Not really in defense of Jon Gruden... but....

I haven't read any of the emails that cost Jon Gruden his job as Head Coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. I have seen some snippets in some published news accounts. Let us stipulate that they are as awful as they have been reported to be.

Gruden surely should have known better than to commit racist, homophobic, or misogynisitic slurs to paper or, in this case, email. He is old enough to know better -- 58, according to my quick research this morning -- and he was likewise an adult when he wrote the emails he is accused of writing. His case thus differs from other recent instances where young atheletes have faced condemnation for social media posts made in high school.

First takeaway: Never put anyting in writing that you wouldn't want read back at you from the pulpit of your church. I've tried to teach my kids this. I've tried to conduct myself this way, too. I'm certain that I have failed, from time to time, though hopefully less and less as the years have accumulated. Nobody's perfect.

Second takeaway: Don't write in anger. And, if you do write in anger, don't press "send."

During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln composed all sorts of vitriolic letters, often to generals in the field that he felt were lacking the proper resolve or spirit, and when he finished one of these, he would put it aside, in a drawer, for later consideration. Usually, the letters actually sent were toned down considerably.

In our modern, instant age, it is all too easy to lash out in anger. We don't even have to pause long enough to address an envelope or find a stamp. We can just press "send" and spew our vitriol out into the world at large. The temptation is grave enough in supposedly "private" communications, such as those in which Mr. Gruden apparently exchanged with Bruce Allen, the former president of what is now the Washington Football Team. (It was while sifting through Allen's old emails, as part of a broader investigation into allegations of misconduct concerning the Washington NFL franchise, that Gruden's emails were apparently uncovered.) The temptation to vomit unfiltered rage may be overwhelming when one is allowed to vent anonymously, as is so often the case on the Internet.

But we should hardly be surprised that Mr. Gruden had anger issues. (Imagine: A coach with a temper. Next you'll be telling me that there's an accountant out there who has an affinity for numbers.) Mr. Gruden, in particular, was renowned for his anger issues, made all the more marketable by his apparent resemblance to the Chucky character from a series of horror movies and television shows that I will never willingly watch.

Sometimes, when people blurt unthinkingly while angry, they will use slurs. As apparently was the case here, in at least one of the damning emails, Gruden used derogatory terms for a homosexual person to describe the Commissioner of the NFL. That does not mean that Mr. Gruden necessarily harbors a particular animus against the LGBTQ+ community, or that Gruden believes, or then believed, that the NFL Commissioner is in fact a member of that community. It does mean that, on one occasion when he pressed "send", Gruden was angry about something the Commissioner had said or done and could not come up with, and/or did not try to find, a better way to express that anger.

That doesn't make it "OK" to use those words. Or any of the other hurtful words Gruden is accused of using. That is why this is, at best, a half-hearted defense of Mr. Gruden.

Human beings are supposedly rational creatures. We are blessed with the power of speech. We have hundreds of thousands of words in the English language alone from which we can choose when we feel the need to express an opinion, positive or negative, about anything. We should always be able to find words to express ourselves without resorting to racial, homophobic, or misogynistic slurs.

At the same time, however, though we are rational creatures, we are also emotional. Sometimes, our emotions get the better of us: We say things we should not say, using words we should not use, using words would not use if we took the time to reflect on what we were really trying to communicate.

I wonder how any of us would fare, including Mr. Gruden's new ardent detractors, were we subjected to the kind of scrutiny that Mr. Gruden has recently experienced.

I offer no opinion on whether Mr. Gruden should have been able to keep his job, despite the newly disclosed emails. He foreclosed further debate on that point by choosing to resign.

But, ultimately, I would hope that none of us, including Mr. Gruden, will be judged solely on what we said, or wrote, in a moment (or, apparently, in Mr. Gruden's case, several moments) of anger. Rather, I would hope that we are judged by those who know us, and see us, and live and work with us, on the totality of their observations of us.

In this harsh and unforgiving modern age, I realize that this is a big "ask." But I'm asking anyway.

Hey, hey, holy mackerel, no doubt about it -- the Cubs are on their way

Photo obtained at this site.

Yes, but to where?

Older readers may hear the 1969 Cub anthem when they read the headline of this post. That was the year that I flirted, however briefly, with becoming a Cub fan. Well, my White Sox were playing on an Astroturf infield with a grass outfield and they were rumored to be heading to Milwaukee (they even played a number of games in Milwaukee that year as Bud Selig schemed to get a team to replace the Braves). Things were so bad for the Sox that they didn't even have a major radio station outlet in Chicago---my memory may be playing tricks on me; this could have been 1970---but it was around this time that the Sox games were consigned to a bunch of low-power suburban FM stations. The Chubbinis, on the other hand, were winning, destined to win, certain to win, and on 50,000-watt powerhouse WGN. My sister actually bought Hey, Hey, Holy Mackerel on a 45rpm record. I actually listened to a couple of Cub games on the radio....

It's a beautiful day for a ballgame
For a ballgame today
The fans are out to get a ticket or two
From Walla Walla, Washington to Kalamazoo

It's a beautiful day for a home run
But even a triple's OK
We're going to cheer -- and boo --
And raise a hullabaloo
At the ballgame today....

I felt dirty and ashamed and I never did it again.

And, of course, the Cubs choked anyway.

Cub fans and Sox fans coexist in Chicago, often uneasily, sometimes under the same roof. And some Sox fans hate the Cubs and some Cubs fans hate the Sox.

But a lot of Sox fans, and I count myself among these, don't hate the Cubs; we are largely indifferent to them. We would rather they moved to Omaha or someplace (the Ricketts family hails from Omaha), but we save our hatred for the New York Yankees. And that's a frustrating, unrequited hatred indeed... because the only Sox the Yankees and their fans worry about are Red Sox.

Cub fans are obnoxious. There are some who follow the game, of course; there are real baseball fans among them, people who can keep score, people who can recite the Infield Fly Rule, people who have even played the game above the sandlot level. And some are just playfully obnoxious -- like my wife's doctor in late September 1989, as he was delivering Younger Daughter, who made a big show of demanding more Pitocin to speed my wife's labor along because he wanted (he said) to get downtown for the Cubs pep rally. But the knowledgeable Cub fan, or even the merely good-natured and playful ones, are often hard to find among the young, intoxicated, ignorant horde that hangs around Wrigleyville on game days.

These Cub fans can't believe we won't join them in going gaga over their team. And so many of them won't shut up. Ever.

Long Suffering Spouse really has it hard this year: Junior high kids are obnoxious to begin with. Add normal 13- and 14-year old obnoxiousness to general Cub fan obnoxiousness -- well, she's showed admirable restraint so far. After only five minutes or so, I would probably clobber one or more of them and wind up in jail.

And the Cubs really are the favorites this year to win it all (for the first time since 1908, as you may have heard). They have the best record in baseball this year. They're pretty healthy coming in. Their starting pitching matches with anyone's and their bullpen is strong. They have one of the best managers around; I like Joe Maddon (my wife does not, but she can't quite explain why).

But... the team with the best record doesn't always win in the Wild Card era. The Wild Card winners, in fact, seem to have a bit of an advantage -- as the 10-1 shellacking Wild Card Winner Toronto gave Texas yesterday in the ALDS opener illustrates.

The Cubs open their series tonight against Johnny Cueto and the San Francisco Giants. Cueto's been pretty darn good in the playoffs. And because the divisional round is only a five game series---and because Madison Baumgarner awaits the Chubbinis in Game 3---the Kismet arrow points to the Giants unless the Chubbinis win both their games tonight and tomorrow. The Giants had a terrible second half... barely squeaking in at the end... but they squeaked in because they caught fire in the last week of the season. And Connor Gillaspie -- former White Sox third baseman Connor Gillaspie -- light-hitting, inconsistent Connor Gillaspie, of all people, hit the three run homer to put the Mets away in the Wild Card game.

And I mentioned 1989 -- that year the Giants beat the Cubs in the NLCS (there was no NLDS then).

But I wish the Cubs no ill. Not even from the safety of an anonymous blog. I won't be rooting for them if they make it to the World Series---sorry, I'm an American League guy and I root for the American League team in the World Series unless it's Yankees---but I do not root for the Cubs to fail... maybe I root for the ground to open up under some of their fans and swallow them whole... but I've nothing against the kids actually playing the games. If they lose, therefore, it's not my fault!

But a word of advice: Don't bet anything too extravagant on the Cubs winning it all.

Curmudgeon takes a vacation -- Part I -- Curmudgeon's Bluff is Called

We don't take vacations often in the Curmudgeon family -- at least not Long Suffering Spouse and myself -- as this essay, from 2006, makes clear.

Here's a link to the story I wrote about that last vacation, nine years ago. The story has 'matured' in the retelling, over the years, as all good stories should, to the point where (the way I spin it now) there's a Shoot On Sight Order posted at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix in case I should ever return again during Spring Training -- how we left Arizona in March 2006, one jump ahead of an enraged committee of the Chamber of Commerce, all decked out in parkas, and carrying pitchforks and torches, bundles of feathers, and buckets of melted tar.

Well, it really did snow as far south as Scottsdale, when I was in Arizona for Middle Son's first Spring Training. That's not exaggerated in the least. And my wife and I and Youngest Son and Younger Daughter wore every stitch of clothing we'd brought with us, all the time, all at once, because it was so darn cold there in the so-called Valley of the Sun. (Meanwhile it was in the 70s and sunny in Chicago.) The hotel didn't have heat -- who needs to heat a hotel room in Phoenix? -- so the only place we could get warm was in the rented van.

We spent a lot of time in that van in 2006.

That part of the story's not exaggerated either.

In the nine intervening years, I believe my wife and I have been out of town overnight on only three other occasions -- once for Older Daughter's wedding (in Indianapolis) and another for Oldest Son's wedding (in San Antonio). We did get to tour a mission on the San Antonio trip and, of course, we remembered the Alamo -- it's right in the middle of town, so you can't forget it, even if you try -- but I don't know if that counts as a family "vacation." And the third trip, to South Bend, for Oldest Son's college graduation, was certainly not a vacation (I offer this as proof) -- and we'd spent the night before the commencement ceremony sleeping, at least occasionally, in a dorm room. Most of the parents did -- there weren't nearly enough hotel rooms, so this was planned in advance. It's just -- well, you've heard of getting a mint on your pillow at a nice hotel? The pillow on my dorm bed was as thick as a mint, and not nearly as soft. I was still recovering from surgery at the time, and was terrified that the only available bathroom was down the hall. Still, we survived.

And time passed.

This spring turns out to be Youngest Son's last Spring Training as a college baseball player. He's a senior already at South Janesville College (the name I made up instead of using the actual school's name) and this year, as in the past three years, Youngest Son's team would be journeying to Central Florida, midway between Tampa and Orlando, for a never-ending 'tournament.' Most tournaments, in my experience, have winners and losers and such. But this tournament is just a way to get as many teams from as many places as possible to play each other. My son's team played a lot of teams from Pennsylvania -- and one from Illinois. Go figure. So it's not really a 'tournament.' Still, it's an opportunity to play in reasonably warm weather, without having to first shovel the field (they do that often in Youngest Son's league), and it may be the actual last time this spring where the kids can play in nice weather.

Anyway, Youngest Son's team has gone down there during the school's Spring Break each year. The very secular South Janesville College does not concern itself with Easter in determining when Spring Break will come -- so it's not surprising that his trip has never coincided with my wife's Spring Break.

But, one night at home, somewhere around Valentine's Day, realizing this was the last time we could see the boy pitch in Florida, I said something to Long Suffering Spouse about how I wished she could get the week off anyway. And -- and this surprised me -- she said she'd ask.

And this surprised me more: The school said, sure, go ahead and go.

I must have been working from home the day all this happened. Perhaps I had a deposition somewhere out here and I didn't want to drive downtown. I have most everything I need to work at home anyway. I know I had gone to the store to buy a box of copy paper for my office -- I was going to be driving downtown at some point, obviously -- because I remember that I was in the parking lot of the store when my wife called and said (a) she needed something she'd forgot at home and (b) she had permission to go to Florida.

I went home and got it and brought whatever it was into the school and, who should I meet on my way to my wife's classroom but the retired teacher who'd already agreed -- just that morning, because everything happened just that quickly -- to substitute for my wife while we were away. "I'm so glad you're going," she told me, and I thanked her.

It wasn't long after that that it hit me: Everyone had called my bluff. We were really going to have to go to Florida, weren't we?

To Be Continued

Curmudgeon thinks about heading to Florida for Youngest Son's last Spring Training Trip

One thing security consultants tell us consistently is that we should never, ever announce on line any plans to be away from hearth and home -- or post vacation pictures on Facebook or Instagram while we are still on the trip -- or do anything else that might tip off would-be burglars that our homes are ripe for ransacking.

But this is an anonymous blog -- very anonymous -- so I don't think I'm taking much of a risk in saying that Long Suffering Spouse and I are seriously talking about taking a trip to Florida next month to watch Youngest Son's last Spring Training Trip ever.

Youngest Son is a senior in college this year and he pitches for South Janesville College (at least that's the name I've given his school here) and, well, there's not much chance of his name being called in the 2015 MLB Draft. It's not that he's a bad player -- he's a very good player, and scheduled to be the number two starter on his team -- but his fastball has never broken 90 mph. These days, for a right-handed pitcher to get drafted, he almost has to have a fastball that hits the mid-90's with some regularity. Even Hall of Famer Greg Maddux hit the mid-90's when he was in the low minors. (Of course, it wasn't until he cut the speed to below 90 -- and allowed the ball to move -- that he began his climb to Cooperstown.)

But -- much as I wish it could be otherwise -- I think Youngest Son is OK with the prospect of having to hang it up after this year. He'll graduate on time (I think) and then do his student teaching and then, hopefully, start a career teaching school and coaching baseball.

In early March, when many of his classmates are scattering to warmer climes for the bacchanalian revels of Spring Break, Youngest Son and his teammates will fly to the greater Orlando area, there to test their skills against other D-III schools on actual baseball diamonds, in weather that should be appropriate -- and surely better than the freezing conditions in which most of their regular season games will be played. Spring in Wisconsin! It's a dangerous time -- can't run the snowmobiles across the lakes as much -- but you can tell the weather's changing because the snow falls less frequently. In each of the last three years, the team-building activity for the South Janesville Team upon its return from Sunny Florida has involved shoveling mounds of snow off their home field.

I want to see the kid pitch. I want to watch a game without worrying about frostbite. I want to go to Florida.

Surprisingly -- even though it would mean having to take a week off from school -- Long Suffering Spouse seems to like the idea. She keeps asking impertinent questions, though, like "how are we going to pay for this?" I don't have any good answers to such questions.

So we're talking seriously about traveling to Florida in March. And I run the risk of leaving our house open to burglars by announcing it here.

Of course, I used to think that no self-respecting burglar would ever take anything from our house. Just one look inside and most burglars, I thought, would turn and leave, possibly dropping a dollar or two as a donation.

But the house is less chaotic since Younger Daughter and Olaf and Granddaughter #1 moved out. Our messes are more localized now: The area around my desk looks like the nest of a giant Pack Rat -- and the dining room table is buried beneath papers that Long Suffering Spouse needs for school. Burglars would still be unimpressed with the shopworn conditions of our living room furniture, and the threadbare carpet, but might venture beyond hoping to find something of value.

Good luck to them.

Of course, all of this could still fall through. I guess I won't believe it can happen until it happens. But that's the plan under discussion right now.

The sad, desperate world of Clash of Clans

I'd seen the ads in the subway for some time prior to the baseball playoffs this fall.

The gentleman at the left was featured prominently in most of them: Gaze into my mustache and despair! read the caption on the poster.

Seriously? I admit I had to look it up in order to get the words right, but I at least remembered that this slogan was meant to evoke a famous poem. It's Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, in case you're at all curious: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Then came the MLB playoffs and the commercials -- hundreds of them, thousands of them -- for this stupid game. I watched and I wondered: Who would be goofy enough to waste their time on nonsense like this?

At a family gathering I found out: My sons had all downloaded the game and were happily destroying each other's villages.

"Can't you peacefully coexist with your neighbors?" I asked. "Can't you grow and prosper by trade or diplomacy instead of warfare? Must everything end in violence?"

My kids regarded me with that pitying look reserved for hopeless cases. They hated the way I'd played the one computer game of theirs that I had attempted (a few different incarnations, over the years, of Sid Meier's Civilization) -- "your turns take 45 minutes," they'd complain, as I built railroads and cleared forests and negotiated trade routes. "No, Dad," they told me, "this is just kill or be killed."

It sounded awful... but the kids were clearly enjoying themselves. And I have this iPad at home and you can only play so much Sudoku or Solitaire and, well, one thing led to another. I downloaded Clash of Clans.

I liked building up my village. I liked clearing the obstacles and setting up my gold mines and building defensive walls. It's hard to build up quickly, because you have to carefully husband your resources. (Either that or spend real money to buy "gems" that can be used to spur production. Well, that wasn't going to happen in my case.)

Still, I started to feel a certain affinity for my villagers, all of whom, apparently, resemble the nice young lady at right who calls me "Chief."

At first, she offered helpful hints about what to build first and where to build.

But all too soon, her messages became darker: "While you were gone, our village was destroyed by MetalMan" -- and, sure enough, I could watch a "replay," starting with my villagers fleeing in terror to the village hall for protection while my cannons and archer towers spat death at my attackers, only to be overwhelmed by force and numbers. Then my mines were destroyed and the builder's huts and resource storage units and, finally, my poor village hall and all the poor creatures huddled within whom I had failed by not upgrading my walls from wood to stone.

But, somehow, all my villagers survived. "We must build up our defenses!" my villager told me, but with no seeming bitterness. If I were them, I'd get me a new Chief pronto, one who could keep the invaders at bay.

But my villagers are stuck with me.

And now I perceive the true horror of their plight. I upgraded the walls, I improved the cannons, I strengthened the archer towers, and still the invaders come as soon as I move onto something else (you know, like work?), and each invasion is more terrible than the last, the attackers always just a bit stronger than anything I'd prepared to repel them, overwhelming my defenses and destroying the town hall where the villagers tremble in fear.

And it never stops.

As soon as I come back, they are made whole again, ready to keep building as I direct even though they should be moving out in droves.

After the village is destroyed, there is a breathing space -- a shield is set up (no thanks to me) -- that keeps the villagers safe for 12 hours or even 16 depending on the extent of the carnage. My villagers are behind such a shield now. But I don't have enough gold to upgrade to level 4 walls -- and if and when I do, stronger armies will come to knock those walls down, too....

Am I taking this a little too seriously?

Time to reset the sidebar again -- baseball edition

Well, I've always been a recycling enthusiast. When you have a long running blog, why not collect and recycle some pieces that may be of interest to persons who have not been following me for since I started this blog in December 2005?

Chances are, the way people drift in and out of my blogging world, most of you who happen on this post will not have read most, if any, these baseball-themed posts, which are now added to the blog sidebar as well. Submitted for your approval:

• Yes, Virginia, the White Sox really did win the World Series last year (April 2006)
• Ring Day brings memories of other giveaway days (April 2006)
• Update on Ring Day -- Or -- A demon has been exorcised? (April 2006)
• Back from Spring Training with an insight for Dad (March 2008)
• Screwing up a kids' game... (June 2006)
• Grown-ups screwing up a kid’s game – again (August 2008)
• A coaching career ends (July 2006)
• Is it "love of the game" -- or are we just plain nuts? (April 2007)
• The Amish Umpire and the Raptors' parents (May 2007)
• A touchy-feely, Dr. Phil-type question.... about baseball (June 2007)
• Setting a bad example: Parents melting down at kids' sporting events (September 2007)
• You can’t get away with anything in our house (June 2008)
• Zombie child! (March 2009)
• The most unkindest cuts of all (March 2009)
• Youngest Son gets an opportunity; his parents get ulcers (May 2012)
• It's baseball season again in Chicago? (March 2010)
• Curmudgeon gets conspiracy-minded about 1918 Cubs World Series loss (April 2011)

A travel baseball parent defends his -- and his kids' -- experiences

Bee will be mad at me for doing a number of sports-themed posts in a row, but I was inspired this morning by Lenore Skenazy's post on Free Range Kids, Your Child is NOT Going to Play in the Pros. She provides an excerpt from a longer piece by an Indianapolis ER doctor, Louis M. Profeta, that appeared Monday on DGIWire.

If you just read the Free Range Kids post, you'd think that Dr. Profeta was hostile to all organized sports, especially travel teams. It's really not the case; Ms. Skenazy let her own biases come through in her editing. She has a distinct point of view and -- for any younger parents that might be happening by -- if you're not looking in on her occasionally, you should. She's a breath of fresh air and common sense in an increasingly fearful world.

On the issue of travel teams being generally bad (her apparent view, not necessarily Dr. Profeta's), however, I must respectfully dissent. Links in this introduction will take you to both Ms. Skenazy's post and Dr. Profeta's original article. What follows started as a comment I left on Skenazy's post this morning.

The good doctor is right on one thing: Injuries will probably prevent most kids, even talented ones, from ever being pro athletes. The people who make it to the pros have a special combination of talent, determination and durability that most kids don't.

Lenore, two of my three boys played travel baseball. We didn't know it existed before my oldest boy tried out for his high school team. He made the team, but he came home from tryouts insistent that his brother find a travel squad. My oldest son played baseball through high school. His younger brothers pitched in college (the youngest is still in school). They both played Division III ball. It was not the big time. My middle son didn't get any interest from the pros (though he was the ace of his staff, and a lefty, his back gave out in the course of his senior season and he was ready to retire). My youngest boy probably will never see a pro contract at any level either, but he wants to teach and coach. His experience will help him get a job in his chosen field. My middle son got a job from baseball, too -- as an accountant -- because one of the players on his college team had a father who worked for an accounting firm and got both my son and his into jobs there. My son would never have had this connection without sports.

Along the way we've seen one kid from our park league make the majors (well, sort of, he's a Cub) -- and that kid left the house league early for travel ball. My middle son played with a kid who got drafted by the Nationals but never made it out of A ball because of, you guessed it, injury. My son also struck out a kid (twice) in high school who's now the starting second baseman for the Cleveland Indians.

You know what? We didn't do it from fear; we did it because we liked baseball (still do) and because the kids wanted to do it.

I coached in the park league when my youngest was little (before we thought it was time to find a travel squad -- although there are some travel teams for toddlers out there). I was the worst coach in the history of what I call Bluejay Park. But six kids on my last team made their freshman teams at various area high schools, including my son -- and baseball is a cut sport. So they didn't burn out. They had enough fun to want to keep playing.

The park, or house, leagues are supposed to be recreational -- less competitive. But every parent thinks their kid is a surefire Hall of Famer when they start playing T-ball -- and then they get discouraged quickly when the kids don't know where to run, how to catch or how to hit. By the time the kids can actually play something resembling baseball, a lot of the parents aren't coming out any more. It's a shame, too, because those games can be a lot of fun to watch.

Of course, sometimes the joy of watching is tempered by the fact that some of those in attendance are entirely crazy, and some of the coaches are the worst. I remember one game when my oldest son was playing -- he still played in the park during summers during high school because he never got on a travel team -- and the coach from the Colt team from the next park over was threatening to kill the umpire and anyone who tried to stop him. I live in a part of Chicago where many of my neighbors are policemen. I watched a few of them checking their service weapons in case things got really ugly. Someone eventually walked the belligerent coach back to his car (the coach was an off-duty cop, too) talking to him about his pension and how this game wasn't worth risking it.

I never saw anything comparable at a travel game. Ever. The parents were generally nice, often knowledgeable (OK, Youngest Son played on a team where the parents were still learning), and I think most of the kids -- not just mine -- did it for fun. For the love of the game.

I think my kids are better for the experience; they deal with authority better, they are less afraid in social settings than I'll ever be. And I include my girls in this, too, at least to an extent -- even though neither played baseball for more than a few years.

A toddler, a cracker, a lawn chair and an unexpected encounter at a baseball game

OK, so last week you got Curmudgeon the outraged father, demanding that all schools of education be closed, railing not just against schools of education generally, but in particular railing against the poor, benighted education department at South Janesville College, the fake name I made up for the very real school that Youngest Son attends.

I got very little work done Thursday or Friday as I talked frequently to my son, wrote carefully worded letters to his coach and to the financial aid department, and generally tried to keep Long Suffering Spouse from going up there and raising holy heck with Youngest Son's professors.

We had to go up there on Saturday anyway.

Youngest Son was pitching.

Given the weather we've been having, Saturday wasn't entirely terrible: Crisp but sunny, easily 55 degrees. There was a breeze that wasn't quite a wind chill. In full sunlight it felt almost not-cold. Almost.

I wore my down coat, of course, over a wool sweater and a flannel shirt, with scarf and gloves and a hat with ear flaps. Long Suffering Spouse wore the lighter of her two winter coats (but we brought the heavier one just in case) with scarf and stocking hat. She brought blankets, too. And we always bring lawn chairs.

At South Janesville college there are a set of bleachers on the home side of the dugout; we've never sat there. We set up our chairs on the other side of the dugout, past the adjacent bullpen. If I actually sat in the chair, I'd not be able to see the players from the shoulders on up; there's a big found yellow guard that runs atop the chain-link fence. This prevents a clear view of the field, but it's great for leaning on, if you pace to the fence, and away from it, and back and forth as the game situation and pitch count dictates. The kid may be doing all the work out on the mound, but I'm fretting enough for both of us.

For you younger parents, or those who never had a kid in sports, trust me when I tell you, it was ever thus. I can go with you to a park of your own choosing, anywhere in the United States where a baseball game is being played, and I can spot the pitchers' parents. They're the ones who are writhing in pain or pacing fitfully or wringing their hands. As parents, we want our kid to do well -- but there's not one darned thing we can do to help when he's out on the mound. So we worry.

That's one reason why we don't sit in the bleachers with the other parents and girlfriends and other fans.

Another reason is that the stands are too close to the umpires.

Now -- again for you younger parents -- you will never help your kid by screaming at the umpire, even when his strike zone is consistently inconsistent.

And coaches will bench a kid sometimes just because the kid's parents get on the umpire's case. It can hurt the team to get the ump mad.

So I never, ever yell at the ump. But sometimes I can't help an involuntary sharp intake of air, or a sigh, or even a moan when a good pitch isn't called for a strike. Umpires have rabbit ears; they can hear stuff like that if you're too close to the plate. And they won't like it. So I like being down the line a bit.

If you could promise me that the kid would do well, maybe I could sit with the others. But if he struggled and if, heaven forbid, someone should get on him a bit, I might have difficulty in not responding. I would never yell at another kid on our team -- but if someone made a bonehead play or dropped an easy fly ball or uncorked a wild throw in the infield I might have that sharp intake of breath, or sigh, or moan -- all involuntarily -- and that kid's parents wouldn't like that either. And I don't blame them.

So that's why Long Suffering Spouse and I keep to ourselves at the games.

Actually, Youngest Son has had a very good spring. He came into Saturday's game with an ERA under 2.0 and a winning record. He's established himself as the number two starting pitcher on the staff. That's pretty good for a junior.

But Youngest Son also had a horrible week. His graduation plans were dashed, the education department pulled a surprise evaluation on him, and he's running a class of pledges at his fraternity and the initiation is almost upon him. The kid had to keep his cool with his professors and keep his outraged parents under control.

I was a little concerned about how he might fare. Could he shut out all these distractions and focus on his game?

He got into some trouble in the first, giving up three runs -- more in that inning than he'd given up all year so far. When he came out for the second I mentioned to Long Suffering Spouse that, if he didn't have a shutdown inning, he was going to have a tough afternoon. Long Suffering Spouse was talking by then with Youngest Son's girlfriend. She came over from the bleachers to say hello. That's pretty brave, don't you think?

If Youngest Son was in any way concerned about his girlfriend socializing with his parents he did not show it. He had his shutdown inning. He had righted the ship. He'd pushed the stress of the week outside the lines.

People wander around at these games. Parents, kids, students, neighborhood people. The women's softball game was going on the next field over and there'd been a lacrosse game over on the football field earlier. So I don't mean to say that Long Suffering Spouse and I were entirely alone. There was another man in a folding chair a little further down the left field line. He looked pretty young for a player's dad, but I think he was.

So, anyway, it was no surprise that, at some point, a toddler wandered over, clutching a cracker, now dropping it, now picking it up and sticking it right back in her mouth.

Her anxious father was close behind. He was a young man, bearded, perhaps the age of Older Daughter. My grandfather instincts kicked right in. As the little girl picked up the cracker I called over to the father, "It probably tastes better that way."

"It's an organic cracker," the father responded. "Now it's a little more so."

The little girl reminded Long Suffering Spouse and me of our own granddaughter -- she was a little thinner, perhaps, but nearly as a tall. She was a month or two older than our granddaughter and so had a couple of actual words down pat. "No," for example.

Somehow that's just about the first real word kids learn. Mama, perhaps Dada, and then "no!"

The toddler thought our lawn chairs were the most interesting things she'd ever seen. One was a table for her cracker first. Then she decided she'd like to sit in it. The father was apologetic, but we egged the kid on. Made a fuss. Cooed at her. Made faces. She was interested in our sunglasses; her father wasn't wearing any.

Both benches were lively during the game. When the other pitcher was having trouble finding the strike zone (even the umpire didn't know where it was for most of the afternoon, truth be told) our bench whooped and hollered. Their bench whooped and hollered right back when Youngest Son went back on the hill. "You see?" the father told his daughter. "Boys are crazy. Stay away from them."

Well, of course Long Suffering Spouse and I played along with that, too.

But I had to watch the game, too, and occasionally have those sharp intakes of breath, or sighs, or moans. The father asked which one of the boys was ours. The pitcher, I told him. "Oh," said the toddler's father, "he's one of my students." He stuck out his hand to introduce himself more formally.

Yes, you guessed it. This nice young man with the cute toddler was one of the education professors who turned down my son's petition to student teach in the fall.

I took his hand, of course, and tried not to blanch visibly. My wife and I had one of those moments of telepathic contact that sometimes occur with long-married couples: We somehow both resolved not to bring up our son's issues right then and there. I wanted to -- I wanted to haul off and belt the guy once I knew who he was -- but I just couldn't justify that after the amiable manner in which we'd been conversing to that point.

Our conversation continued, but we were wary now. He realized that my wife was grading papers (she's always grading papers) and asked if she also taught high school. "Elementary," my wife said, after just the briefest pause. She didn't want to say that she taught at a Catholic school in case this professor was anti-Catholic as so many at the very secular South Janesville College seem to be. And she didn't want to say junior high either, lest it trigger a discussion of the education department's sua sponte consideration -- and rejection -- of a proposal to let Youngest Son student teach in junior high next fall instead of high school.

Youngest Son looked over at us at some point and saw with whom we were speaking. "I almost lost it right there," he told us later. I promise, I told him, we did not talk business. This professor must still grade Youngest Son; Youngest Son was concerned that we might say something sufficient to goad the professor into dropping his grade. But we stayed mum. Honest.

In the end, it was the toddler that brought us together; it was the toddler who decided it was time to part. She had tired of the chair. She wanted new excitement elsewhere. Her father had no choice but to comply. We were relieved to see him go.

Seriously, though. What else could we have done? Should we have raised our issues? I could have tried to be polite -- I can be, at least for short spurts when it's really, really important. Or were we wise to not inject those issues into what had been a relaxed social encounter?

The good news is that South Janesville came back to win the game; Youngest Son went eight innings and got the win. But, for now at least, he still must expect to do his student teaching in his ninth college semester.

*Sigh*

How Warren Buffett proved that time travel will not exist for the foreseeable future

Mr. Buffett

Even those who don't follow sports will recall that Warren Buffett teamed with Quicken Loans to offer a billion dollars (that's billion with a "b") to anyone who could accurately predict the outcome of each and every game in this year's NCAA tournament.

Oh, sure, most people have office pools -- the winners in these may have two or three of the Final Four pegged accurately -- but Mr. Buffet's contest required entrants to correctly forecast the outcome of every game -- predict every single upset -- and identify all the winners. Mathematicians calculated odds of anywhere from 1 in a billion to something like 9.2 quintillion to 1 against -- and you had better believe all those smarty-pants mathematicians heaved a sigh of relief when the last perfect bracket was eliminated just days after the tournament began (Mercer's upset of Duke wiped out most entries).

But what does this have to do with time travel?

Think about it. Here's this immensely rich guy who made arrangements to have a billion dollars available (no, he wasn't really going to write a personal check -- you don't get to be the Oracle of Omaha by doing stupid stuff). Actually, Buffett was going to use one of his insurance companies to insure the billion and he probably had Quicken Loans, his co-sponsor, pay the premium, estimated by some at $15 million. You can probably guarantee Buffett made a profit on this deal. That's how you get to be an Oracle. Or Wizard. I hear tell he's been called both.

Anyway, Buffett's announcement makes huge news -- the Intertubes are ablaze with the billion dollar bet -- it's a PR stunt that will long be remembered... you know, well into the future?

And yet, not one of my great-great-great grandkids showed up with a cheat sheet for me to use as an entry.

In fact, nobody's did. Because if somebody's great-great-great grandson or daughter showed up with the perfect bracket, Buffett and his fellow investors would, at this point, be getting just a wee bit concerned about having to make good on the bet.

And you can imagine our little time traveler passing out investment advice after the billion is paid out, too, feathering his or her nest for a very comfortable future.

Now, this doesn't prove that time travel is impossible any more than travel into outer space proves there's no Heaven. Warren Buffett, for all his wealth and fame now, will presumably be largely forgotten in time -- it may take centuries before he is unfamiliar to historians specializing in 21st Century America, but it probably will will happen. Therefore, what this proves is that time travel will not be invented while this March Madness bet is still remembered. Time travel might be invented after Warren Buffett has faded from the footnotes of history so that no one knows what a golden opportunity the inventors of the time machine missed by not looking up their old ancestors.

Alternatively, I suppose, it could indicate that, in the future, our descendants won't care so much about money.

But that seems about as likely as correctly predicting the outcome of each and every NCAA tournament game.

On the increasingly controversial Washington "Redskins"

Seems like everyone these days has an opinion -- mostly hostile opinions -- about the name used by the Washington NFL franchise.  This recent editorial cartoon by Tom Stiglich illustrates a widely shared view:

Editorial cartoon by Tom Stiglich obtained from Creators.com.

The issue here is not whether some find the "Redskins" nickname offensive -- it is established beyond question that some do take offense.

Nor would I presume to argue that those complaining about the nickname should simply 'get over it.' There's no question that the term 'redskin' can be an intentionally offensive insult or slur.

But I will assert that, as used by the Washington NFL franchise, the term "Redskins" is absolutely not used as a racial slur. As I wrote last year, the name Redskins, like the names Indians, Chiefs, and Braves, were adopted by sports teams in honor of other teams or qualities they admired, or that they wished to emulate -- "and early in the 20th Century, most athletes (of any ancestry) wanted to emulate the skill and success of Jim Thorpe and the Carlise Indians."

In the early days of the 20th Century, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School played a major college schedule (and college football was then firmly at the apex of the football pyramid). Coached by Glenn "Pop" Warner (yes, there was a real Pop Warner), the Carlisle Indians dominated the college football world.

Now, you don't have to have a lot of skill at argument to prevail on a claim that the very premise of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was racist, at least by any standard we understand today. The original purpose of the school was to take Indian boys off their reservations, strip away all vestiges of their heritage, and thereby 'civilize' them. Boarding schools like the Carlisle Indian Industrial School were determined to assimilate their charges into American society. Carlisle's founder, Richard H. Pratt, described the philosophy of the boarding school program as, "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."

And Pratt was sympathetic to the Indians. He thought he was helping.

But teams didn't take up the banner of Indians, Braves or Chiefs or, yes, Redskins because they were in favor of the destruction of Native American culture. Nor did they take up the names to mock indigenous peoples. They took up the names because they wanted to be as successful as -- as good as -- the Carlisle Indians generally and Jim Thorpe in particular. (Thorpe excelled at baseball, too; it was the discovery that he'd picked up some money playing minor league baseball in the summers between school terms that led to his being stripped of the medals he earned at the 1912 Olympics.)

Stiglich's use of the Confederate battle flag in his cartoon is thought-provoking. There is a wing-nut school of historical revisionists that claim that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. From this, the wing-nut revisionists argue that the Confederate battle flag and similar symbols are not emblems of racial oppression, but of states' rights.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. The Civil War was absolutely about slavery -- even though it is also true that most Confederate soldiers were not slaveowners. Some Union soldiers were slaveholders. We like to think of big plantation owners as the only supporters of chattel slavery. That would be so much more convenient than the actual truth: Poor whites in the North and South alike feared economic competition from freed African-Americans and many -- most? -- were implacably opposed to abolition. Their descendants became casual, and sometimes virulent or violent, racists. As Reconstruction ended, as Jim Crow laws were being put in place, the view grew up that many Confederate soldiers had been chivalrous Cavaliers, possessed of honorable qualities well worth emulating. Many sports teams in the South adopted nicknames like "Rebels" as a result. The Confederate battle flag was a common sideline symbol at sports events for decades. This wasn't necessarily a deliberate slap at African-American sensibilities; it is probably more correct to say that, in the racist culture of the time, the effect of the use of these symbols on African-American sensibilities was never given a moment's thought.

But the meaning of symbols can evolve. By the 1960s the symbols of the old Confederacy became increasingly and indelibly identified with the worst, most-violent, die-hard racists. And while historians can still point to the careers of gallant, chivalrous Cavaliers who mistakenly fought for The Lost Cause, we have matured as a society to the point where the hurtful, hateful aspects of the Confederate battle flag overwhelm any virtues that this symbol might once have represented for sportsmen.

How does this apply to the current Redskins controversy? I'd agree that the feelings of indigenous peoples were not taken into account by those adopting the Redskins name. But the Redskins name and logo is, at bottom, an homage to Native Americans, not a deliberate slur. There is no feat of sophistry that can be conjured to transmute the Confederate battle flag into an homage to African-Americans.

Thus, the analogy suggested by Mr. Stiglich's cartoon does not hold.

The Redskins name is not deliberately insulting or an intentional racial slur. The PC Police are wrong to say otherwise. Still, while the "Redskins" name is just another homage traceable ultimately to Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indians, it is the least sensitive of all. Granted, in 70 years, the Redskins name has become a "brand name" and there are many positive things associated with that brand. Nevertheless, if I were advising the team, I wouldn't counsel Daniel Snyder to dig in his heels and refuse to consider changing the name of his franchise. But let's do so for the right reasons, OK?

I sure wish I liked hockey

The Chicago Blackhawks will host the Boston Bruins tonight in the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Maybe that isn't big news where you are. In Chicago, however, the Blackhawks are dominating the sports pages, the news pages, the features pages (did you know that, tonight, Bob Gertenrich of Skokie will attend his 2152nd straight Blackhawks game in person? did you know he started this streak in 1966 at the old Chicago Stadium when he was 19?), and even the business pages. Blackhawks flags festoon the County Building this morning and I saw men, women and children wearing Indian head sweaters or hats (or both) as I was coming into work.

The whole town seems bursting with hockey-infused civic pride.

But I don't like hockey.

It's not that I haven't tried. When I was a kid I'd listen to Lloyd Pettit call the Hawks games on the radio but I couldn't make any sense of it. I learned just enough to appreciate that Bruce Wolf did a pretty fair imitation of Lloyd Pettit back in the day. In college I went to some games (my school had a club team). I thought I might understand it better if I saw it in person. But it didn't take.

I know people who like hockey. One of my many ex-partners (whose son was a gifted hockey player) once told me that the only thing worse than having a kid who likes hockey is having a kid who's good at it. I told my cousin that when his two sons began to seriously take up the sport.

Little kids will have practices at 4:00am because that may be the only time that the ice is available. As a baseball parent, I schlepped my sons from the far north suburbs to the far south suburbs and groused about it. Hockey parents not only get up in the middle of the night for practice, they take their kids to Minnesota, Michigan, and even into Ontario -- and they like it.

But I just can't get into it.

This time around, I've taken to reading about hockey. Youngest Son has a subscription to Sports Illustrated and I've read a lot of hockey articles in the past few months as playoff fever began to build in Chicago. I noted with interest a recent column by Steve Rushin, who said that the famous Indian head logo that the Blackhawks use was designed in the 1920s by Irene Castle, then the wife of Frederic McLaughlin, the first team owner. McLaughlin named his new club for the 86th Infantry "Blackhawk" Division, the outfit in which he'd served during World War I. Rushin wrote that Irene Castle "introduced Americans to the bob haircut and the foxtrot" before designing the Indian head.

Ah, yes, I said to myself, Irene Castle. I remember now: The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, the last movie that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made together, and the only one filmed in color. I watched that -- once. Not a lot of laughs in the story of the two most famous ballroom dancers at the start of the 20th Century, not when British-born Vernon goes off to join the Royal Flying Corps and gets killed in a training accident.

Did you notice? I just can't stay focused on hockey.

Hockey strikes me as soccer on ice, only with sticks. I remember that Knute Rockne didn't much care for hockey; he didn't want the sport adopted at Notre Dame because he couldn't endorse any game where Irishmen were armed with clubs.

I'm happy for all the hockey fans, old and new. I feel like I'm missing out on something, but I just can't get into it. I wish I could.

Payton Prep forfeits baseball game after parents refuse to let kids drive to Roseland on a Saturday night

Bee, I know you're going to think this is about sports, but it's not really. Nor is this really about race, but that's the way it's being reported here.

Walter Payton College Prep and Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep are two of the best, most prestigious high schools in Illinois. That's not my opinion; that's the verdict of the current U.S. News & World Report rankings. Payton checks in at #2, Brooks at #13. These are both Chicago Public Schools (indeed, seven of the top 20 in the state are CPS schools -- most of them, Payton and Brooks included, highly selective "magnet" schools).

Payton is located not far from the Loop, at 1034 N. Wells, in an area the Realtors call the Near North neighborhood, close to both the Gold Coast and River North neighborhoods. Brooks, on the other hand, is located at 250 E. 111th Street, about two miles east of I-57, in the Roseland neighborhood.

Roseland is increasingly in the news these days, and not in a good way. It is wracked by gang violence, shootings, drugs, and all manner of crime. You can get mugged near Payton on a Saturday night, too. Cabrini Green used to be just a couple of blocks away -- but that neighborhood is, objectively, far safer these days than Roseland.

The Brooks baseball team plays on its own field, on the school grounds. According to one account I saw, the field is literally locked away from its surrounding environs. Ninth Ward Ald. Anthony Beale, who happens to be an assistant coach on the Brooks team, says that Brooks has the nicest high school field in the City. Even if he is a Chicago alderman, on this point at least, I take him at his word. It looked pretty sweet on TV.

The story broke this way: Sunday morning it was reported that Payton forfeited its scheduled night game at Brooks because 'team parents' refused to let their kids venture into the Roseland neighborhood. The Payton coach was embarrassed. The Brooks coach was embarrassed -- and angry. Furious backtracking has been underway since.

We will probably never know exactly what happened. It seems, however, that a bus was supposed to take the team to and from the game -- which may or may not have been hastily arranged. It's been an awful spring around here, folks. Coaches can't reschedule all the rain-outs and freeze-outs and they are grasping at any opportunities they can to get their kids some playing time. It's quite possible that last-second bus arrangements might have fallen through.

Unless you've had kids who've played high school baseball you may not know what that means.

Let me tell you: Some parents would have been able to take their own kids and maybe a couple of others. But, on a Saturday night, in families with more than one kid, there may have been -- would likely have been -- conflicts. Who knows? Maybe some of the moms and dads had plans of their own. So that means that kids would be expected to get themselves there. To carpool. To drive to an unfamiliar, and dangerous, neighborhood, where kids can, and do, get killed because they looked like someone else. Or maybe just because they looked like they didn't belong.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell, an African-American, wasn't happy about the situation, but, she wrote, "Given the steady stream of shootings and killings occurring on the South Side, I really can’t blame any parent for having concerns about a night game." She added:

I’m not proud to admit it, but I don’t travel certain streets at night when I have my grandson in the car.

Crime can happen anywhere. But by now, I have a good idea where I run the greatest risk.

Obviously, this is not something parents should have to worry about, but they do — especially when they are not familiar with the area.

Unfortunately, because of the increase in homicides that we experienced last year on the South Side, the entire area must seem like one big shooting gallery.

Mitchell writes that there were 13 shootings in Chicago this weekend, one resulting in a fatality, and most on the South and West Sides. "Although none of the shootings occurred in Roseland," she writes, "the entire South Side has been stigmatized by the gun violence."

I agree with Ms. Mitchell about the stigma that attaches to the entire South Side -- but the fact that none of this weekend's shootings were in Roseland is no more than a happy coincidence.

But at least Ms. Mitchell is trying not to see this controversy in terms of black and white. Simply calling this a black and white issue is overly simplistic, of course, and (although perhaps not just because it is the simplest) it is the the one adopted by the media generally: Brooks is in an African-American community, therefore Payton parents must be bigots for refusing to let their kids go play. A picture of the Payton team, gathered around their coach during a game Monday at Taft (in a largely white neighborhood on the Northwest Side), on page 10 of this morning's Sun-Times, subtly reinforces this view. The kids sure look white, at least from a distance. I'll bet some of them are.

But there is no such thing as a lily-white Chicago Public High School, and certainly not a magnet school. Every race and nationality is represented at Payton. If Brooks is predominantly African-American, it is a function of its location in such an overwhelmingly African-American area -- but I'd bet there are white kids there from Mt. Greenwood and Beverly, too. That makes it a little harder to just cry bigotry.

Image from this morning's Chicago Sun-Times

I'll also bet that, even if there aren't a lot of African-American kids on the Payton squad, there probably are a lot of Hispanic players. A lot of high school baseball teams in this area are heavily, if not predominantly, Hispanic. And appearances can be deceiving: My kids are half Cuban. Middle Son's high school catcher, a 6'4" behemoth who looks more like a Viking than anything else, is half Dominican. The picture that accompanies the on-line version of the page 10 story I just referenced shows Mayor Emanuel making nice with the Brooks players. Some of the kids are surely African-American, but -- again -- I'd bet money that the Brooks squad is heavily Hispanic, too.

Moreover, although I'm sure Payton students are drawn from all over Chicago, I'd guess that the majority may be native to the North Side. It is a fact of Chicago life that North Siders are cheerfully ignorant of anything south of Roosevelt -- Soldier Field and McCormick Place occasionally excepted -- just as many South Siders, white and black alike, are ignorant of anything north of Oak Street (North Avenue, perhaps, for the adventurous). I am a rarity among my fellow Chicagoans. I was born on the South Side and I've lived on the North and Northwest Sides. There aren't that many of us. So it's neither surprising nor conclusive evidence of racism if Payton parents plead unfamiliarity with the far South Side.

Sixty-six years after Jackie Robinson, white Payton parents weren't refusing to let their kids play against African-Americans. Parents, white and Hispanic alike, weren't comfortable allowing their kids to go to an unfamiliar, dangerous neighborhood on a Saturday night. Especially when they'd have to drive themselves. Is that really racism? Or is it prudence?

(Those who think that having a bus available would have solved everything need to consult the very politically incorrect police blog, Second City Cop. In SCC's coverage of this story, in NEWSFLASH! South Side Isn't Safe and in today's post, More Payton vs. Brooks Controversy, it is noted that school buses are sometimes targeted by gangbangers with guns.)

However, as the linked Sun-Times story notes, the game will finally be played this Saturday night, weather permitting. We can assume that the 5th and 22nd Police Districts will be employing surge tactics along 111th Street: Mayor Emanuel will insist that there be no incidents. The kids will be happy to play, as kids are. It'll take some time, though, for the alleged grown-ups to work through all this.

Before we condemn -- or laugh at -- Manti Te'o

Image obtained from Yahoo! Sports.

Look, I don't know any more than you do whether star Notre Dame linebacker was in on this whole 'fake girlfriend' thing or not.

If he was, he's got some serious problems -- and needs some serious help.

If he was the victim of a cruel hoax, as Notre Dame is saying so far, people are going to think him a fool, an idiot, a naif at best: You never actually saw this girl, this love of your life, in person? You never Skyped, you never Facetimed?

But before you hurl stones, ladies and gentlemen, where are you right now?

We live so much of our lives on line these days, sometimes the people we meet here are darn near as real to us as the living, breathing people we interact with in person. If we actually do interact with anyone in real life, that is.

In an essay last April about the difficulties of telling truth from fiction on line, I cited to the terribly sad case of Paula Bonhomme, a woman duped into spending over $10,000 on gifts for a 'man' named 'Jesse James' that she 'met' through an acquaintance in an Internet chatroom dedicated to fans of the HBO series Deadwood. Actually, the acquaintance didn't make an introduction, she made up Jesse -- and an extended family, too. Eventually, the victim 'met' most of Jesse's 'family'; she thought she and 'Jesse' were in love, and she made plans to fly from her California home to meet Jesse in Colorado and move in with him. 'He' canceled at the last minute, though, sending the poor woman into depression and therapy and eventually, according to her pleadings, an infection caused by the depression-related suppression of her auto-immune system. Then she was told that Jesse had 'died' -- of liver cancer (not leukemia as in Te'o's case). Even after Jesse's 'death,' the poor woman kept up a relationship with the mutual 'friend' who had supposedly made the introduction, the defendant in this case, meeting her in Colorado and traveling to New Mexico to visit some of Jesse's favorite places. When the defendant came to visit her in California, the victim spent over $1,000 prepping the house for the visit.

When the deception was finally revealed, plaintiff sued -- but the Illinois courts held she had failed to state a claim and threw her case out of court. See, Bonhomme v. St. James, 407 Ill. App. 3d 1080, 945 N.E.2d 1181 (2nd Dist. 2011), Appellate Court affirmed in part and reversed in part by the Illinois Supreme Court, 2012 IL 112393. (For any lawyers out there, the Supreme Court held that plaintiff had waived any other claims she might have been able to make, placing all of her hopes in a claim for the tort of fraudulent misrepresentation, but that tort did not lie because the parties did not have a business relationship.)

Why did the defendant in the Bonhomme case do these terrible things? For fun, perhaps, and for the gifts -- for the money.

Why would someone ensnare Manti Te'o in this horrible web of deceit? Well, supposedly, Te'o finally realized something was amiss when his 'dead girlfriend' called early in December... as Notre Dame was preparing for the BCS National Championship Game. Maybe gambling interests were aware of the hoax from the outset, or maybe some smart guy sniffed it out and decided to 'reveal' the situation to Te'o at a time when it would mess him, and the team, up most. Notre Dame generally -- and Te'o in particular -- played as if they were seriously distracted by something.

I'd like to think that Te'o will be exonerated from complicity in the hoax, even if he ends up being perceived as hopelessly gullible from all this. Of course, I also wanted to believe that Tiger Woods wouldn't cheat on his gorgeous wife.

But, as we rely increasingly on our screens to get us through our days, to manage our appointments, to do our networking, to manage even our 'friendships,' I can't help but wonder if all of us won't become increasingly vulnerable to scams like this. If all the "Nigerian generals' widows" would just take a course or two in grammar and basic writing skills, how many more of us would get sucked in?

No. I may feel sorry for Te'o and I may wind up angry at him. But I won't laugh. There's nothing funny in this story.

Why Curmudgeon is rooting for Notre Dame tonight

Everybody in the country (except, perhaps, Bee, who doesn't follow sports, even at a distance) knows that the BCS National Championship Game will be played tonight in Miami. It's not the only college football championship game, of course; champions have already been crowned in NCAA Divisions II, III, and FCS. And the NAIA has crowned its football champion, too. (I put in all the links just in case Bee wants to make sure I've giving her the straight dope.)

But tonight's game is really, truly, absolutely the end of the college football season.

Except for the various all-star games (which are really pro tryouts), but let's not be hyper-technical here.

In the Curmudgeon household, we have a number of reasons to cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame tonight. To wit:

When I was a boy, on the South Side of Chicago, and enrolled in the parish school, the good sisters spoke of only one college in the entire country -- Notre Dame. There may have been some other schools Out East somewhere, Harvard or Yale or something like that, but Notre Dame was the school to which we should aspire.

We watched Notre Dame football games (*ahem*) religiously when I was a boy.

My father used to say it was important that a big town like Chicago have two pro football teams (the Bears being the other one). He could be cynical at times, yes.

I had my period of rebellion, too.

My rebellious period may have begun one fall afternoon in the early 1970s as I was raking leaves at my parents' home in Boondockia. I was in high school then, listening to the Notre Dame game that day on the radio as I worked. The Domers were strafing the Air Force Academy that day, and they won by something like 45 points.

Because I was working, I didn't go and turn off the radio immediately when the post-game show came on and the drooling idiots began calling in. Coach Devine (Notre Dame's coach at the time... he's the head coach in Rudy, too) was an idiot, the callers said, a bum. A good coach would have beat Air Force by 75 points, or maybe 100.

It was a shocking glimpse into the twisted psyche of Notre Dame fandom... not all of whom attended school under the Golden Dome. In fact, as I only eventually came to realize, the Subway Alumni (those who never went anywhere near the school) may be the most obnoxious... or at least the least polished of the fan base. And probably the most numerous.

During my rebellious period, I laughed at all the old jokes:

How many Domers does it take to change a light bulb?

Twelve. Only one actually changes the bulb, but the rest are there to tell you how the new bulb will never be as good as the one that burned out.

Or this one:

How do you find the Domers in a crowded room?

Don't worry. They'll find you.

Many years passed and Oldest Son got accepted there. I began to soften. Somewhere the nuns smiled.

As the parent of a Domer, I had the opportunity to go to two football games a year. I'd never gone to a college football game before (my college had no football team) and the fact that I had to sit up where the echos get shaken down from the sky was really of no consequence to me. I was thrilled with the pageantry and ritual of a Football Saturday in South Bend.

Some of my hardness remained. I've sometimes referred to the place here as the cow college in South Bend.

But a corner had been turned. My attitude toward the place really softened when Oldest Son found a nice wife and a good job, both thanks to Notre Dame. Yes, it resembles a cult in many ways, but they do seem to take care of each other.

When Oldest Son was a student, parents weren't allowed a crack at football tickets for Michigan or USC, but we were allowed in for Army, Navy or BYU.

One year I took my cousin to the Navy game. He'd been a Captain in the Navy, so that seemed appropriate. I had to give away my tickets to the BYU game, though: I didn't know any Mormons.

No, actually, the reason I had to give away my tickets was that one of my kids was scheduled to be confirmed on that particular Saturday and Long Suffering Spouse insisted. "The Bishop would understand," I protested, "I've got Notre Dame tickets." But Long Suffering Spouse would not relent.

At the Army game a year or two later, I got all misty-eyed during the National Anthem. Everyone was standing, of course, but down on the Army sidelines, I couldn't help but notice that the perky little Army cheerleaders, in their perky little cheerleading outfits, were saluting. Saluting, ramrod straight, as is appropriate for future officers in the Army of the United States -- for young people who might be off the football sidelines and on the front lines in Iraq or Afghanistan in a year's time.

I used to like heading to Mass at the Basilica on campus following the game. I got my Sunday obligation out of the way and allowed traffic to clear. And when I couldn't get into the Basilica, it seemed that most of the dorms offered Mass after the game as well. My son's did. I had to stop off there a couple of times instead.

Oldest Son loved to play football (I wrote about how Long Suffering Spouse and I reluctantly let him start playing in grammar school). He wasn't going to play for the varsity in South Bend. Given his love of the sport, I remember trying to get him to consider playing small college ball -- but I think that ended for him the day his high school coach brought a couple of kids from Aurora University (a Division III school out in the far western suburbs of Chicago) to practice.

"They were huge!" Oldest Son told me at the time. "Their necks were enormous! And these were just DBs!"

(Defensive backs, Bee, are among the more normal-sized players.)

I may have told him about the kid who was a couple of years ahead of me in high school in Boondockia. He eventually went on to play in the NFL; he has a Super Bowl ring. Obviously, I didn't see much of the guy after he went to the pros, but I did see him once or twice at parties or something. He was a DB too -- and his neck was enormous -- but it had been a pretty much standard-issue neck back when he was in high school.

If I told him that story, though, it did no good. Oldest Son seems to have abandoned plans to play college football from that day.

But at Notre Dame they play football as an intramural sport -- each men's dorm has a team -- and, it being Notre Dame, they play with full pads and equipment on regulation size fields with referees and everything.

Oldest Son was impressed with the skills of his fellow teammates. "Dad," he told me in one phone call freshman year, "I'm playing on a team with guys who were all state in high school. OK, they were small states, but still...." (Guys who were all state in Florida or Texas tended to play on the varsity.)

I was therefore prepared to accept that the quality of the dorm football would be pretty good even before I went there for the first time and had to ask someone to direct me to the proper field. "Some years," the lady told me, after pointing me in the right direction, "the dorm games are better than the varsity ones."

Actually, during some years of Oldest Son's tenure, that may have been true. The Domers had trouble navigating past Navy. I don't remember whether Oldest Son was already gone when Navy finally sank Notre Dame. They did it a few times before this year.

But, this year, the Irish are back and I'm rooting for them openly. I made some comment on Facebook and a college friend snapped back, "Who are you and what have you done with the real Curmudgeon?"

Still, I don't know if anyone can beat Alabama Coach Nick Saban in a championship game. And all the experts, even most of the local ones, are predicting the Tide will roll over the Irish. But I'll be glued to the screen tonight, hoping for the best.

Even in Taiwan, they hate Jeffrey Loria

NMA.TV has jumped all over Jeffry Loria for dumping most of the big paychecks on his team on the Toronto Blue Jays, including long-time White Sox favorite Mark Buehrle. Yes, these high-paid free agents underperformed in Miami; so did their manager, Ozzie Guillen. I blame Loria (OK, I blame Ozzie a little, too, for cozying up to this doofus -- Ozzie should have known better). Anyway, I'll bet Toronto gets more out of all of them than ever Loria did. And Ozzie will land on his feet, too. (Although he won't ever become a Shakespearean actor.)

NMA.TV is a product of Next Media Animation, a Taiwanese subsidiary (says Wikipedia) of Next Media, a Hong Kong media conglomerate. Their Sims-like animations of events in the news are often quite funny.

Bears vs. Packers on a September Thursday?

Bee, I don't think this is necessarily a "sports post," although I'm going to talk about sporting events.

You -- and anyone else -- can agree or disagree in the comments.

The Chicago Bears have gone up to Wisconsin, there to play their dreaded foe, the Green Bay Packers.

On a Thursday night.

In September.

Football on a Thursday is fine, if the Thursday in question is Thanksgiving. That's tradition. Without the Detroit and Dallas games, when would we know when to serve the turkey?

Chris Sale is pitching against the Tigers
tonight in a game that may be decisive
in the AL Central race.

Football involving teams not from Chicago may even be alright on other Thursdays -- just not tonight, not when Chris Sale is going to duel Justin Verlander on the South Side in a game that may well determine whether the Detroit Tigers or my beloved Chicago White Sox will win this year's AL Central race.

The Tigers and the Sox are both staggering at this point of the season, like punch-drunk fighters. The Sox bullpen, so dominant for so long, is suddenly showing its youth and inexperience. Just when Sox fans began to long to see Adam Dunn at the plate, he can't pick up a bat (he's got a strained oblique, Bee; I tell you so you don't feel you have to look that up yourself). Even Paul Konerko is scuffling. The surest way to keep the Sox off the board is to load the bases with Pale Hose. Then they get themselves out for you.

But one of these teams will play through the pain and seize control of the Central. The Sox can bring their division lead back to two full games tonight; the Tigers can leave town tied for first, with all the momentum in their favor.

With this going on, why the heck do we have a Bears-Packers game scheduled for tonight?

In Chicago, Fall weekends are divided in two (yeah, says the wise guy, Saturday and Sunday, just like every weekend -- but the wise guy is wrong).

In the Fall, and into the Winter, Chicago weekends are divided between Bears Pre-Game and Bears Post-Game. The game itself is the fulcrum, the pivot point.

Now, of course, sometimes the game isn't until mid-afternoon on Sundays, when the Bears go to the West Coast or when the Bears are good enough to rate a national game on one of the networks. So the post-game period seems short. But anticipation should be longer than reflection or cool-down or whatever you want to call the aftermath. With anticipation, all things are possible: Jay Cutler might throw for 500 yards. Julius Peppers and Shea McClellin might get three sacks apiece. Devin Hester might score on a punt return, a kickoff return, and on a pass reception. Let irrational exuberance reign supreme!

But after... well, after, if the Bears lose, a gloom settles in on the City. Carl Sandburg said the fog creeps in on little cat feet, but a Bears loss falls on the City like a painter's heavy canvass drop cloth. Everyone walks with a little less spring in their step, a little more hunched over. The refs were terrible, the O-line couldn't protect Cutler... whatever the reason, it doesn't matter. Husbands and wives exchange sharper words than they should. Kids can't focus on their homework. Dogs instinctively look for slippers on which to chew.

Even if the Bears win, the rest of the weekend is anticlimax. Denouement. Roll credits. Iron shirts, shine shoes, fold socks, make tomorrow's lunch. The Sunday night "news" is mostly highlights from the game, including critiques of what should have been done better. It can get tedious. But at least a win makes that anticipation of next week's game just that much more delicious.

A Bears game on a Thursday just screws up this natural rhythm of Chicago life. We haven't had time to really anticipate the Packers yet -- did I mention the Tigers are in town and the Sox are playing for their post-season lives? -- and the Bears game will all be over all too soon.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday -- all anticlimax in Chicago.

Roger Goodell, what were you thinking?

Curmudgeon confesses: I was rooting for Spain

Although I'd said I wouldn't, I did relent and voluntarily watched the second half of yesterday's Gold Medal basketball game.

Doug Collins was doing the color commentary on yesterday's NBC broadcast -- an interesting choice. He was a collegian (at Illinois State) back in 1972, in the days when our amateurs played the world's professionals in Olympic medal games.

Back then it didn't seem at all mean-spirited to root for the good old USA. It was, after all, our boys against the world's men. Yet American Davids were still favored over foreign Goliaths; in basketball, America never lost.

Photo of the short-lived American celebration
obtained from the Guardian website

The Soviets were out to change the script in 1972. They seemed to have the game in hand before the Americans mounted a furious late charge. Then Collins sunk what seemed to be the winning free throws in America's come-from-behind victory. This Mental Floss article (by Scott Allen) picks up the narrative:

International rules prohibited a team from calling a timeout after a free throw, so the Soviets inbounded the ball. The Soviet coach and bench ran onto the court to demand a timeout and Bulgarian referee Artenik Arabadjan stopped the clock with one second remaining. Arabadjan denied the Soviets a timeout, but allowed them to re-inbound the ball. After the Soviets’ ensuing pass was deflected and the buzzer sounded, the Americans began to celebrate.

But the celebration was short-lived. The Russians (aided and abetted by a British basketball official, Dr. William Jones, the secretary of FIBA, the international governing body of the sport) got three more seconds put back on the clock. Jones had a title, but no authority to change the rules of the sport on the spur of the moment; nevertheless, the Bulgarian referee complied.

Surprised?

Even then, the Russians flubbed this second attempt to give them victory despite their defeat. From the above-linked Guardian article:

Play resumed, the buzzer sounded as a Soviet long pass went awol, and again the Americans jumped and whooped and hollered.

They believed they had won their seventh straight Olympic title. But as the clock was in the process of being reset when play resumed, the floor had to be cleared again and the three seconds reinstated. The Americans, frustrated at the farce, considered pulling out. People say, 'Why didn't you leave?'" says Collins. "We were told that if left we would forfeit so we were pushed out on the court."

Finally the game got under way again. But the Americans, their emotions meleed by everything that had gone on and fearful of conceding a technical foul, had no pressure on Ivan Edeshko on the inbound line. His Hail Mary pass was caught by Alexander Belov, who brushed off Jim Forbes and Joyce and sunk a lay-up before running back to his teammates, arms aloft like a track athlete who has just crossed the finishing line....

An appeal was denied, 3-2, on an obvious political basis, with Cuba, Poland and the Soviet Union deciding the clearly irregular was regular enough, as long as the Americans lost.

Times change. International basketball has gotten much more competitive and besides, nowadays, professionals can represent their countries in the games.

American pro basketball was represented in London this year by players on the teams of several nations: Our home-grown millionaires playing against our imports.

In the Gold Medal game, five of the 12 players on the Spanish squad were NBA players, including brothers Pau and Marc Gasol.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am not a member of the 'hate America' crowd. I am an old-fashioned, sometimes starry-eyed (stripes and starry-eyed?) patriot.

But I couldn't help myself. The American 'dream team' led by LeBron James and Kobe Bryant were such overwhelming favorites. Like a lot of Americans, I sympathize with the little guy ('little' here being used in an entirely figurative sense given that the brothers Gasol are both 7-footers).

I rooted for Spain. I was sorry they lost.

Curmudgeon can't get too worked up about the Olympics

Sorry, NBC. It's the television coverage I can't stand.

Every footrace, every lap around the pool, every tumble on the mat is so freighted down with treacly "up close and personal" profiles of this athlete I've never heard of or that athlete I've never heard of, that by the time they actually show a race or a routine I'm generally in a diabetic coma.

I even understand why the networks lather on all this schmaltz (ABC used to do it, too; I remember): Track meets take forever. There's a lot of waiting around while the next race gets set up. Then there's a minute of action, or six minutes or whatever, during the actual race... and we all start waiting around again.

Fact is, in some events, we'd be bored before the track clears. People can be interested in who finishes first and second -- but no one really cares about the guy who comes in last. And they still have to wait until he's done before they can even start lining up for the next event.

And if they just taped the actual events and ran them one after another, what would they do in the second hour of coverage?

My less-than-enthusiastic attitude is really not sour grapes.

I don't think I was ever more than lukewarm about the idea of the Olympics coming to Chicago in 2016 (as I said in the linked October 2009 post, on the day the next Olympics were awarded to Rio instead of Chicago).

Even if the games had been awarded to Chicago, I'd still not be interested in the events. The IOC cut baseball as a sport. That's too bad; I'd probably have watched baseball games. But I'm really not interested in track and field. I can't swim. I feel like a dirty old man watching the women's gymnastics. And basketball? I don't much care for the NBA and I'd probably root against the multimillionaires on the American team.

But if Chicago had been awarded the games for 2016 I would be more interested in the logistics of the London Olympiad.



At left is the first logo we had here when Daley II decided to try for the 2016 Olympic Games.  It was a pretty neat logo -- the flame the torch resembled -- maybe evoked is a better term -- our distinctive skyline.

But, it turns out, using a torch-shaped logo was a bad idea.

The IOC thought that was a trademark violation or something.

So we were obliged to come up with a different logo, like the one below and to the right.

The six-pointed star is shaped like one of the four stars in the Chicago flag.  The Olympics, had they come to Chicago, would have been accorded a fifth star.

And the gravy train would have been running full-tilt throttle.  Imagine the boodle bags that would have been filled, the shady deals that would have been consummated.  To a life-long Chicago, the real sport would have been to watch the well-connected racing to find new ways to profit from the games.


The U.S. Attorney's office here would have had to add on a third shift just to keep up with all the indictments.

But that's not logistics.  I'd be interested in where would all the visitors be housed?  The City of Chicago had a plan for the Olympic Village.  But even our abundant stock of hotel rooms would be insufficient to house the athletes' friends and families, the world press, the fans, and all the other hangers-on that the Olympics might have attracted.

Could we have hoped to get to and from work with the Olympics in town?  Would there be any business to be done, other than restaurants and retail?  What additional security arrangements would have to be made?  (Some of the Olympic venues were planned for areas that are -- today -- shooting galleries for gangbangers.)

If Chicago had been awarded the Olympics, I might be watching the London games, trying to see if I could pick up clues or hints or tips for surviving the onslaught four years' hence.  But I still wouldn't be interested in the events.

But, for better or for worse, the next Olympics will be Rio's problem, not Chicago's.  So I've no incentive to watch these Olympics at all.  But I hope things go well for London residents.

Will you be watching the Olympics?  Why?