp festival.

“We are thankful that Notre Dame is allowing us to host our camp at their new state-of-the-art, world-class facility,” said Hawks general manager Stan Bowman, a Fighting Irish alum. “Opening camp on the road offers our players and coaching staff a unique team bonding atmosphere. We look forward to bringing Blackhawks hockey to our fans in Northwest Indiana.”

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

Thursday’s column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) There hasn’t been a forfeit in Major League Baseball since 1995.

But maybe there should be more of them in the future.

A lot more, if that’s what it takes to actually rid baseball of the PED problems that continue to plague the sport and cast suspicion on every guy that puts on a big league uniform and actually fares well while wearing it.

No matter if he’s squeaky clean, or as dirty as a grass stain.

Earlier this week, in the wake of Ryan Braun’s season-ending suspension for violations of the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program, I received a message from my buddy Josh that read, “Players aren’t going to quit taking PEDs until getting caught punishes teams and teammates.”

As someone who’s already pushed for MLB to be much harder on PED offenders – to the point of even suggesting a zero-tolerance policy resulting in a lifetime suspension for a single failed test – I found Josh’s thoughts about forfeits to be intriguing. And I’d be on board with MLB taking steps to adopt such a measure.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

Today’s column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) When it comes to championships, the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs don’t have a whole lot in common.

But when it comes to mascots? Well, they do. That’s because neither franchise has one. The Dodgers and Angels don’t either, making the Cubs among only four Major League Baseball teams to not have a costumed character patrolling the interior of their ballpark.

You know, besides Ronnie “Woo Woo.”

I’m wondering, however, how long the Cubs will keep that common thread with the Yankees. Because, the recent news that the Cubs are trying to kill off an unofficial mascot outside their ballpark has me suspicious that they’re only doing it because they want to put their own official one inside Wrigley.

And I’d really rather they didn’t do that.

Last week, NBC Chicago reported that Major League Baseball recently sent a 100-plus-page letter to Chicagoan Jon Paul Weier, demanding that he cease and desist his activities as “Billy Cub,” the unauthorized bear mascot who wanders Wrigleyville before Cubs games wearing a pinstriped jersey and carrying a “tip money” cooler.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

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

By Dave Wischnowsky

The WISCH LIST

Getting around Chicago is always an adventure.

This past Wednesday, for example, while riding the CTA Red Line my train stopped cold in the subway deep below street level. The conductor squeezed past me in the front car, popped open the door and exited carrying a heavy wooden stick with a metal hook. She was gone for about five minutes before returning, and off we went.

My fellow passengers and I speculated that she had to kill a zombie.

Even for a seasoned city traveler, that was a new one. As a visitor to Chicago, however, there are three new things that you should know about navigating the Windy City by car, train, bus or even bicycle.

Free meter parking on Sundays

Earlier this week, the New York Times’ DealBook blog praised Chicago’s parking meter system as “one of the world’s best.”

Of course, the author of the piece, New York attorney Kent Rowey, didn’t mention that he was involved in former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s much-reviled deal that privatized the city’s 36,000 meters through 2083.

Fitting.

What you need to know about Chicago’s parking meters, however, is that through Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s recent renegotiation of the contract, you can now park for free on Sundays at meters outside Chicago’s central business district. Just be sure to check the signs to make sure your meter is indeed a free one.

Continue reading “3 New Things You Should Know About Navigating Chicago”

Last Thursday’s column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) Things Illini Nation learned this past week: 1) Ron Zook now works for a bank, and 2) Mike Thomas is willing to invest time in rebutting him.

The former may be strange, particularly for a football coach who sometimes couldn’t count his team’s scores, let alone beans.

But the latter? Well, it’s truly baffling.

And Thomas really needs to be bigger than that. After all, the Illini AD has bigger fish to fry these days than addressing his ex-coach’s gripes. Namely, his current coach’s performance, although the touchy reaction to Zook is likely tied to that.

Last weekend, the Sun-Times reported that the affable-but-daffy Zook, who led Illinois to a 34-51 record in seven erratic seasons before Thomas fired him in December 2011, is now working in Ocala, Fla. He’s not a football coach – not now, at least – but rather is serving as the community relations/business development officer for GatewayBank, of which he’s a shareholder.

“It keeps me busy,” the 59-year-old Zook told Sun-Times reporter Steve Greenberg, before eventually spinning off into lamentations about the demise of his coaching career at Illinois.

In explaining his final season in Champaign – during which the Illini started out 6-0 before promptly losing their next six – Zook tried to blame a Rose Bowl hangover from the 2008 season on the 2011 collapse.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …

Last Tuesday’s column from CBS Chicago …

(CBS) Much like the NBA’s Slam Dunk Contest, we’ve already seen the best that the MLB Home Run Derby has to offer. The event is both tired and, at three hours long, tiring. As a result, it’s in desperate need of some juice.

No, not that kind.

(Although, the Steroid Era was indeed the best that the Derby had to offer.)

In lieu of pumping its competitors full of PEDs (if they already aren’t … sigh), the following are three suggestions about how MLB and ESPN can shake things up with the 27-year-old Derby to put some swagger back in its step.

After all, Bryce Harper’s hair-do can’t do it all on its own.

Continue reading at CBSChicago.com …