Last year, we were Wrecks Grossman. But with Kyle Orton's ascension to starter, we feel the need to bench our fantasy football team name. But one can't draft without a kickass name. And with our draft approaching, we still haven't decided yet what to name our 2008 squad. At least we've found help. Fantasy Team Names let fantasy sports fans submit and rank team names. While they have categories for football, baseball, basketball, hockey and......

Cubs Rally Past Pirates In a score more appropriate for a Bears-Steelers defensive struggle, the Cubs outlasted the PIrates 14-9 in a game where effective pitching was nowhere to be found. Geovany Soto was the definite MVP of the game, knocking in seven runs and scoring three. Alfonso Soriano went three-for-six and scored twice. Carols "The Molar" Zambrano struggled in the first inning, giving up three runs. Overall, he gave up six runs in four......

And, lo, there was much rejoicing in the Windy City. Yes, Chicago, our long sports journalism nightmare is over. Jay Mariotti has left the Sun-Times to "pursue other opportunities." Mariotti was at the S-T for 17 years, for good and for (mostly) ill. He's also been one of the intolerable screaming heads on ESPN's Around the Horn for several years. And his resignation comes on the heels of his re-upping with the S-T through 2011......

Starting Thursday, Major League Baseball will begin using instant replay for some home run calls. For now, video will be used only on so-called "boundary calls," such as determining whether fly balls went over the fence, whether potential home runs were fair or foul and whether there was fan interference on potential home runs. The crew chief decides when to use the replay, when to reverse a call, and where to place runners. Lou, Ozzie,......

ChuffPo* blogger Bahar Takhtehchian has concluded that because she doesn't like sports, her fellow female residents of Chicago must not—at least not really—either. "Do Chicago gals genuinely care about the fortunes of this city's sports teams? Are they sitting through hour after hour of endless sports for the love of the game ... or for the love of the men in their lives?" she asks. Well, concludes; that's the closing thought of her story, and......

Barack Obama and the rest of the Democratic party converge on Denver to, among other things, unify the group after the drawn out primary season continues to divide Democrats into two camps: those who support Obama and the fans of Hillary. But Obama apparently has no intentions of trying to similarly unify the fans of Chicago's two baseball teams. If anything, he's still fueling the rivalries when it comes to our national past time. Asked......

More than 8,000 triathletes competed in yesterday's Chicago Triathlon. The UK's Stuart Hayes won for the men in 1:48:09.2, and Minnesotan Becky Lavelle won the women's race in 2:00:19.5.......

Cubs Take Series From Nats On the back of another Mark DeRosa home run and seven huge innings from Rich Harden, the Cubs took game three and the series from the Washington Nationals with a 6-1 victory. Harden struck out 11 en route to his ninth victory of the season. Geovany Soto and K-Fuk added two-run shots of their own as the Cubs hit the road for a three-game series in Pittsburgh to begin the......

Aaaaaaaand that's a wrap! Whew. After 16 action-packed days, the 2008 Summer Olympics have come to a close and America brought home the most medals (110) in spite of a fantastic effort by the host nation, China (100), who brought home more golds (51) than anyone else. And Chicagonia fared well themselves. We have no problem calling this one of the more exciting Olympics we've seen. Drama, intrigue, age controversies, this Games had it all......

Cubs Crush Nats A pair of Aramis Ramirez three-run homers and a strong outing from Ryan Dempster helped the Cubs cruise past the visiting Washington Nationals 9-2 on Saturday afternoon. Dempster gave up eight hits but allowed only one run in seven and a third innings of work to to tie his career-high with his 15th win of the season. Said Dempster, "The most I've ever won in my career is 15, and it's nice......

We're inside the final 24 hours of the current Olympiad and there seems to be no need for Jack Bauer. Lots of Gold Medal team finals to go and many with Chicago connections, including both men's and women's indoor volleyball and men's and women's basketball. If Chicago were a nation (say, Chicagonia), it would wind up with a pretty dang decent medal count, eh? I, for one, am in favor of this new nation. I......

As we're entering the final days of this Olympiad, and focus turns to team finals rather than individual finals (though holy crap this Bolt kid is ridonkulously fast!), we're happy to see many of our area athletes still in the thick of the competition, especially with Gold Medal finals happening. Friday's action was light, but a pair of U.S. squads featuring Chicago-area members were in action, battling on towards more Gold. Full results after the......

In what was supposed to be their closest thing to a dress rehearsal before the regular season begins, the Bears lost 37-30 to the San Francisco 49ers at Soldier Field on Thursday. Once again the team looked decent on one side of the ball and lackluster on the other. But in an unusual twist, it was the offense that performed well while the defense showed they're still not ready for the regular season. Kyle Orton,......

Cubs Slip to Reds In spite of a stellar outing for Ted Lilly (including a no-hitter through five innings), the Cubs weren't able to generate any offense as they fell to the Cincinnati Reds 2-1. Lilly gave up two runs over seven innings and struck out seven. Of course, more impressive was Reds' starter Bronson Arroyo, who only gave up one run and three hits. Said Lilly, ""I was throwing the ball pretty good. "I......

Are you a fan of the shoes Michael Jordan made famous? If so, you might want to join the hundreds (thousands?) of fans of MJ and his eponymous shoes who will converge at his statue outside the United Center at noon this Saturday to shoot the final scene of the documentary "Jordan Heads." Billed as "the most anticipated sneaker documentary ever," Saturday's shoot caps four years of production on the film. The documentary looks......

Words cannot even express how much I am going to miss having Bela Karolyi in my life from now on. The man could make watching someone paint sound exciting. Where's the drama in my life now? How can I get excited about anything else after having Bela's exuberance in my life for the last nine days? Fortunately, there's still plenty of Olympics to go as we close in on team finals as well as some......

While gymnastics has taken over for Michael Phelps in providing all the fireworks and dramatics this week, several Chicago-area athletes are providing drama of their own as part of several U.S. teams entering the medal round. It's "win or go home" time and while we'll be happy to welcome back our athletes with open arms, we hope they get to extend their stay in Beijing just a little longer to bring home some medals. Basketball,......

While the Bears thankfully brought their quarterback competition to a close with yesterday's selection of Kyle Orton, the team has a history of lining up just about anyone behind center when the going gets tough. Whether due to ineffectiveness or injury, the Bears have employed more starting quarterbacks over the past decade and a half than any team in the NFL over that time. Since 1992, while the Packers had started Brett Farve and only......

We're coming down the homestretch of the competition now, having completed 12 of the 18 days of competition (while the Olympics are "officially" 16 days long, there were two days of preliminary action before the opening ceremonies). And while China has dominated the gold medal count, Team USA continues to maintain a slight overall lead over the host nation. A few Chicago-area athletes were in action today, doing their part to help the US maintain......

Now halfway through their preseason schedule, the Bears still haven't answered their biggest question -- who'll start at quarterback? While Kyle Orton's performance rated slightly better than Rex Grossman's and some think he's shown enough to earn the job, neither QB looked particularly good playing behind the Bears' ragtag offensive line. We're certainly not sold on either of 'em. Like many of the team's games in recent years, the bulk of the point came......

Michael Phelps is a badass. To do what he did is unfathomable and he did it with grace, dignity, and respect to himself, his fellow swimmers, and Mark Spitz. But thank God swimming is over because if NBC showed Phelps' mother in the stands reacting to a race one more time, I was going to tear my hair out. This is the network's fault in doing what they do best : taking a very sweet......

We've hit the half-way point for the Olympics but there's still plenty of excitement, including Michael Phelps heart-stopping gold medal race. At this point, we suspect he may just be toying with our emotions just to keep us interested. But our Chicago-area Olympians, including Christine Loukas and Dwyane Wade, are providing some fireworks of their own and keeping us glued to our televisions. Which is a good thing, right? Screw it. Go Team Chicago!......

About this time on Friday afternoons, we start getting Friday brain. We feel punchy. We feel silly, maybe a little argumentative, and certainly unable to complete substantive tasks or engage in meaningful discourse. Sometimes, this becomes a leg-wrestling tournament. Sometimes a walk around the block to play that stupid road trip game where you put the word "anal" before the names of cars ("anal Explorer," "anal Liberty," etc). Today, Marcus and I decided to discuss......

While not necessarily trying to sell tickets or merchandise, per se, the Chicago Bears have nonetheless decided they need to ramp up an advertising blitz to remind Chicagoans that we're all part of the Bears. The goal of the "One City, One Team" campaign is "to drive home the strength of that inexorable connection and make [fans] feel a sense of pride in the long-accepted fact that, win or lose, Chicago is a Bears town."......

Do you know someone who "through personal effort and tireless dedication, improves the lives of others and makes a positive impact on their community"? Nominate him or her for the White Sox's Roland Hemond award. It honors extraordinarily philanthropic Chicagoans with a trip to the All Star Game, which will be in St. Louis in 2009. Nominations are due August 22, but the form is really, really basic. [White Sox]......

Team USA's softball team extended its overall Olympic winning streak to 16 games with the help of Cat Osterman's no-hitter, shutting out Australia 3-0 in a rematch of 2004's gold medal game. Osterman, when not competing with Team USA, serves as an assistant coach for DePaul's softball program, and lives in Lincoln Park. She joined the program in 2007 after finishing her illustrious career at the University of Texas in '06. USA Softball Player of......

Former Bear Muhsin Muhammad, now with the Carolina Panthers, said in an interview with Sports Illustrated that Chicago is "where receivers go to die." While that's the quote that's getting the most play today, we like the next part, too. From Peter King's column: Speaking of Muhammad, he had this to say about the state of the Chicago quarterback situation: "In the time Brett Favre has started for the Packers -- what's it been, 16......

In the heat of a division race, with a pitching staff that's seen its ERA climb in each of the past four months, the last thing the White Sox needed was to lose a part of their starting rotation. In fact, the Sox were hoping to get back a key component of their rotation when Jose Contreras, who'd been out since July 13 because of elbow tendinitis, pitched Saturday night. Instead, they lost Contreras to......

The Bears opened their preseason with a 24-20 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs at Soldier Field on Thursday. And while Bears fans were looking for some answers about their team and its prospects, particularly on offense, instead more questions were raised than answered. Heading into the game, the biggest question was at quarterback. Would either Kyle Orton or Rex Grossman show enough to prove they could ably lead the team's offense? Last night, neither......

The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing are getting ready to start have already kicked off and, well, it seems that not many folks are as enthusiastic about it as some of us are (one of us has even participated in an Olympic Torch relay). So forgive us if we seemed a bit excited this morning because we dig that time every four two years when the world comes together to celebrate the pageantry and......