Results tagged “sports”

During Tuesday's morning shoot around, the Bulls sent power forward home Tyrus Thomas home with "flu-like symptoms." Thomas missed the Bulls dramatic comeback win against the Milwaukee Bucks last night, with rookie Taj Gibson starting in his place.

     

It's hard to believe more than 20 years have gone by since Sweetness last played for the Bears, and that a decade has passed since Walter Payton's untimely death due to a rare liver disease at age 45. On the ten year anniversary of his passing, the Bears held a halftime tribute to Sweetness at Soldier Field on Sunday afternoon. With his widow Connie, children Jarrett and Brittney and his mother Alyne in attendance the team showed a video tribute to Payton of his highlights on the field and his legacy off the field, as one of the greatest players to wear a Bears uniform and one of the greatest men to play in the NFL. The team also honored Payton by emblazoning both 34 yard-lines with Payton's #34 jersey number.

       

Having fallen to .500 by losing two straight after a 3-1 start to the year, the Bears looked to right the ship against the 1-6 Cleveland Browns at Soldier Field on Sunday. While the Bears came away with a 30-6 victory, it was hardly the reassuring victory the team and fans were looking for. Sure the Bears managed to score 30 points on Sunday, but the team's offense repeatedly encountered trouble when it found itself inside the redzone against the league's worst defense. On three separate occasions the team had to settle for field goals and once even turned the ball over on downs. The Bears may have scored 30 points, but that they didn't capitalize on opportunities to score forty or more was a failure.

       

Is this the year the Bulls finally reclaim their place among the NBA's elite? For the past few seasons, the Bulls have been full of potential but inconsistent on fulfilling that promise on the court. One of these years, they'll finally make that jump. When we last saw the Bulls playing meaningful games, it was in an epic seven-game series (plus seven OT periods) with the Boston Celtics in the opening round of the playoffs. Taking the defending NBA champs and second-seeded Celts the full distance gave Bulls fans a lot to look forward to for this season. But is the optimism justified just yet?

       

Well, that was ugly.

Chicago's sports teams seem to have a knack for drafting players with unique talents. Bulls rookie James Johnson showed off his YouTube-worthy skill -- break dancing! In this clip posted by Dime Magazine, he shows off his windmill skillz at the 2009 NBA Rookie Photo Shoot. He's not the only local rookie to grace YouTube for his off the field antics. Bears rookie Jerron Gilbert has made a bigger name for himself on account of his leaping ability than his play on the field thus far.

Just five games into his tenure, Bears GM Jerry Angelo rewarded quarterback Jay Cutler with a two-year, $30 million contract extension. The deal includes about $20 million in guaranteed money. Already under contact through 2011, the team now holds Cutler's rights through 2013. The Bears stopped short, however, of ensuring Cutler will retire a Bear -- he'll still be just 30 years old when his new deal expires. While his deal is nowhere near the six-year deals pushing $100 million that other young franchise QBs have received, if Cutler continues to put up numbers like he has so far, we have a feeling Angelo and Cutler will be making more deals in the future.

       

While the scoreboard showed that the Atlanta Falcons beat the Bears 21-14 on Sunday night, the reality is that the Bears beat themselves. Turnovers in the red zone and inopportune penalties killed numerous chances to score and left the Bears to hang their heads in defeat. "We had a lot of opportunities to win the game," coach Lovie Smith said. "You can't make those kinds of mistakes on the road against a good football team."

If there's one thing we know about professional sports and the athletes that play them, is that it's as likely for someone to face criminal charges as it is for someone to donate to charity. Unfortunately, Chicago Bears rookie Lance Louis is associated with the former. Louis, offensive linemen and 7th round draft pick out of San Diego state, faces a misdemeanor assault charge for an altercation that happened while in college. The incident, occurring last fall, involved Louis and fellow teammate Nick Sandford. Authorities report that Louis assaulted Sandford in a team meeting room, causing Sandford to suffer a fractured cheekbone, broken eardrum and a concussion on top of it all.

Are the Bears interested in trading for loudmouth wide receiver Terrell Owens? That's the rumor ESPN was spreading yesterday when Adam Schefter speculated that the 1-4 Buffalo Bills may want to trade T.O. before next week's trading deadline, and their Rumors page (both ESPN Insider only) suggested he might end up with the Bears.

              

Yesterday's Bank of America Chicago Marathon saw Kenyan Samuel Wanjiru set a course record of 2:05:41 and Russia's Liliya Shobukhova was the top woman finisher. In addition to the standard prize money for winning, Wanjiru also pocketed a $100,000 bonus for setting the course record -- but that almost didn't happen. Not aware of his record-setting pace or the bonus at stake, he waved to the crowd during the final stretch and ended up surpassing the old mark by a single second.

For an estimated 45,000 runners, months of training will culminate with the 32nd running of the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, which will begin at 7:30am in Grant Park Sunday morning. The 26.2 mile race snakes through 29 of our city's neighborhoods, from the Loop north to Wrigleyville; looping back south and west through University Village, Little Italy, Chinatown and Bridgeport; before hitting the finish line back in Grant Park. The urban course creates an amazing tour of Chicago for the runners, while also being spectator friendly: over 1.5 million people are expected to stand on the sidelines cheering on friends, family or strangers. The marathon website offers spectator info. While the past two years have seen high temps create problems for runners, this year's race forecast calls for cool and rainy, with a high of about 50 degrees.

Last season, both our baseball teams reached the playoffs. This time around, both the Cubs and White Sox cleaned out their lockers. This was not unexpected for the Sox, but many truly thought this was going to be the Cubs' year. And yet fans on both sides of town are left to "wait until next year."

With all of the Olympics hoopla last week, we hadn't yet had a chance to preview the Blackhawks season, which opened in Helsinki, Finland against the Florida Panthers on Friday. After last season's renaissance on the ice, hockey has re-emerged as a sport we in Chicago care about, and we fans have high expectations for our Blackhawks in 2009-10.

       

For a half, the Detroit Lions looked like a team intent on putting together an actual winning streak as an encore to their first victory in almost two years. They jumped out to an early lead and went into the half tied at 21. However, the Bears came alive in the second half and ended up blowing out the Lions 48-24 at Soldier Field. We probably weren't the only Bears fans concerned when the Lions scored on the game's opening drive, to take an early 7-0 lead. But the Bears answered, with Jay Cutler scoring on an helicopter spin of a leap into the end zone. The Lions stormed back down the field and took a 14-7 lead before the Bears tied the game on a touchdown moments into the second quarter. A Tommie Harris interception set up a Greg Olsen score that gave the Bears a 21-14 lead, but the resilient Lions drove 98 yards to knot things up before the intermission.

       

For the second time in as many weeks, the Bears came from behind in the fourth quarter to win, this time knocking off the Seattle Seahawks 25-19 on the road. In the first half, things didn't look so good for the Bears when they fell behind 13-0. Jay Cutler threw an interception, Robbie Gould missed a field goal attempt and penalties hurt the team. They couldn't take advantage of a team without a number of its top players, including starting QB Matt Hasselbeck. Momentum in the game shifted, however, just before the half when Matt Forte's fumble at the two yard line was challenged and overturned. The Bears scored a TD and cut the Seattle's lead to six at the break.

Ugh. Thank you, ESPN Chicago, for twisting the knife and - as the Cubs see their slim odds of a playoff appearance in 2009 disappear in the wake of a season of mediocrity and controversy - reminding us of another Cubs team, one that made a great run through the NL East only to see a two games to none lead in the NLCS (in a best-of-five series, mind you) over the San Diego Padres vanish as the Padres won three straight on their way to the World Series.

Embattled Cubs outfielder Milton Bradley tried to improve a very bad situation on Wednesday, by issuing a formal apology through his agents. Bradley also dropped his union grievance over the suspension on Wednesday, when the Cubs agreed to suspend him with pay -- meaning he'll earn about $400,000 while sitting at home (waaaaaaaaaaaaay more than what Marcus makes by blogging in his underwear from a basement).

Over a year ago, we posted about an article in the "Sporting News" which theorized that the infamous "Black Sox" scandal -- the 1919 White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series -- was inspired by the Cubs having done so themselves the year before. A fascinating new wrinkle to the already extensive Chicago baseball lore. The author of that article, Sean Deveney, continued his research and has now written The Original Curse, which digs deeper into what may be the true reason for the Cubs' century of futility.

For their home opener -- and Jay Cutler's regular season debut at Soldier Field -- the Bears welcomed the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers to town. With a Week 1 loss in Green Bay, the Bears couldn't afford to fall to 0-2. But could they defeat the reigning champs? In fact they could, winning 17-14 on a Robbie Gould field goal with just seconds left in the game. The Bears had never led in the game until that final kick put them ahead at the end.

Don't want to say "we told you so," but we suspected the Cubs would be sorry when they signed Milton Bradkey to a three year, $30 million free agent contract during the off-season. Seems management has finally reached their breaking point with the outfielder before he finished even one season in Chicago, suspending him for the remainder of the season.

A pair of former Cubs have made the news recently. Here are their strange tales

Rookie starter Randy Wells had a rough outing for the Cubs as the Brewers rode a Jody Gerut grand slam to a 7-4 win this afternoon at Wrigley Field. Both teams struck in the first and the Cubs held a 2-1 lead until the top of the fourth when Wells gave up the four-run dinger to Gerut. Mighty Micah Hoffpauir got the Cubs back within striking distance at 5-4 in the bottom of the inning thanks to a two-run double. But the Cubs bullpen couldn't hold. In the seventh, Tom Gorzelanny put two Brewers on and was then relieved by Esmailin Caridad who gave up a two-run double to Mike Rivera. The Brewers bullpen kept the Cubs scoreless for the rest of the game and the Cubs wound up batting 2-for-8 with runners in scoring position. The Cubs are now off to St. Louis for a weekend series, starting tomorrow night at 7:15 p.m. (CSN).

For the upcoming season, the Chicago Bulls have added a spanish-language radio broadcast as they try to reach out to the city's large Latino community. Twenty-one home games will be aired on La Tremenda WRTO 1200 AM, with Omar Ramos and Ozzie Guillen, Jr. calling the games. As in son of the hot headed, loud mouthed White Sox manager. If he runs his mouth anything like his dad, we're sure the broadcasts will be entertaining -- no matter the on-court play. Pretty sweet as we've been looking for an excuse to brush up on our Spanish. This isn't the first time Ramos and Guillen have teamed up: the pair have been calling the White Sox on Spanish radio for the past few seasons.

The PGA Tour made its lone swing through the Chicago area this weekend, playing the BMW Championship at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in suburban Lemont. Tiger Woods didn't disappoint the crowds, running away with the tournament on the club's newly redesigned Dubsdread Course.

       

As if the the debut of supposed franchise "savior" Jay Cutler wasn't enough, playing a nationally televised Sunday night game and playing against the arch rival Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field meant we Bears fans were revved up for Week 1. By the end of the night, however, our excitement and optimism had turned to dejection as the Packers outlasted the Bears 21-15 in an ugly opener. That the Bears even had any chance to win the game was a bit of a miracle, but they actually took a 15-13 lead with less than three minutes to play. Unfortunately, it was one of those nights where if anything could go wrong, it did.

Jay Cutler -- one addition forever changed the course of the Bears' franchise and one name changed the expectations of Bears fans for the upcoming season, which begins on Sunday night against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. When the unique opportunity to transform the team by adding a young, Pro Bowl quarterback presented itself, GM Jerry Angelo boldly traded for cannon-armed Cutler. Denver's loss is Chicago's gain, as the Bears gave up Kyle Orton and a package of draft picks to add their best passer since Sid Luckman.

In celebration of Michael Jordan's induction to the Basketball Hall of Fame tomorrow, both the Tribune and Sun-Times have created an extensive special Michael Jordan Tributes. Both feature a collection of articles, columns, photos, and videos that trace MJ's life from his childhood, to his standout college career, to his illustrious run in the NBA, his detours for the Olympics and minor league baseball, as well as life in the executive suite. So go ahead and waste your workday reminiscing about the best basketball player we're likely to ever see, as well as the one who brought six championships to town.

In the long, mostly disappointing history of Chicago baseball one of its lowest moments came when members of the 1919 White Sox threw the World Series. Among the "Black Sox" permanently banned from the game was the team's biggest star, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. Ninety years later, two Chicago lawyers involved with the start-up Chicago Baseball Museum are taking another stab at clearing Shoeless Joe's name. Paul Duffy and Daniel Voelker take exception with assertions made about Jackson in the 1963 book by Eliot Asinof, Eight Men Out. They are plowing through Asinof's research, which is now part of the Chicago History Museum's collection. With research consisting of primarily newspaper recount, the pair was surprised that the notes included no interviews with any of the events' principals.

On Friday, Michael Jordan finally assumes his rightful place in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. Leading up to his enshrinement, the Trib asks what we can only assume is a rhetorical question, "Is MJ the best ever?" Sure, we may be a teeny bit biased here in Chicago. But we still pick MJ over the likes of Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Oscar Robertson. So would former Bulls assistant coach Johnny Bach, "I saw Oscar Robertson and Russell play. I coached against Wilt (in college). The idolatry Michael experienced would send anybody else off spinning. But he continued to produce."