Posts Tagged ‘chicago’

A memorable, for all the wrong reasons, 2024 Chicago White Sox season

Posted: September 29, 2024 by John Ruberry in baseball, Sports
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By John Ruberry

“The Mets have shown me more ways to lose than I even knew existed.” Casey Stengel, New York Mets manager in 1962. 

“I didn’t know there were this many ways to lose a ballgame.” John Schriffen, Chicago White Sox play-by-play announcer in 2024.

“It was a year that none of us anticipated,” Steve Stone, White Sox color analyst, during the last game of the season.

Last Friday night the Chicago White Sox made history in Detroit when they lost their MLB record 121st game. To add salt to the wounds, in the home broadcast booth, Chicago area native Jason Benetti, who was the South Siders’ play-by-play announcer from 2019 thru 2023, called the game for the Tigers. According to media reports, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who has been, deservedly so, cast as the villain on the South Side, didn’t like the serendipitous and a bit quirky broadcasting style of Benetti, who is now the television voice of the Tigers.

When your team sucks, Jerry, an announcer like Benetti is just what is needed. Besides, I thought Jason was great. 

While I didn’t make it out to Guaranteed Rate Field for a Sox home game—lots of stuff came up–I viewed many games on television.

And it was bizarre watching.

After I’d miss a few games, I’d tune in and see an unfamiliar player at bat or on the pitchers’ mound. A lot. 

By the end of July, it was as if the team plane for the White Sox had crashed, killing the entire roster.  Of course that’s exaggeration, but there was an incredible amount of turnover this season as general manager Chris Getz and team manager Pedro Grifol, tried to patch holes on the sinking ship.

Who is that guy? Where did he come from? Those are questions I asked a lot when tuning in to White Sox baseball.

Grifol didn’t survive August. Few managers do after losing 21 straight games—and that tied an American League record, set by the Baltimore Orioles in 1988.

Here’s an interesting fact. Larry Sheets, an outfielder for those awful O’s, is the father of Gavin Sheets, an outfielder and first baseman for the Sox.

Why were the Sox so bad in 2024? Bad luck? Perhaps. Injuries? A bit. But in a 162-game season, even the best teams hit an unlucky patch or two. All teams in all sports have injuries. 

The short answer is that the White Sox farm system has been bereft of talent for years, save for “white flag” mid-season trades of established players with expensive contracts in exchange for prospects. The last number one Sox draft pick who has justifiably been called an MLB standout was shortstop Tim Anderson, the 2019 American League batting champion and a two-time all-star. Anderson was drafted eleven years ago. He’s out of baseball now. The following year the Sox drafted Carlos Rodón in the first round, he now hurls for the New York Yankees. Rodón is a two-time all-star who pitched a no-hitter in 2021. He comes close to stardom, but again, Rodón was drafted ten years ago.

In this afternoon’s game against the Tigers, there was a typical White Sox boneheaded error. Stone remarked that “communication issues” have been a problem all year for Chicago. A Detroit pinch hitter, Andy Ibáñez, hit a routine foul pop-up that soared near the visitors’ dugout. Sox first baseman, Andrew Vaughn, yelled “I got it” repeatedly. But Pale Hose catcher Korey Lee ran towards the pop-up too. Neither caught the ball, it landed between them.

Of the White Sox players with enough at-bats to qualify for a batting average crown, Vaughn ended up with the highest average at .246. That made him the 88th best batter in MLB in 2024

I hate to single out Vaughn, but he played a big role in one of the most bizarre endings of an MLB game ever. He was called for interference on an infield fly rule play, concluding a game against the Orioles with a double play.

Take a look.

Schriffen pointed to this defeat when making that comment about his naiveté on the many ways to lose a baseball game.

There is some good news for the South Siders. If you are a “there is a no such thing as bad publicity” type, for the first time since the White Sox won the World Series in 2005, they’re no longer playing in the shadow of the more popular Chicago Cubs. They’re getting national attention.

Secondly, the Sox, who lost 101 games last year, didn’t finish last in the AL Central in 2023. The Kansas City Royals lost 106 games a year ago–and they made the playoffs this season. That being said, if you believe that the White Sox will play in the post season in 2025, which by the way will be their 125th annual effort, I have some Enron stock to sell you. Getz has already said that the Sox won’t be a big factor in the off-season free agency market.

Thirdly, unless the Pale Hose break the record again next season, its “worst ever” record might be broken soon by someone else. In the 21st century, there have been several teams, most notoriously the 2003 Detroit Tigers who lost 119 games, who have challenged the Mets’ 1962 woeful performance. The 2018 Orioles tanked 115 times. The Tigers had another very rough year in 2019, losing 114 times.

The Orioles and Tigers will be joining the Royals in this year’s playoffs.

Lastly, the White Sox finished the 2024 season winning five of its last six games, including today’s game in Detroit. Interim manager Grady Sizemore might have made a difference–and he could return next year.

UPDATE 8:30pm EDT:

During the White Sox-Tigers game, Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf issued a long statement where he admitted that the South Siders “on-field performance this season was a failure.”

From that statement:

While embracing new ideas and outside perspectives, we will do everything we can to fix this for 2025 and the future. This will include further development of players on our current roster, development within our system, evaluating the trade and free agent markets to improve our ballclub and new leadership for our analytics department, allowing us to elevate and improve every process within our organization with a focus for competing for championships. In fact, change has already been happening in our baseball operations group throughout this past year. When named general manager in 2023, Chris Getz and his staff immediately began conducting a top-to-bottom evaluation of our existing operations. Chris is rebuilding the foundation of our baseball operations department, with key personnel changes already happening in player development, international scouting, professional scouting and analytics. Some of these changes will be apparent quickly while others will need time to produce the results we all want to see at the major-league level.

Great words, these are.

But Getz’ “top-to-bottom evaluation of our existing operations” that he began over a year ago has seen the White Sox, a bad team then, get much worse.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Chicago’s leftist mayor cancelling gunshot detection contract because he’s beholden to his ideology

Posted: September 22, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson

By John Ruberry

Chicago, in Brandon Johnson, has a leftist idealogue as its mayor. Not surprisingly, he’s failing. 

Take away his far-left beliefs, “Branjo” is a big empty suit, one tailored by his former employer, the radical Chicago Teachers Union.

As I discussed last week, Johnson was a backer of the Defund the Police movement, until after he made it to the runoff round of last year’s mayoral election.

Johnson’s approval rating is 25 percent. Crime was the biggest issue of the 2023 campaign. While murders are down slightly, the crime numbers remain horrible. People don’t feel safe, despite the minimalizing of lawbreaking by Chicago’s weak-kneed media.

Despite 33 of Chicago’s 50 alderpersons voting to continue the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, a gunfire detection system deployed in high-crime areas, Branjo is putting ShotSpotter on mute. 

While there are critics of ShotSpotter on the left and right, the general belief of people possessing open minds–meaning people aren’t extreme left-wingers–is that ShotSpotter works. A University of Chicago Crime Lab study said that there is a “3-in-4 chance that the technology saves about 85 lives per year.”

Besides those 33 alderpersons, Chicago’s two major daily newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune–both liberal publications–favor keeping ShotSpotter. As does Johnson’s pick for police superintendant, Larry Snelling.

Branjo has never explained why, other than fulfilling a campaign promise, his reasons for dumping ShotSpotter. Last week, Chicago’s man-child mayor dismissed ShotSpotter as “walkie-talkies on a stick.”

ShotSpotter, until Sunday night that is, is deployed in 12 of Chicago’s 22 police districts. The problem for Johnson and his far-left cop-hating base is that those districts are minority-majority. However, most of the alderpersons representing those areas voted to keep in ShotSpotter in place. The core of the support for cancelling ShotSpotter in the City Council are alderpersons–some of them are openly socialist–from progressive white wards on the North Side who put Johnson over the top in last year’s election.

This afternoon on X, Silvana Tabares, who represents a Southwest Side ward. bashed Johnson’s shortsightedness.

Experts and community member all know ShotSpotter provides a vital tool for first responders to render aid to victims of gun violence.

Beginning tonight, every gunshot victim bleeding in the streets of our city will be a worth sacrifice in the eyes of our mayor for his radical agenda.

Every single one.

Here are some headlines about ShotSpotter from CWB Chicago in just the last three days:

Branjo’s inner circle is comprised of fellow leftists. Earlier this month, on the Fran
Spielman Show podcast, a moderate downtown alderperson, Brian Hopkins, ripped the mayor.

“When you’re a democratic socialist who has some very extreme, left-wing views, that closes off a lot of opportunities to grow relationships with centrists or even moderate Republicans,” Hopkins said. “The city is suffering from that.”

A couple of, well, normal people were part of Johnson’s core staff early in his administration. Rich Guidice, the mayor’s first chief of staff, resigned his spring and he was replaced by a left-wing radical, Cristina Pacione-Zayas. Earlier this month, an office reshuffling ended up with an experienced and respected intergovernmental affairs officer, Sydney Holman resigning. Now in charge of lobbying the City Council and state legislators for Branjo is another extremist, Kennedy Bartley, who called police officers “f*cking pigs” in a 2021 podcast.

Chicagoans are only 16 months into Johnson’s four-year term as mayor.

As Barack Obama once said, “Elections have consequences.”

More murder victims will be one of those.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Presidential election warning from Chicago: Media malpractice gave the city its failed leftist mayor, Brandon Johnson

Posted: September 15, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, election 2024, elections, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Last year’s mayoral election in Chicago presents a media deja vu moment with national implications.

Yes, I’m talking about Kamala Harris.

Brandon Johnson, an organizer for the far-left Chicago Teachers Union while serving as member of the Cook County commissioner–a rubber stamp body controlled by board president, Toni Preckwinkle, a leftist like Johnson.

Paul Vallas, a centrist Democrat, ran a wonky white-paper dominated campaign that was centered on hiring more police officers and prosecuting more misdemeanors. He lost. 

Johnson campaigned largely on platitudes. His political career is a creation of the Chicago Teachers Union, and aggressive campaigning by the CTU, including door to door work, identifying Johnson’s supporters, and getting them to the polls, pushed “Branjo” over the top. 

Republicans? Are we doing that? 

Back to my point.

As a commissioner, Johnson could only point one accomplishment in office, the non-binding “Justice for Black Lives” resolution that passed in 2020, which called for diverting funds from law enforcement to social services.

The extreme left loves symbolism. It also hates the police.

Also in 2020, Johnson said of the Defund the Police movement that it was “not a slogan, it’s an actual real political goal.”

Chicago’s mainstream media, Fran Spielman of the Chicago Sun-Times is a notable exception, are compliant lapdogs for the left. If at all, they barely challenged Branjo on his thin resume and his far-left beliefs.

Before the first round of voting for mayor, Johnson was asked about his support of Defund the Police and cutting law enforcement, Johnson flippantly replied, “Ask better questions.”

Finally, at a law enforcement forum before the second round of balloting, Johnson was asked about his backing of the Defund movement. “I said it was a political goal,” Johnson replied, “I never said it was mine.”

So the media, even though crime was the biggest issue of the 2023 Chicago mayoral campaign, dropped the Defund issue. 

The Chicago media barely vetted Johnson. Just as the national media didn’t do so on Joe Biden’s senility in 2020–and it all but ignored Hunter Biden laptop story. A year later, the national media elite is ignoring or minimizing the far-left political position of Kamala Harris, and her politically convenient flip-flops on them.

Last week, in her weekly podcast, the aforementioned Spielman interviewed centrist Chicago alderman Brendan Reilly, who supported Vallas in last year’s election.

Reilly, who may be candidate for mayor in 2027, said that Johnson was en route to becoming a “one-termer” who was “woefully unprepared” to lead America’s third-largest city, and a mayor who is a beholden to the “radical left.”

Johnson, who has blamed Richard M. Nixon for Chicago’s violence epidemic, is rumored to have suffered from panic attacks. The mayor regularly points his finger at white supremacy when his discussing city’s many ills.

The warning signs were there on Johnson for anyone who did some digging. But the Chicago media barely reported on them. Last week, a Fox Chicago reporter revealed that his City Hall staffer in charge of working with City Council and state legislators to advance the mayor’s agenda, Kennedy Bartley, made vile anti-police comments in a 2021 podcast, including calling law enforcement officers “f*cking pigs.”

This is Johnson’s inner circle. The mayor has resisted calls to fire Bartley.

As for crime, while Johnson has not defunded the police, his choice as police superintendant, Larry Snelling, says the CPD is short nearly 2,000 officers. 

Chicago faces a $220 million budget deficit for this year and a nearly $1 billion for 2025. In response, Branjo announced a hiring freeze, but two days later, he exempted the fire and police departments from that freeze. 

Crime is still sky high since Johnson took over. Murders are down, but only a little bit.

Johnson has driven the Chicago train off the rails. Ironically–and the Chicago media ignores this other story–the mayor has a massive polite detail, said to number anywhere from 125-150 cops. Johnson clearly doesn’t want to defund his police protection.

Back to Harris. 

Will the mainstream media drop its biases and finally vet the vice president?

Or will they wait, until a year or so after she’s sworn in, when another “woefully unprepared” office holder, one who is beholden to “the radical left,” fails again, for so-called journalists to finally sound the alarm about Harris? Maybe not. The media was all-in on Biden until his cognitive decline couldn’t be explained away after his June debate with Donald Trump.

Biden, whose mind was clearly slipping in 2020, is arguably a tool of the far-left. 

Will Harris, arguably an intellectual lightweight, end up in the same position if she wins the presidency?

John Ruberry regularly blogs from just north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

Swing state voters, what to say when an Illinois leftist is at your door telling you to vote for Kamala Harris

Posted: September 8, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, election 2024, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

If you live in a swing state, a pestilence is headed your way this autumn.

Leftists from Illinois–and other liberal states–are on their way to tell you who to vote for in the 2024 presidential election. 

Some of them might show up at your front door. 

Politico’s Illinois Playbook, a gossipy left-wing email newsletter, asked its vainglorious readers, “We asked how you’ll be hitting the campaign.”

Nearly all of the respondents replied that they’re heading to Wisconsin or Michigan. Longtime leftist gadfly Terry Cosgrove said his presidential campaign goal is to be “up to Wisconsin as often as possible knocking on doors with Operation Swing State to help Kamala Harris win.”

Last weekend, Illinois’ Democrat governor, J.B. Pritzker, was in New Hampshire campaigning, throwing his weight around. Besides the states I just mentioned, if you live in Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, or North Carolina, expect an onslaught of haughty know-it-alls from Illinois and other failed blue states, including California, calling you on the telephone while you’re sleeping or having dinner.

And yes, they might show up at your front door.

The horror, the horror!

Cosgrove, with his arrogance and his Harvey Fierstein-like gravelly voice, might actually help the conservative cause in Wisconsin. 

But others might be more persuasive with low-information voters.

Just today, Matt Martin, a Chicago alderman, boasted on X that liberals in his ward were headed to Wisconsin. There are 49 other wards in Chicago.

If you are reading Da Tech Guy blog, you are well-versed in following the campaign. You won’t fall for the fatuous “joy” campaign platitudes of the Kamala Harris campaign. But you can break the opposition. 

Being friendly is no longer an option. Our country is at stake. 

These blue state invaders need to be demoralized.

Because I live in Illinois–someone has to document its decline-and-fall–I’m going to focus on what to say when that Prairie State progressive shows up at your front door. If you get a call and the accent isn’t quite right, or they mispronounce your hometown, assume it’s a blue state liberal ruining your day. Your task is to respond as I recommend.

First, a little background on Illinois:

The Democrats have controlled both chambers of Illinois’ state legislature–often with supermajorities–since 2003, thanks to egregious gerrymandering. During that time span, there has been a Republican governor for only four years. 

Illinois’ largest city, Chicago, hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1931. 

The many problems of Illinois are the creation of Democrats. Remember that.

I don’t expect you to remember everything listed here. If you can, then great

So, your doorbell rings, and it’s, let’s say, it is Terry Cosgrove from Illinois and Operation Swing State who bellows, “I’m Terry, and you must vote for Kamala.” 

Now comes the fun–but important part.

Your best reply is, “Why should I vote for the Democratic candidate for president when you leftists destroyed Illinois?”

You’ll hear some lies about how Illinois is the closest thing to heaven on this planet, but then you need pounce back. 

Remember. we want to break these leftists. Think of Emperor Palpatine using the Force to destroy Luke Skywalker. 

So you answer back:

  • If Ilinois is as great as you say it is, then why has the state been losing population annually for ten years and counting?

As longtime Chicago White Sox broadcaster, Hawk Harrelson, used to say after the South Siders scored a run, “Don’t stop there!”

More replies for that leftist:

  • Illinois has the nation’s second-highest gasoline taxes. Where does that money go?  Illinois’ roads suck. Oh, you intrusive leftists: make sure you fill up your gas tanks before you head home.
  • Four of the last ten elected governors in Illinois have served time in federal prison, Illinois is corrupt. Keep political graft inside your hell hole.
  • Chicago is corrupt too. Every sixteen months or so a Chicago City Council member is sentenced to prison.
  • Crime is out of control in Chicago. For the last eight years, a George Soros-funded prosecutor, Kim Foxx, has coddled criminals. We don’t need Chicago-style mayhem here.
  • Illinois cares more about criminals than crime victims. Illinois is the only state that bans cash bail. For the last 12 years, more people were murdered Chicago than any other city–and New York and Los Angeles have many more residents.
  • The public pension plans in Illinois–and Chicago–are among the worst funded in the country. Clearly, Democrats can’t manage money. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have driven this point home.
  • Chicago faces a nearly $1 billion deficit for 2025.
  • Will a Harris-Walz administration propose Illinois and Chicago bailouts?
  • Illinois has the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation. I like earning paychecks.
  • Illinois is failed state, the Venezuela of the Midwest.
  • Go back to Illinois and stay there.

If the commie at your door brings up reproductive rights, meaning of course abortion on demand, reply that Donald Trump has repeatedly promised not to implement a federal abortion ban. Unlike most politicians, Trump generally keeps his word. For instance, every major presidential candidate for decades promised to move our embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Only Trump followed through.

The usual retort used by leftists to explain the Illinois Exodus is one word, “weather.” If that’s true, then why is every state that borders Illinois–and Michigan–gaining population?

For you swing state voters, remember. No more Mister Nice Guy. Save America and protect yourself from blue state failure.

Break them.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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