Next week, I'll be off to Chicago for a quick visit.  Quick or not, I have tickets for a Cubs game against the St. Louis Cardinals.  I was surprised that the ticket price was so reasonable, The Cardinals, after all, are the Cubs long-time rivals and those games are packed, so I thought it would be one of the club's Premium-tier games.  Then I realized…”Oh, it’s for April 18.”  I was immediately sure that that was why, as an very early-season game in Chicago, it wasn’t Premium. 

Now, mind you, I'm sure that many people may think, "Ohhh, okay, I get it.  I might be cold then."  No, you don't quite get it.  Let's put it this way.  Today is the home opener for the Cubs.  That's a big deal for any ballclub.  Jammed park.  Lot's of hoopla ceremony.  Turning on my MLB GameDay service to listen to the game, I saw that the game was postponed until  tomorrow.  Well, hopefully tomorrow.

This is why an April 18 game in Chicago, even against their historic rivals, is not “Premium”… 

Next week, when I have my ticket, it's supposed to be a balmy 46-degrees.  So, here's hoping.  Today is a little nippier, at 38-degrees.

Before today's Opening Day the game, Bleacher Nation reporter Michael Cerami sent out a tweet that he would jump into Lake Michigan if the Chicago Cubs outfielder Ian Happ lead off the game with a home run. Happ hit the first pitch of the game into the seats.

The water temperature was 41-degrees.

We return you now to Riccardo Muti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  This is from 2012 when he threw out the first pitch at a Cubs game.

I find it adorable that Muti seems to love the Cubs, particularly since he's from Italy and didn't grow up on baseball or perhaps ever played it at all.  But we know now that he's a lefty.  Not the same form on the mound (or front thereof) as on the podium, but he did get it to the plate.

By the way, listen closely in the background as he walks to the mount.  The P.A. is playing Beethoven's 5th Symphony.

And to help honor the occasion, here are the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and their conductor Riccardo Muti (in a Cubs jersey, mind you) playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”  I think this was done in honor of last year’s World Series since it was posted by the CSO on November 6, 2016.  Also adding to the last-minute sense of quickly throwing this together is that the musicians are in street clothes -- though many are wearing Cubs paraphernalia or Cubbie blue.
 
What I particularly like about this, regardless of who'sperforming, is that It's a fun arrangement, too, not trying to overwhelm such a small, charming song with full orchestral bombast, but arranged with an almost old-timey feel.  And maestro Muti seems to be having a good time with it all.

​Play ball!

Here's an enjoyable follow-up to the piece I wrote about this morning, Daniel Brown's article on being sportswriting competitors with his wife.  The update was written by Lisa Bonos of the Washington Post, who wisely called up Susan Slusser to get the other side of the story.  You can read that here.

I want to have another Trump-free morning.  And this fits the bill as effectively as anything.  In fact, it's another baseball story -- but please don't run from it.  It's a total joy.  And not what you might otherwise think from that description.

This is an article by Daniel Brown, a sportswriter in Northern California for the Bay Area Mercury News, writing about his biggest competition at another local paper, Susan Slusser, who's the beat sportswriter for the San Francisco Chronicle.  And she's a formidable competitor at that -- accomplished, driven, tough, and yet so admired that in 2012, in this male-dominated field, she became the first woman to be elected president of the Baseball Writers Association of American.

One other thing:  the two are married.

This is a hilarious, endearing, wonderful, interesting, fun, loving and gracious article.  It's titled, "Help! I married my dreaded baseball rival (a love story)."

He writes openly and happily about being regularly scooped by his wife, and shamelessly using her name to develop a rapport with athletes who he knows adore her for her "fairness, accuracy, accountability, comic timing and ferocious work ethic."  Among several examples, for instance, he writes, "If I drop her name, players bounce up. I once approached Jose Guillen at his locker and told him I was married to Susan Slusser. He sprang out of his chair to hug me."

There's even a very funny story about the one time he lucked out into scooping his wife.  That's a rarity, however, since most of the article is filled with other tales, like the even more amusing story about the rumor of the trade with Stephen Piscotty.

(Personal digression.  I love talking about Stephen Piscotty.  But not for the reason you think.  He used to play for the hated St. Louis Cardinals, the favorite team of the inveterate Chris Dunn.  We'd talk about Piscotty often whenever the Cubs would play their despicable rivals, and I finally explained one day why I always liked bringing Piscotty up.  It's because his name reminds me of a five-year-old kid trying to say, "spaghetti.")

It's just a terrific article.  Do yourself a favor and don't avoid it just because you may not like sports, or baseball.  You can read it here.

Fun, goofy, elaborate, but still a bit low-key.

And that left it up to the two team executives.  And together they put together their plan.  A video that would play during an upcoming game.

It required the participation of Anthony Rizzo, the team's leader, who did the narration.  And throughout the film there are clips of La Stella answering questions about himself.  But it's important to know that those weren't done for the video, but actually they were outtakes from a 2015 promo that the team did.  Clips that had never been used, and were just sort of off-beat.  So, La Stella had no idea.

Throughout the day, before the game, Rizzo kept going up to La Stella, setting the table, and preparing things beforehand.  "Tommy's a perfect candidate to be able to take something like that," Rizzo said. "All day I was telling him that I loved him and 'Tommy, I want you to know I love you and you're a good friend.' I'm buttering him up."

And then at the end of the third inning, La Stella came to the plate and line out into a double-play, ending the evening.  As he walked back to the dugout, he passed Rizzo who was next at bat.  "He lined out and I'm on deck," Rizzo explained, knowing what was coming in a few seconds, "and I said, 'Hey, this is the reason I've been telling you this all day.'"

And this is the video they ran on the big Jumbotron scoreboard before the fourth inning, for the entire packed stadium to see --

I've been enjoying the NCAA basketball tournament more than usual this year.  That's because the Loyola of Chicago Ramblers have been shocking the basketball world, and after their win last night, they've made it to the Final Four.

For most people, this is notable because Loyola of Chicago is not known as a major basketball powerhouse.  (To be clear, it's not as tiny a school as people might think.  Undergrad enrollment is 16,500, which is twice the enrollment at Northwestern.)  But for me, it's not only notable, but highly-notable for another reason.

It's not just that Loyola is just about two miles down the road from Northwestern -- literally.  (Both schools are on Sheridan Road.  Northwestern in Evanston borders Chicago about a mile to the north of Howard St. -- which is the dividing line -- and Loyola is about a mile south of Howard Street.  But one of the iconic sports memories of my life concerns Loyola basketball.

I was but a wee kid at the time, but even then I knew it was something really special when Loyola of Chicago shocked the basketball world (the first time...) back in 1963 when they made it to the NCAA basketball finals.  And it was all the more shocking because four of their five starting players were black, led by All American Jerry Harkness.  They weren't given any chance against their opponents, the University of Cincinnati Bearcats, since Cincinnati was not only the defending national champions -- but they were the two-time defending national champions.  And yet...Loyola won.  In overtime.  On what was literally a last-second shot.  Despite being behind by 15 points with about 10 minutes left.

I don't remember much of the game (I didn't remember any of those details above, but was reminded of them when tracking down this video below), but I knew enough even at that young age that when I was watching on our old black-and-white set, this was pretty amazing.  It helped, too, when you could hear the Loyola announcer Red Rush screaming "We won!!  We won!!!

And now, I wasn't just a fair-weather fan.  I followed all the Chicago teams, including the DePaul Blue Demons and their legendary coach Ray Meyer, and Loyola was especially fun to listen to because Red Rush was a reasonably-outlandish announcer.  I remember that their games were sponsored by Gonnella Bread -- easy to remember because Red would loving boom out their slogan, "Gonnella, it's swella, fella."  And I've always remembered Loyola's coach, George Ireland.

I listened to Northwestern basketball, too, but...well, they sucked eggs.  As you may recall, up until last year they were the only major college team never to have qualified for the post-season tournament in the history of the NCAA.

It was a notable tournament that year for another reason.  That was the year that Mississippi State played in the NCAA post-season tourney for the first time, having avoided it in the past, despite being a very good team, since that would have meant playing integrated teams.  And in their very first NCAA tournament game, Mississippi State's opponent was...the Loyola Ramblers.  From what I've read, it's one of the most-famous games in NCAA history, known as the Game of Change.  And Loyola, of course, won -- "of course," because they had to have won all their tournament games that year, given that they won the championship...

This is a very good 30-minute documentary on Loyola's 1963 championship season, made by Comcast Sports.  It focuses on that Game of Change and the championship game.  If you only want to see the coverage of the final game, just jump to the 22-minute mark.  (Loyola is wearing the white uniforms.)  The fun thing, too, is you get to hear Red Rush's wildly-excited play-by-play, including his screaming of "We won!!  We won!!"  Alas, not a word about Gonnella Bread.  But it is swella, fella.

(And still is, after 130 years...)

We watched the Olympics all day for two weeks, so you could have a life...

Okay, the Games are over.  There's now this empty void, but that's okay, I'll get past it, I always do.  It just takes a little time.

Anyway, all that's left to comment on are the Closing Ceremonies, so I'll dive in.

I thought the Closing Ceremonies were wildly uninteresting.  While I like the use of computer graphics, and have actually argued for them for years at such outdoor TV spectaculars, like Super Bowl halftime shows, they should be to augment the show, not be the show.  If they're the focus of the pageant, then it’s like we’re just watching a cartoon.  And to me, that's what so much of the presentation was.  It certainly was impressive technology, and pretty.  But I found it empty, and told me little about the culture.  

What most surprised me, though, was how thin the Chinese presentation was for the 2022 games in Beijing.  That's because it was produced by the same brilliant film director, Zhang Yimou (whose work includes The House of Flying Daggers and Hero), who did the otherworldly stunning -- if a little creepy -- Opening Ceremonies for the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.  Last night's not only also relied on computer graphics, but also came across like they forgot that had to do this and threw it together last month.

Also, as I noted beforehand, my concerns came to be, and Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir were, unfortunately, a waste.  I’m sure many people, if not most thought they were “fun,” because of their rapport with one another, but they added nothing to what was going on.  They knew little about most of the athletes, who they were, what they did during the Olympics and why that may have been meaningful, and the thing about the Closing Ceremonies is that identifying them as they march in is half the fun of the Parade of Athletes.  Putting into perspective why they're so happy.  Terry Gannon did the best he could, but he’s been focused with figure skating for the Games and didn’t know most people, and could only add a limited amount.  That’s where someone like a Bob Costas shined.  At one point, Gannon asked about whether the Closing Ceremonies was where the athletes really had a chance to finally deal with one another, and Lipinski burst out an enthusiastic, "Yes!" and explained that that was why it was so special.  Happily, it was left to Weir to note quietly that they tended to mingle in the Olympic Village during the Games.  I love the Closing Ceremonies for what they are, but at their best they can be so rich and vibrant, and be the proper culmination of the two weeks of sport spectacle that went on before.  These just pretty much...were.
 
And one huge, personal complaint that I'm sure most people couldn't have cared less about – NBC didn’t have the "Scroll of Entire NBC Production Crew" that I always find touching, 10 minutes of names going by to honor those who pulled this remarkable technical achievement off.  I was told by my pal Clare Duffy Swift -- whose senior producer credit I always love spotting -- that she was told someone thought that they did run the credit, but at a "weird time."  That may be, though especially given how much I watched the broadcasts and didn’t see them, it’s hard to miss a 10-minute crawl…  But even if I did miss them at some weird time, “weird times” doesn’t count. Having the credits come at the very end, as they show the montage of highlights is always a highly dramatic and lovely way to honor everyone.

But the Olympic flame is now out.  It was mostly quite wonderful.  And now life goes on.  Until two years from now in Tokyo.  ​Kon'nichiwa.