28 Days

It only took four weeks, but a Tribune writer finally has acknowledged the Kosuke Fukudome "Horry Kow" T-shirts being sold outside and worn into Wrigley Field by supposed Cubbies fans. ChicagoSports.com blogger Rahula Strohl had previously written on the controversy, his criticisms of the shirts getting him barbecued as "politically correct" and worse in comments from CS readers. But the core sportswriters--the winceable Dream Team of Sullivan, Rogers, Gonzales, Downey, Morrissey, and McGrath--have been mum.

Unfortunately, Paul Sullivan's piece today doesn't bring a happy conclusion to the story. The apologetic headline, Cubs can't stop all sales of offensive Kosuke Fukudome T-shirt, says it all.

The Cubs and the Tribune are caught in a tough place here. But between the month the Tribune took to officially acknowledge the shirts and the sellers, the fact that it owns its ballpark and could well better police it and the Wrigleyville area to rid the city of such ugliness, and that no one on its pages can bother to state the obvious and condemn this type of ugly racism for fun and profit, it's hard to be too sympathetic.

Worse, imagine the taunts and, apparently, the T-shirts screened once Fukudome finally slumps this season.

--Brett Ballantini

Fuzzy Math (or News That Makes Us Richer, Part 2)

Paul Sullivan was lucky enough to witness a 19-5 pasting of the Brew Crew last night. But apparently he was too distracted by the presence of Mark Cuban in the park to bother fully researching his own writing. An excerpt from his game story:

[Geovany] Soto has 20 RBIs in April, the most for a Cubs rookie since records began being kept in 1956.

Wait a just a second. "Records began being kept?" Isn't baseball the most over-recorded sport in human history?

Now, it's possible that the deep Tribune coffers and resources are vastly overestimated, but there were several options available to Sully before he opted out so lazily:

• Page through the Cubs media guide.
• Telephone his newsroom for assistance.
• Drop $29 on yearly access to www.baseball-reference.com's advanced stats and devote 10 minutes to surfing.
• Befriend one of the millions of SABRheads in the world, many of whom already are likely corresponding with Sully. Such perfectionists would likely do a whiz-bang, instantaneous run of the numbers for Sully for free, and in time for Wrigley's seventh-inning warble.
  
• Contact Stats, Inc., which not only would quickly track a straightforward record like most Cubs ribbies in April by a rookie, it'd probably tell him how many batting gloves that rookie went through during the month and the kid's favorite type of hoagie sammich.
• Or, if all else fails, don't print the stat.
  

Not to be outdone in the popular Trib category of fuzzy math, Sully's study buddy Dave Van Dyck wildly speculates about the presence of every north sider's favorite Racer X, Cuban, in the crowd:

Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks (who fired coach Avery Johnson on Wednesday), has publicly expressed interest in owning the Cubs, but it is still uncertain if he could raise the expected $700 million it would take or whether he could get approval from other MLB owners. Tribune Co. hopes to sell the team by the end of the year, and several groups have expressed interest, although Cuban is the most visible individual suitor.

This is unethical journalism to the nth degree.

DVD very fairly speculates on Cuban's ownership interest in the Cubbies. Cuban likely would bring increased interest, aggressiveness, and competitiveness to the Cubs, the team that's bordering on 100 years between World Series titles and counting. That's newsworthy. The fawning is a little unbecoming, but after untold years of faceless ownership, Cuban could be a fresh breath for the Wrigley regulars.

However, DVD, a Tribune employee and presumed stockholder, cannot resist speculating on a price tag for the ballclub, which has been a favorite pastime from the moment the Lovable Losers approached the auction block.

A modest, reasonable price tag might even be OK, for speculative purposes. For example, stating that the Cubs were expected to fetch at least the $XXX million a prior team sale earned is fair play--after all, the cost of buying into MLB's gold mines is stretching ever upward.

But to pull $700 million out of his hiney isn't speculation, it's auctioneering, and the act is absolutely out of line. We know the Tribune has been bandying about a false-bottom price of $1 billion as the likely cost of the ballclub and Wrigley Field for months now, so DVD's numbers surely don't reflect the combo price. DVD can't even employ the specious price of $500 million in his wild speculation; no, the dutiful stockholder/employee has upped the ante to $700 million, citing it in no small measure as a starting point ("the expected $700 million").

This speculation has no place on the sports page, or anywhere in the Tribune, for that matter, at least without a disclosure accompanying it, per Tribune policy. It certainly has no place being created by a fiction writer the likes of Dave Van Dyck.

--Brett Ballantini

Quote of the Year

It's early, but we have a contender for quote of the year, courtesy of Cubbies beat writer Paul Sullivan, penning yet another of the already-tired Dusty-Baker-returns-to-Chicago stories.

In a hard-hitting piece that compares Dusty to current Cubbies manager Lou Piniella, Sully leads his story with:

Asked the difference between managers Lou Piniella and Dusty Baker, Kerry Wood said they're actually quite similar, pointing to their main character trait."They both hate to lose," he said.

So simple, it's classic.

--Brett Ballantini

A Tale of Two Stories — Biased Stories

Two stories on the front of the Tribune's sports page today, one about a White Sox victory, one about a Cubs victory. In each, the hometown manager makes self-deprecating comments. Here's Ozzie:

"We got Detroit at the right time. Those guys are going to wake up sooner or later because they have unbelievable talent."

And here's Lou:

Before the game, Piniella said the Cubs were "fortunate" to be in a position to end the trip with a winning record "despite the problems we've had in the rotation and with our offense."

The bias shows in the way each reporter responds to those comments. Even though the Cubs have more reason to thank their lucky stars — they won by one run but had two runs gifted to them, one by an umpire and one by a Phillies error — Cubs house organ Paul Sullivan writes, "But the offense was just good enough Sunday." He writes of Jason Marquis pitching in and out of trouble and writes that "Derrek Lee saved the day with a brilliant stop to present the winning run from scoring with two outs in the ninth." When the Cubs are lucky, they're also brilliant, but when the White Sox are lucky enough to allow only five hits in two games and hit two grand slams on the same day, Dave van Dyck can only be skeptical:

"The question is whether this is real or whether it comes from playing Detroit, considering five the Sox's seven victories have come against, surprisingly, the worst team in baseball."

So, the Sox have a winning record (van Dyck neglects to mention that it's the best record in the American League) only because they beat the Tigers five times. But isn't it also true that the Tigers have the worst record in baseball only because they lost to the White Sox five times? Maybe if they played another team they would have won those games, in which case they would be 7-5, not 2-10.

It makes sense for managers to downplay their teams' accomplishments in April, to stay humble for the long haul. When Lou does it, the Tribune contradicts him. When Ozzie does it, the Tribune piles on.

-- Jeff McMahon

Perfection by Omission

Paul Sullivan practices a common Tribune tactic in his ebullient take on the finish to his north sider's second win of the season on Sunday. Call it "perfection by omission."

Sully breathlessly reports that closer-until-broken Kerry Wood was able to "pick up his second save in two tries with a perfect ninth inning."

Now, to the letter, Sully isn't fudging here. Wood, despite a 9.00 ERA and 1.33 WHIP, has not yet blown a save in two tries.

But there's an implication in the writing that Wood's been perfect this season, that 1-2-3 9ths are just another day at the office for him, the long-time Cub, first-time closer.

Heh, not exactly. It was a mere six days earlier that Wood debuted disastrously, handing the game to the Brewers in the 9th before receiving a complete, three-run bailout from Kosuke Fukodome in the bottom of the inning.

Sullivan was at that game too, right? Let's check. Yep, here you go: "But the day was a total downer for Carlos Zambrano, who remains winless in four Opening Day starts and left in the seventh inning with forearm cramps. And for Kerry Wood, who allowed three runs in the ninth in his debut as the Cubs' closer."

After Wood's implosion, visitors to ChicagoSports.com voted by a 74% landslide that Wood be replaced by the electric Carlos Marmol as the team's closer. Comcast SportsNet's you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours Chicago Tribune Live, the talking head survey of all Chicago sports that just happens to star a panel of experts almost exclusively culled from the dank Tribune catacombs (the White Sox played on Comcast that day, but the Cubbies still managed to cut in line for coverage), was just as hysterical in its debate.

If the White Sox's Bobby Jenks had just completed his second save in two tries but badly misfired in his first outing of the year, is there any chance whatsoever that Tribune coverage merely would laud Jenks for the two-for-two and conveniently overlook the fact that he needed a barf bag to escape his outing in the opener?

You know the answer to that rhetorical question. Never. Ever.

Apparently Sully feels Kerry Wood's psyche is as fragile as all his reconditioned arm pieces. And that Chicago sports fans aren't smart enough to catch the insipid bias that seeps into every Tribune sports page.

--Brett Ballantini

Stop the Presses! Cubune Picks Cubs to Win!

You'll be shocked to discover that the Cubs shareholders who work in the Tribune Tower think the Cubs are going to prevail in the Division Series against Arizona. Paul Sullivan, who covered this sloppy team for 162 games and once referred to them as "accidental contenders," predicts they'll sweep the Diamondbacks, and hey, maybe they will. Most Trib writers think they'll win it in four games, and one genius thinks they'll win it in six.

Tribune fiction writer Dave van Dyck thinks the Cubs will win because "The excess of power will be too much for the D'back pitchers and in postseason series three-run homers traditionally win games."

Who has an excess of power? Arizona season HRs: 171; Cubbies: 151, and the Cubs play in a Little League park. Maybe DVD's been taking LSD to work, and we don't mean Lake Shore Drive.

Of the Cubune's public faces, only golf expert and token staff Sox fan Ed Sherman picks the snakes. Whoever he likes, Sherman has shown that his world view remains firmly planted in Cubland. And how could it not be? He drinks out of the same water cooler. He shares the same profit sharing plan. And the Tribune has been pushing a little too hard lately to convince people it has Sox fans on staff:

The Tribune sports desk
Spirited voting among 18 members of the Tribune's sports copy desk—except for the one wise guy who picked Cubs in 6—led to a nearly even split. Undoubtedly the healthy number of Sox fans and Cubs fans looking to alter cosmic karma led to the eight picks for the Diamondbacks.

Only because of a "healthy" number of Sox fans on its Sports Desk did the Diamondbacks get any votes. That shows confidence in the expertise of the Sports Desk, doesn't it? And what's a "healthy" number of Sox fans? When the Tribune hires a Sox fan, it's like getting a flu shot?


Brett Ballantini contributed to this post.