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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Royals All-Star Salvador Perez came up to bat in the seventh inning, representing the tying run with two outs.

This time the White Sox had All-Star right-hander Craig Kimbrel waiting for him.

After hitting his 39th and 40th home runs of the season against Reynaldo Lopez and Michael Kopech and driving in five runs, Perez was no match for Kimbrel, called on by manager Tony La Russa an inning or two earlier than usual. The timing was good with the Royals’ top of the order coming up.

“If somebody gets on base, Perez is up, and Craig had to be the guy to face him,” La Russa said. “So a lot of theater to that inning.”

Kimbrel, who struck out Sebastian Rivero and Royals leadoff man Whit Merrifield before Nicky Lopez reached first with a half-swing single to left field, got Perez to chase three breaking balls for swinging strikes. Aaron Bummer and Liam Hendriks followed with perfect eighth and ninth innings, and the Sox nailed down a 10-7 victory Saturday at Kauffman Stadium.

“We were going to make sure [Perez] wasn’t going to beat us,” catcher Yasmani Grandal said. “We used his aggressiveness to get him out, and it was a huge out.”

After Kimbrel held the Royals in check, Andrew Vaughn knocked in a run with a single to give the Sox 10 runs or more for the 15th time and fourth time in the last eight games.

Kimbrel was credited with the win, and Hendriks notched his career-best 32nd save.

Luis Robert had the second four-hit game of his career, starting it with a 452-foot homer in the first inning and adding three singles to raise his average to .343. He scored three runs.

Grandal was 3-for-3, including a homer in the first, and had four RBI. He is 12-for-22 with five homers and 15 RBI since coming off the injured list.

Kopech gives up two homers

Kopech got four outs and allowed four runs and four hits, including the homer by Perez and another by Carlos Santana.

He has allowed multiple runs in three of his last six relief outings — the four Saturday, five in one inning at Toronto on Aug. 26 and two in one inning against the Athletics on Aug. 19. His ERA climbed from 2.72 to 4.00.

Lopez goes four

Lopez pitched four innings and threw 65 pitches, allowing three runs and three hits. He pitched one inning of relief against the Pirates on Wednesday. Lopez’s string of 25 batters retired ended when Santana walked in the second inning with one out.

No. 500 for Abreu

Jose Abreu’s RBI double off the center-field wall in the fourth inning was his 500th career extra-base hit. Abreu singled and hit another double in the eighth inning.

Moncada sits; Gonzalez starts

Yoan Moncada, who has a sore wrist that can get aggravated when he swings right-handed, didn’t start against Royals left-hander Daniel Lynch. Romy Gonzalez, who made his debut off the bench in a 7-2 loss Friday, started at third base and got his first career RBI on a groundout.

Lambert in the mix

Triple-A Charlotte right-hander Jimmy Lambert is with the team and could factor in plans for a needed pitcher Tuesday in Oakland. A bullpen game is a possibility.

“Jimmy is very likely to be activated for that game,” La Russa said.

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CHAMPAIGN — As impressive as UTSA was on Saturday in beating Illinois 37-30, you’d never guess the Roadrunners’ football program is only a decade old.

Or that it was UTSA’s first time facing a Big Ten opponent.

“I’m just so thrilled for my kids,” UTSA coach Jeff Traylor said. “We’ve been together 21 months now, and they’ve believed in us since the day we got here. I might seem like I’m a little cocky. I’m really not.”

He had reason to be.

UTSA never trailed in its season opener as Frank Harris was 20 of 32 for 280 yards and a touchdown and ran for a second score. Sincere McCormick carried 31 times for 117 yards and Brenden Brady ran 11 times for 67 yards and two touchdowns. Zakhari Franklin caught 10 passes for 155 yards and a touchdown for the Roadrunners.

Artur Sitkowski was 22 of 42 passing for 266 yards and 3 touchdowns for Illinois. Reggie Love III rushed for 39 yards. Sitkowski got his first start for Illinois with Brandon Peters is out with a left, non-throwing shoulder injury.

Quarterback-turned-wide receiver Isaiah Williams caught 8 passes for 101 yards, while Daniel Barker hauled in 5 passes for 74 yards and two touchdowns. Deuce Spann, another converted quarterback, caught a 31-yard pass for a touchdown, his only reception of the game.

“This hurts, you know,” said Illinois coach Bret Bielema. “Against a non-conference opponent. And I don’t mean to take anything away from UTSA. They are a good football team and they came in here with a game plan and they executed it.”

SO CLOSE

Illinois nearly tied the game with seconds left, but an offensive pass interference call on Luke Ford pushed the Illini back to the 25. Sitkowski tried to hit Williams in the end zone with time expiring but the ball sailed over his head.

“We did enough things to hurt ourselves,” Bielema said. “We’re just not there yet. We’re working on it, but we’re not there yet.”

Illinois, which knocked off Nebraska in its season opener, started slowly and UTSA took advantage. The Roadrunners scored first on a 9-yard run by Harris with 1:32 left in the first quarter. The run capped an impressive 94-yard, 13-play drive. Brady then scored on a seven-yard run with 11:31 left in the second quarter and UTSA led 14-0.

Illinois answered with a 31-yard pass from Sitkowski to Deuce Spann with 9:21 left in the first half — Sitkowski’s first completion in four attempts.

After a UTSA field goal late in the second quarter, Illinois went 75 yards on 8 plays, ending with a 14-yard touchdown pass from Sitkowski to Daniel Barker. On the ensuing kickoff, the Illini’s Kerby Joseph touched the ball but couldn’t field it. UTSA recovered on the Illinois 21.

The Roadrunners settled for a field goal and led 20-14 at the half.

In the second half, the Illini’s James McCourt kicked field goals of 52 and 53 yards, his fifth and sixth career 50 yards-plus field goals, an Illinois school record.

HE SAID IT

Traylor: “We wanted to be the most visible defense tonight, and we were. Now we didn’t get any turnovers, and we’re sick about that. We dropped like five interceptions, we had balls on the ground we didn’t come up with. But we hit. We freaking hit on defense.”

Bielema: “They brought a lot of double-edge pressure, that’s for sure. Now we look at what happened today and get ready to go to Virginia next Saturday and play in a hostile environment.”

THE TAKEAWAY

Illinois clearly misses starting quarterback Brandon Peters, out with a left shoulder injury suffered early in last week’s win over the Cornhuskers. While Sitkowski, a Rutgers transfer, has shown promise at times, the Illini will need Peters back sooner rather than later if they want to contend in the Big Ten.

Harris was impressive, as was the Roadrunners’ defense, which bent but didn’t break the entire game. UTSA has only fielded a football team for 10 years, and the win over Illinois was the program’s first Big Ten encounter.

UP NEXT

UTSA hosts Lamar on Sept. 11.

Illinois travels to Virginia on Sept. 11.

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The boy was in the basement of a home just before 8 p.m. in the 8500 block of South Marquette Avenue when someone opened fire.

By

Sun-Times Wire

Sep 4, 2021, 8:46pm CDT

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Watch out, Bears. At this rate, Chicago might become a Frank Schwindel town.

A three-run ninth inning capped off by Schwindel’s dive into first base gave the Cubs a 7-6 walk-off win over the Pirates on Saturday, stretching their winning streak to five.

Schwindel’s slide into first base was so close that a video review gave the Wrigley Field fans a chance to sing “Go, Cubs, Go” twice: first in the aftermath of the play and then again after umpires ruled him safe officially.

“That was the loudest I’ve heard it here,” Schwindel said. “It was a tough spot coming in here, with those guys being so loved, and it had to be tough for fans, losing their favorite players, and really a bunch of guys they haven’t really heard of to help fill out, but today was unbelievable.”

Schwindel homered in the fifth inning, the fifth home run in his last six games and 10th of the season. The 450-foot blast was the first homer to hit the left-field scoreboard since Justin Turner and Willson Contreras both did it during Game Four of the 2017 National League Championship Series.

He was activated by the Cubs the day Anthony Rizzo was traded to the Yankees, and Schwindel’s recent play could be painting some of the 2022 Cubs picture.

Right now, Schwindel said he’s just enjoying the experience and not focusing on anything too far into the future. Still, how much he’s ingratiating himself to Cubs fans and people in the organization can’t be overlooked.

“He’s been great, there’s really no other way to slice it,” interim manager Andy Green said. “He’s done everything you could possibly want a baseball player to do. Now we just want to see it on repeat for a long time.”

Coming over from the American League, Schwindel had not played much first base at the major league level, but that’s an aspect of his game that he’s working on.

“I’ve always wanted to be more than just a hitter,” Schwindel said. “It’s important to put the time in to get the extra defensive work. We’ve been working a lot on the pre-pitch setup, groundballs and fielding, and paying more mind to doing the little things right. I’m getting more comfortable there every day.”

Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks could not make it past the fifth inning and showed signs of trouble early. He allowed a lot of hard contact — including a first inning Yoshi Tsutsugo solo home run that hit the right field scoreboard — and struck out only one Pirates batter.

In the fifth inning, a leadoff walk to Phillip Evans and a single from Cole Tucker set the table for the first of the five runs Hendricks allowed. Hendricks then issued back-to-back walks to Jacob Stallings and Colin Moran and hit Anthony Alford on the elbow before being pulled.

Hendricks has thrown 160 2/3 innings this season — fifth most in baseball — but he is not chalking up any recent struggles to fatigue.

“Just gotta get back to executing better,” Hendricks said. “Everything feels good, I’m just not executing. Timing gets off and just throwing way too many bad pitches.”

The Cubs scored their other runs in the fourth inning. Matt Duffy’s single and groundouts by Jason Heyward and Sergio Alcantara drove in three runs after Ian Happ (double) and Willson Contreras and Patrick Wisdom (walks) loaded the bases to lead off the inning.

The team’s recent winning streak is a product of the way they were playing in early August, even as they were losing big, Green said.

“They never took at-bats off, they fought to the end of every game,” he said. “Nobody noticed it because we’d lose 13-5 in some of those games, but we started to get a feel for the group as a whole that the fight was inside of them.

“You’re getting to appreciate that fight because it’s translating a little more frequently into Ws.”

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — What’s not to love about a 10-game lead in September?

Well, Liam Hendriks isn’t crazy about it.

“I don’t like a nine or 10-game lead. It’s the worst thing you can have,” Hendriks said Saturday.

Owners of first place in the AL Central since May 7, the White Sox led by 2 1/2-games on June 1, by five games on July 1, nine games on Aug. 1 and 10 games on Sept. 1. They led the Indians by 10 games going into their game against the Royals Saturday.

What’s wrong with that?

“Because you have the ability to take your foot off the gas and I don’t like that at all,” Hendriks said. “I would prefer to have a tight race, looking over our shoulder or above us to catch somebody. Because that means you’ll get in the playoffs raring to go and playing the best baseball.”

Like the 2019 Nationals, who used the last week of the regular season as a springboard to a World Series title, Hendriks said.

Jose Abreu said the Sox “relaxed a little bit” last season after they clinched the franchise’s first playoff berth. They surrendered first place to the Twins and lost to the Athletics in the Wild Card.

Hendriks was the A’s closer.

“That’s something I’ve been harping on with some of the guys here,” Hendriks said. “You guys, the 2020 White Sox, were probably a better team than the 2020 A’s but we hit our stride at the right time and they got a little lackadaisical and didn’t have a burst in the last week — and it showed in the playoffs.”

The Sox aren’t necessarily doomed because of their big lead, Hendriks says. He’s not seeing any letup in the Sox.

“Everyone has kind of learned from last year,” he said.

While manager Tony La Russa, who replaced Rick Renteria before the season, is taking advantage of the lead to rest players who might otherwise be pushing through nagging aches and pains if the Sox were in a tight race, his push to win each day is evident.

“To play every game as a playoff game” is the message received from La Russa, Abreu said this week.

La Russa won’t allow the Sox to get soft, coach Shelley Duncan said Saturday.

“Comfort kills,” Duncan said. “With comfort comes complacency and when you take your foot off the gas you lose your edge. All those fine details, you start to forget about them.

“I’ve always believed in playing one style all the time. Never focus on leads and always searching for perfect. And what I can tell you is there is no comfort in Tony. There is no lead that is safe. And he wants to win every single game, whether it’s an exhibition against a local club team or a spring training game or the seventh game of the World Series.

“If anyone showed any sign of comfort, it would be nipped in the bud.”

Over 162 games, after a six-week spring training, not letting up at one time or another is next to impossible. There is an element to pacing, but as Hendriks warned, beware the dangers.

“Because you win today, then you win tomorrow and the next day,” Hendriks said, “and all of a sudden you have built that momentum where it’s easier to start from level eight in confidence rather than level five. Because you’ve won a few games in a row, but you’re still playing day by day.”

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Most schools in the area won’t travel 20 minutes to Wilmette to play football against Loyola. Teams generally need five wins to qualify for the state playoffs and matching up against the Ramblers isn’t very likely to result in a win.

That didn’t scare Rochester and coach Derek Leonard. The Rockets’ Week 2 game was canceled due to COVID. They could have taken a forfeit win. Instead the traditional Class 4A school drove 226 miles up I-55 to face Loyola.

It was a bold move, something that will earn the respect of football fans across the state. Rochester is one of the state’s best football programs. The Rockets are 163-34 with eight state championships under Leonard.

That confidence and pride may have gone a step too far on Saturday afternoon. The Rockets made a show of planting their flag on Loyola’s logo at midfield just before the start of the game.

That might not sound like a huge deal, but the Loyola players were still referencing the slight three hours later.

“That gave us some energy for sure,” Loyola quarterback Jake Stearney said. “We are thankful they came all the way up here to play us but that thing on the logo got us fired up for sure.”

The outcome was never in doubt. The Ramblers rolled to a 56-7 win. The running clock started in the third quarter.

“They do everything,” Leonard said. “They fly to the football. They don’t turn the ball over. They do all the little things. And we didn’t convert. You can’t be sloppy. They are so big in every spot.

“I didn’t come here for respect. I thought we had a chance. We didn’t play good and they beat our butts.”

Loyola running back Marco Maldonado had all kinds of running space in the first half. He finished with 15 carries for 107 yards with touchdown runs of 31 and one yard. Maldonado had three catches for 112 yards and one touchdown.

“We knew what would work and what wouldn’t against them, it was something we have seen before,” Maldonado said. “It wasn’t too complicated of a defense. So we just tried to blast off right away.”

Maldonado didn’t take Rochester lightly.

“I knew who they were,” Maldonado said. “They had a real good team a few years ago that beat St. Rita. So I knew they weren’t a team to just take lightly.”

Stearney was 17 of 23 passing for 279 yards with four touchdown throws. Loyola receiver Danny Collins had seven receptions for 76 yards with one touchdown.

Rochester quarterback Hank Beatty, an Illinois recruit, was 15 of 24 for 118 yards and connected with 10 different receivers. He had a one-yard run for the Rockets’ only score.

Loyola coach John Holecek doesn’t think it is right that Rochester winds up punished for choosing to play a game instead of accepting a forfeit win.

“We need to have some common sense about this,” Holecek said. “They had a forfeit win and now they have a loss because they came and challenged themselves. What are we trying to reward? Common sense should make that an easy switch.”

Leonard agrees.

“No one would play us and I want to play every week,” Leonard said. “I understand that due to the IHSA rules no one should want to play us. They shouldn’t want to play Loyola. The IHSA should step up and say this is not a good rule for the kids.”

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George Pullman started the Pullman Palace Car Co. and founded the town later annexed by Chicago.

But the story of the Pullman railcar factory in the Far South Side neighborhood is one of workers, and that was on full display at Saturday’s Labor Day weekend grand opening of the Pullman National Monument’s visitor center.

Inside the former administration building of the sprawling Pullman company factory, which closed in 1982, the National Park Service’s visitor center features an exhibit with plenty of labor history, including stories about union movements at the factory, the Black Pullman sleeping car porters and a Black women’s council that helped organize workers.

A reconstructed workers’ gate on the park monument’s south end commemorates a historic 1894 American Railway Union strike at the Pullman site that led to a national labor protest. After National Guard members responded to the strike and 13 workers died, then-President Grover Cleveland turned Labor Day into a federal holiday.

James Kinney, having worked at the now-closed U.S. Steel South Works site years ago, was looking for those worker stories at the site — particularly on Labor Day weekend.

“It’s [important they] come through with the regular labor history and not gloss over it, make it all about Pullman,” said Kinney, a 69-year-old East Chicago resident. “You need that balance.”

Friends James Kinney, Tom Shepherd and Wayne Garritano pose for a picture outside the Pullman National Monument’s visitor’s center on its opening day in the Pullman neighborhood, Saturday afternoon, Sept. 4, 2021.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Kinney ran into an old friend, Tom Shepherd, outside the visitor center. Shepherd recalled exploring the building as a teenager when he met the girl who would become his wife. She lived on the other side of the train tracks from the factory.

“Our senior year of high school, she introduced me to this neighborhood,” he said. “This was all vacant and abandoned. And it was a cheap date back then because we’d spend a whole day just going through like an archaeological thing.”

Shepherd, an ex-president of the Pullman Civic Organization, said he remembered organizing the first Labor Day event held at the site nearly three decades ago, which prompted efforts to start cleaning up and preserving the building.

After walking through the exhibit, Ramale Smith, 43, said he felt the authenticity of the site was maintained.

“It looked like the 1800s,” he said. “You could see how times have changed.”

About a dozen visitors at a time walked through the exhibit because of COVID-19 capacity limits. Across 111th Street, hundreds gathered for a performance by the Jesse White Tumblers, and enjoyed food trucks and live music. Some went on Pullman neighborhood walking tours and visits inside the old Hotel Florence, named after George Pullman’s oldest daughter, that was used by Pullman, his family and associates.

Up on the train tracks that run along Cottage Grove Avenue, visitors checked out a set of restored, fully operational Pullman railcars at the 111th Street Metra Electric Station.

Robert Bushwaller, a board member of the Historic Pullman Foundation, one of the non-profits that helped spearhead the attraction, said he was encouraged by the number of people who showed up the first day.

“The public support has been better than expected,” Bushwaller said. “The turnout is tremendous. They remember so much from how it used to be and want to see if it still tasted that way, and they’ve been satisfied.”

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Two teenagers were wounded in a shooting Saturday afternoon in East Garfield Park.

They were outside a business about 3:25 p.m. in the 2900 block of West Fulton Street when two people inside a vehicle fired shots, Chicago police said.

A 15-year-old girl was shot in the calf and ankle and was taken to Rush University Medical Center in good condtion, police said. A boy, 12, suffered a graze wound to the hip and was transported to same hospital in good condition.

No arrests were made.

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At least 16 people have been wounded in shootings across Chicago since Friday evening, including a 4-year-old boy who was shot in Woodlawn on the South Side.

The child was inside a home about 9 p.m. Friday in the 6500 block of South Ellis Avenue when bullets tore through the front window, striking him twice in the head, Chicago police said.

Paramedics took the child to Comer Children’s Hospital, where he was in critical condition, police said.

Early Saturday morning, five people were shot in a single attack in Lawndale on the West Side.

They were among a group of people about 12:15 a.m. in the 1400 block of South Tripp Avenue when someone unleashed gunfire from a black Nissan, police said.

A 22-year-old man was shot in the shoulder and a 37-year-old shot in the back and lower backside, police said. Both were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and were listed in good condition.

A woman, 25, suffered a graze wound to the hip and another, 33, was shot in the leg, police said. They took themselves to the same hospital and were also in good condition.

A 34-year-old woman was shot twice in the leg and taken to Stroger Hospital in fair condition, police said.

Later Saturday, a 16-year-old boy with a gunshot wound showed up at Stroger Hospital.

Someone dropped him off at the hospital about 10:30 a.m. in the 1900 block of West Ogden Avenue with a gunshot wound to his elbow, police said. The location of the shooting was unclear, but police said the teen was in a vehicle when he was shot. His condition was stabilized at the hospital.

At least nine other people have been wounded in citywide shootings since 5 p.m. Friday.

Last weekend, at least six people were killed and 50 others were wounded in incidents of gun violence across Chicago.

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Maybe Hunter Johnson had time to blink, or maybe he didn’t. Either way, he was already in a hole and up against it.

Down 7-0 after one play. Down 14-0 soon after, then 21-0.

Northwestern’s quarterback could have folded Friday in what turned into a 38-21 season-opening loss to Michigan State in Evanston. He could have retreated into that old, uncomfortable space where doubts that he ever warranted so much hype live. He could have blown his second chance to lead a Wildcats team, and that would have been an unmitigated disaster.

Instead, Johnson pulled and prodded his team through a difficult, disappointing — but, because of his play, not demoralizing — game. And by the time it was over, there was no doubt whom the Wildcats’ best player had been.

Johnson completed 30 of 43 passes for 283 and three touchdowns, with no interceptions, and did all that while under constant pressure from a defense that knew the Wildcats couldn’t run the ball much and sacked him four times.

Around the Big Ten, the game will be remembered as Kenneth Walker III’s night. Michigan State’s shiny new running back, a Wake Forest transfer, raced for a 75-yard touchdown on the first play and finished with 264 yards and four TDs. It could be Michigan State — a game under .500 since making the 2015 College Football Playoff — is kind of on the way back.

In Evanston, the takeaways are different. The defending Big Ten West champs have plenty of early problems to dig into: poor tackling, less-than-stellar offensive line play, missed kicks, a complicated transition from longtime defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz to newcomer Jim O’Neill. But there are zero questions at quarterback: Johnson is their guy. And that comes as a giant relief.

“It was definitely a very promising first game,” he said.

Watching it unfold was so much different than watching Johnson suffer at Stanford in the 2019 opener. A former top recruit who’d transferred from Clemson, he was supposed to step in, sprinkle some five-star dust on the offense and make it sing. Instead, he endured a nightmare. He was intercepted on his second throw, pulled from the game after three hopeless series and back in the fire only after an injury to backup T.J. Green. In the final minute, leading 10-7, the Cardinal sacked Johnson, forced a fumble and scored.

“He will get better,” coach Pat Fitzgerald said then. “I have great confidence in him.”

But by the finale of a 3-9 season, Fitzgerald turned to his fourth quarterback, Andrew Marty, to lead the team at Illinois. And then Fitzgerald signed Indiana graduate transfer Peyton Ramsey to steer the ship in 2020. Johnson receded into the background.

So when he won the job all over again in training camp, the news didn’t come with a feeling of permanence. Fitzgerald emphasized that Johnson was the starter “for the opener.” But it’s his gig now. It’s finally his time.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Johnson said.

On Northwestern’s opening series against the Spartans, Johnson stepped into a third-and-14 completion — with a pass rusher closing in — that went for 41 yards to Bryce Kirtz. Just like that, he had his best play as a Wildcat.

He topped that on the offense’s next possession, floating a gorgeous deep ball along the right sideline for a 47-yard gain by Stephon Robinson Jr. The deep strikes ended there, but Johnson settled into an efficient, confident performance that included fourth-down conversions and led to touchdowns on a night when shaky QB play probably would have meant getting shut out.

“If we’re going to draw a positive today, I thought I saw a lot of growth from Hunter,” Fitzgerald said.

Anyone who watched saw it. Anyone who wondered if Johnson had it in him had to be impressed.

And that’s a good start.

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