Editorial Page Wears Cubbie Blue Too

The Tribune's Editorial Bored has admitted that "The future of our parent company—conceivably, the future of our jobs—rests to some unknowable extent on the successful sale of the Cubs and Wrigley Field, and the resulting reduction of corporate debt. " And perhaps that explains why the Editorial Bored seems to go out of its way to mention the Cubs whenever possible, regardless of the actual topic of the editorial. Here's one:

The perfect Father's Day gift

June 13, 2008

You wait until the last minute, hoping for inspiration. You seek clues. You ransack your brain for fresh ideas. You get none. What does Dad want for Father's Day? He's apt to shrug and say, 'Nothing.' (He may be thinking: A few hours on the couch, with a six-pack and a Cubs game and no interruptions sounds good.)

Not my Dad. Here's another plug they slipped in:

Just veto the thing

June 25, 2008

The writing has been on the wall ever since the General Assembly passed a state budget that Gov. Rod Blagojevich says is $2 billion out of whack. There are two things he can do about it: He can veto the entire budget and tell lawmakers to start over. Or he can use his amendatory veto to cut the budget down to size himself. On Tuesday, Blagojevich made it clear he's still holding out hope for option 3: House Democrats suddenly realize they forgot to fund all that spending and hustle back to Springfield to pass some new revenue measures. House Speaker Michael Madigan has shrugged off that suggestion for weeks, so the governor called a news conference Tuesday to announce a July 9 or else deadline. What's he waiting for? By July 9, we'll be more than a week into the 2009 fiscal year and two days into the Cubs' last home stand before the All-Star break. Might as well get busy.

Huh? Is our state government's calendar determined by the Cubs now? Only in the Tribune. Another:

Stats aren't for sale

June 9, 2008

In a move almost as boneheaded as calling a tie in the All-Star Game, Major League Baseball three years ago declared itself the owner of Greg Maddux's ERA, Jason Giambi's on-base percentage and Corey Patterson's sorry, sorry batting average.

Baseball fans accustomed to helping themselves to those numbers—they were right there in the sports pages, after all—were surprised to learn they'd been committing larceny, and steamed when they learned what MLB was up to: It was trying to take over fantasy baseball....

If MLB officials are smart, they'll stop gouging and start groveling. Fantasy players are some of the best fans on earth. They may root for the home team, but they have a stake in dozens of other games every week involving players on their fantasy rosters. They're a great advertising demographic: above average education and income; big consumers of sporting goods, online tickets, fast food and alcohol. They're three times as likely as the average Joe to attend an actual game and melt down the MasterCard: two tickets, $88; six beers, $36; four hotdogs, $16, etc. Watching the Cubs lose in the bottom of the ninth (bummer!) thanks to an Albert Pujols homer that moved your fantasy team up a notch in the standings, priceless. And by the way, free.

"Bummer!" Do you get the sense we've got a Cubs fan writing all the Tribune's editorials lately? Maybe it's this guy Paul Weingarten:

Oh, no. It's commencement time!

By Paul Weingarten

June 20, 2008

I've been trying to remember what, if anything, I could recall about the commencement speaker at my graduation, whoever that might have been and whatever he/she might have said. But hey, that was quite a while ago and the memory's not what it was.

You current Northwestern University grads won't have that problem. You'll remember that Mayor Richard M. Daley was your commencement speaker on Friday, even though some of you dissed him in e-mails to NU's president, Henry Bienen....

The NU naysayers who dissed Daley said they were expecting someone like Jerry Seinfeld. It's like, after spending all that money on tuition, the grads are expecting a send-off ceremony with tickets that could be scalped to bring Cubs World Series-like prices....

Paul Weingarten is a member of the Tribune's editorial board.

Thanks to Lone Ranger for this observant post.

Slobberin' to Criticize

Phil Rogers, the Tribune "baseball expert" who picked Detroit (currently the 26th-best team in the majors) to win the Central Division this year, is so desperate to drag down the White Sox that he creates two new presumed fictions in his "Whispers" column in Sunday's Tribune.

Rogers quite fairly trashes Detroit Tigers infielder Miguel Cabrera, whose marks of .218 with runners in scoring position and .107 in close-and-late situations are simply pathetic. But Dr. Phil can't resist tweaking the South Side faithful, whose money apparently isn't green enough to help rescue his flailing, conflicted "newspaper" out of a debt that has mounted to billions. Asks Phil:

Remember when White Sox fans were angry [Ken] Williams didn't trade for Miguel Cabrera?

Yeah, Phil, White Sox fans were positively freaking out over the fact that Detroit sozzled the Florida Marlins with blue-chippers and didn't so much as sneeze at absorbing twiglegged BP tosser Dontrelle Willis in the process. Yeah, there was some surprise that Detroit would feel a need to augment its Motown Murderer's Row with yet another big bat. Certainly after the Tribune and other media outlets painted White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen as nothing short of Cabrera's favorite uncle, best baseball bud, and personal Jesus all rolled into one, the Migster's swap to a division rival was a shock.

And who could blame Phil for his outrage over the White Sox not being able to just go out and get whatever player they wanted? After all, his employer has committed more than $300 million in salaries to players, deserving or not, in just the past two offseasons. Apparently, if you're not rocking free agency old-school Yankees style by dumping $18 mil a year on an outfielder who is as mobile on the Shrine's green grass as a tree sloth, you're not doing much to GM a ballclub.

But as dumb as Rogers' Miggy-baiting was, worse still was the low blow on Williams and his son, Wichita State outfielder Kenny Williams Jr.

Rogers claims that a "draft source" called the White Sox's sixth-round plucking of Junior "a reach." (Far be it for us to expect real detail here, Phil, particularly when you're dissing the GM's son.) Dr. Phil cites no statistics or context for either the source's dismissal of Williams Jr. or his own decision to pad his column with a blind attack on Williams himself. Of course, this is nothing new; citation is Rogers' Kryptonite.

And worse, Rogers completely ignores the drama behind the situation. In its draft-day story, the Associated Press reports that, essentially, the entire White Sox draft war room had to persuade Williams that he shouldn't pass up picking his son in the sixth round.

All Rogers had to do in order to offer a more legitimate analysis of the pick and duck the sort of criticism he's getting here was read the wire story that everyone and his hamster had access to within hours of the pick.

Because it's pretty clear that research and reporting aren't Dr. Phil's strong suits, the Chicago Cubune Watch will make an exception and run to his aid before he slags Williams or his son off in a second straight "Whispers":

• This season, Williams Jr. hit .325 with 16 stolen bases for Wichita State.
• White Sox scouting director Doug Laumann calls Williams Jr. "somewhat of a project" and a "high-risk, high-reward guy."
• Laumann says Williams was not in the draft room when the White Sox picked his son, saying the GM really struggled with having him join the team. Reading between the lines, all indications are that Williams disassociated himself from the pick--at least as much as a GM can on draft day.
  

This does not in any way sound like the sort of nepotism Rogers implies when he chastises the White Sox for having picked Williams Jr. "in a round that matters." Still, to have cited anything more than the anonymous mumblings of a "draft source" would have legitimized Dr. Phil's praise or condemnation of the pick.

Shame on him for lazily extending his apparent personal vendetta against Williams, and moreso his sham newspaper for allowing such pseudo-journalism to run unabated, week after week, year after year.

Why is Dr. Phil so agitated? Shouldn't he celebrate the lone successful GM in the city of Chicago?

And by the way, memo to the Trib editors--next time Phil inserts one of his presumably fictional, anonymous sources to discredit the ballclub across town, at least change the dopey label "draft source." They're called scouts.

(And if they're not scouts, why the hell is Rogers "quoting" them in the first place?)

--William Melvin and Brett Ballantini

Clobberin' with Lies

Dave van Dyck was responsible for writing up Saturday night's White Sox game story.

(Those of you who just cringed, bonus points for appreciating Tricky Van Dyck's special brand of "writing.")

With the White Sox's offense back in full force and scoring outrageous amounts of runs, you'd think Tricky V.D. would shoot right out of the gate with a delicious lede. Perhaps he'd mention Joe Crede's four home runs in the past two games, an accomplishment not attained by a White Sox player in nine seasons. How about 64 hits in five games so far in the homestand? Hey, he couldn't even be blamed for leading with news of the rarest of baseball accomplishments, a Paul Konerko triple.

No, the lede for the story detailing the White Sox's trampling of Minnesota, their fiercest rival and closest Central Division trailer, by a lopsided, 11-2 margin avoids any such pertinence:

They may have the worst winning percentage of any team leading a division, but the White Sox have a bigger lead than the best team, the Cubs.

Now, let's try to ignore how horrible Tricky Van Dyck's writing is and how lazy and convoluted a lede this is. As is to be expected from a writer from a newspaper that prides itself more on torpedoing its crosstown rival than reporting facts, Tricky Van Dyck's lede is simply wrong.

The division leader with the worst record is not the red-hot White Sox but the Arizona Diamondbacks, whose 34-28 record trails the White Sox by a full 1.5 games. Moreover, the north side bumblers are no longer the "best" team in baseball as the Trib's Hall of Fame-nominated hatchet man implies--they're now tied with the L.A. Angels at 39-24.

Apparently the Tribune sports editors "missed" the falsities when they "fact-checked" Homer Dave's story.

— Submitted by Cubune Watcher Edward B., with an assist from Brett Ballantini