What’s New

Anthony Rizzo left the Chicago Cubs a couple of years ago because they were never able to get an extension done together. He clearly didn’t have a preference on whether or not he stayed but he probably would have preferred to stay.

It was clearly a good decision to leave tho as he was put in a very nice situation. The Cubs made the decision to trade him to the New York Yankees which was one that clearly worked out well for Rizzo.

On Tuesday, it came out that he has chosen to make that his MLB home for the second straight free agency bid. He is there now on a multi-year deal after declining the qualifying offer that was extended to him a little bit ago. Rizzo is going to make a lot of money well into his 30s with them.

Instead of playing on this rebuilding Chicago Cubs team, he gets to play with the New York Yankees who are going to be perennial contenders in each of his seasons there. They needed a full-time first baseman in 2021 and they went out and got one. He happened to love it there.

The New York Yankees are in agreement with Anthony Rizzo on a contract.

Of course, the Yankees are far from done. Aaron Judge is the big free agent fish following a historic season in which he hit 62 home runs for the American League record. He is sure to make a lot of money. The Yankees definitely want to keep the face of their franchise.

They are known to spend good money and they have with Rizzo. Rizzo and Judge have become good friends over the last few years so this move might be a good pro for Judge staying with New York. That is surely going to be an interesting story to follow until something breaks.

Rizzo deserves this type of treatment. He is one of the greatest players that the Chicago Cubs have ever had. His time was done and he handled it with grace. Now, he is living it up with the Yankees.

If he can keep putting up seasons with 30+ home runs, 75+ RBIs, and an OPS over .800, he will bring great value and leadership to this Yankees team that is so close to being championship caliber. This is a great situation for him.

Read More

Last week, beloved Lincoln Park vinyl shop Dave’s Records announced some sad news: after 20 years, it’s closing for good. Store owner Dave Crain tells Gossip Wolf the last day will be in December, but he hasn’t confirmed an exact date. Crain opened Dave’s Records in 2002 in a former 2nd Hand Tunes location, and about a year and a half ago the whole building was sold. The new owners have told Crain they intend to knock down and replace the building, so even though he renewed the shop’s lease last year, he knows that the writing is on the wall. “Selling it didn’t seem like an option to me,” Crain says. “Starting at a new location, I thought about—but I’ve seen people move, and it takes a while till people figure out that you didn’t just close up. And then there was option three, which is the option I’m taking—which is to go out in a blaze of glory and get the records in the hands of all our fans.” 

Crain has been thinking about shuttering the shop for a few months, and he decided to formally announce it on election day. The closing sale kicked off with 50 percent discounts on singles and used LPs, plus a “buy one, get one half off” deal on new LPs. “I’ve been surprised at how quickly it’s turned into a madhouse,” Crain says. “It’s been, like, four days now, and it seems like four Record Store Days in a row.” The shop won’t participate in the actual Record Store Day on Black Friday, though it will stock a handful of RSD titles. Crain says he’ll use the shop’s social media accounts to post updates about further sales and formal closing-day plans.

Bassist-vocalist Katie Ernst and saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi are perhaps best known to Gossip Wolf readers from jazz trio Twin Talk, who masterfully stretch the genre’s boundaries with their graceful, breathy interplay between instruments and voice. But the couple also have an indie-folk duo, Edith Judith, named after their three-legged dog and founded in their apartment during COVID lockdown in spring 2020. Laurenzi added guitar, synthesizers, clarinet, and flute to his usual horns, and he and Ernst brought in Los Angeles-based drummer and producer Ben Lumsdaine to help finish the tracks. “These are love songs and question songs, hopeful songs and sad songs,” says Ernst. “They’re poems of uncertainty.” 

On Sunday, November 20, Chicago new-music group Ensemble dal Niente presents a scintillating program inside the lower-level “catacombs” space at Epiphany Center for the Arts (201 S. Ashland). Two dal Niente members, percussionist Kyle Flens and soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, will perform a program of solo and duo pieces that play with the acoustics of the space, including world premieres by Colombian composer Melissa Vargas and dal Niente flutist Emma Hospelhorn. Trans, by Chinese American composer Lei Liang, will enlist the audience to accompany Flens with “a chorus of small rocks,” and Luis Fernando Amaya’s Guerrilla de Dientes Entre los Árboles will bring aboard second percussionist John Corkill to join Flens in playing amplified combs, bottles, planks, and other objects.

Read More

Last week, beloved Lincoln Park vinyl shop Dave’s Records announced some sad news: after 20 years, it’s closing for good. Store owner Dave Crain tells Gossip Wolf the last day will be in December, but he hasn’t confirmed an exact date. Crain opened Dave’s Records in 2002 in a former 2nd Hand Tunes location, and about a year and a half ago the whole building was sold. The new owners have told Crain they intend to knock down and replace the building, so even though he renewed the shop’s lease last year, he knows that the writing is on the wall. “Selling it didn’t seem like an option to me,” Crain says. “Starting at a new location, I thought about—but I’ve seen people move, and it takes a while till people figure out that you didn’t just close up. And then there was option three, which is the option I’m taking—which is to go out in a blaze of glory and get the records in the hands of all our fans.” 

Crain has been thinking about shuttering the shop for a few months, and he decided to formally announce it on election day. The closing sale kicked off with 50 percent discounts on singles and used LPs, plus a “buy one, get one half off” deal on new LPs. “I’ve been surprised at how quickly it’s turned into a madhouse,” Crain says. “It’s been, like, four days now, and it seems like four Record Store Days in a row.” The shop won’t participate in the actual Record Store Day on Black Friday, though it will stock a handful of RSD titles. Crain says he’ll use the shop’s social media accounts to post updates about further sales and formal closing-day plans.

Bassist-vocalist Katie Ernst and saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi are perhaps best known to Gossip Wolf readers from jazz trio Twin Talk, who masterfully stretch the genre’s boundaries with their graceful, breathy interplay between instruments and voice. But the couple also have an indie-folk duo, Edith Judith, named after their three-legged dog and founded in their apartment during COVID lockdown in spring 2020. Laurenzi added guitar, synthesizers, clarinet, and flute to his usual horns, and he and Ernst brought in Los Angeles-based drummer and producer Ben Lumsdaine to help finish the tracks. “These are love songs and question songs, hopeful songs and sad songs,” says Ernst. “They’re poems of uncertainty.” 

On Sunday, November 20, Chicago new-music group Ensemble dal Niente presents a scintillating program inside the lower-level “catacombs” space at Epiphany Center for the Arts (201 S. Ashland). Two dal Niente members, percussionist Kyle Flens and soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, will perform a program of solo and duo pieces that play with the acoustics of the space, including world premieres by Colombian composer Melissa Vargas and dal Niente flutist Emma Hospelhorn. Trans, by Chinese American composer Lei Liang, will enlist the audience to accompany Flens with “a chorus of small rocks,” and Luis Fernando Amaya’s Guerrilla de Dientes Entre los Árboles will bring aboard second percussionist John Corkill to join Flens in playing amplified combs, bottles, planks, and other objects.

Read More

Read More

Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky riffs on the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty, and interviews politicians, activists, journalists and other political know-it-alls. Presented by the Chicago Reader, the show is available by 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at chicagoreader.com/joravsky—or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss Oh, What a Week!–the Friday feature in which Ben & producer Dennis (aka, Dr. D.) review the week’s top stories. Also, bonus interviews drop on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays. 

Chicago Reader podcasts are recorded on Shure microphones. Learn more at Shure.com.

Chicago Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky discusses the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty on The Ben Joravsky Show.

Read More

Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky riffs on the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty, and interviews politicians, activists, journalists and other political know-it-alls. Presented by the Chicago Reader, the show is available by 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at chicagoreader.com/joravsky—or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss Oh, What a Week!–the Friday feature in which Ben & producer Dennis (aka, Dr. D.) review the week’s top stories. Also, bonus interviews drop on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays. 

Chicago Reader podcasts are recorded on Shure microphones. Learn more at Shure.com.

Chicago Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky discusses the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty on The Ben Joravsky Show.

Read More

We came into the 2022-23 NHL season knowing that the Chicago Blackhawks were going to have a rough go of it on the ice. Kyle Davidson made it clear that a long-term rebuild (the right way) was taking place and that people needed to be patient.

Nobody really had an issue with that. A similar approach helped them win three Stanley Cups in six years about a decade ago. That’s not to say that they will win three or even one but they will be in the mix if they do things the right way again.

Things got off to a surprisingly nice start though. New head coach Luke Richardson has gotten these guys to play a certain way and it has led to them getting more wins in the early going than we would have thought.

It is exciting because now we know that if they play like this once they have more talent, they might be a really hard team to beat. However, when this group plays against an elite team like the Carolina Hurricanes, it isn’t going to be pretty most of the time.

The Chicago Blackhawks had no chance against the Carolina Hurricanes.

On Monday night, they lost 3-0 and it could have even been worse than that if it weren’t for some good play from Petr Mrazek in the net. He made 29 saves on 32 shots and his offense didn’t score a single goal.

One of the three goals he gave up was also a horrid giveaway by Caleb Jones. From behind the Blackhawks’ net, he tried to make a stretch pass but it deflected off the stick of Jesper Fast and landed on the stick of Andrei Svechnikov right in front of the goal mouth.

Svechnikov didn’t miss a snipe with that much time on his hands which was good for his 12th of the season. If anyone on the Carolina Hurricanes were to get the puck on their stick for free like that, they would choose Svechnikov as he is becoming one of the best snipers in the league now.

Most goalies would have given that up so you can’t fault Mrazek for this game. The rest of the team was shut down hard by Carolina and their goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov who earned his first career shutout.

Carolina just outclassed the Blackhawks in every way and they had no answer. There are going to be plenty of more games like this but at least we know that there is a chance that they will be competitive in certain games.

Their next chance to play is a Wednesday night game against the St. Louis Blues in Chicago. A rivalry game like that is always fun even though both teams are near the bottom of the Central Division standings.

It should be very interesting to see how it plays out. No matter what, the Blackhawks want to have a better showing than they did against these Carolina Hurricanes. Expect some big performances from Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane against St. Louis.

Read More

Justin Fields has been superb as of late, and it’s not just Chicago Bears fans ranting and raving about his breakout.

The national media is finally taking notice and doing a collective 180 on his future outlook. Fields has taken the league by storm over the past month, and although the Bears aren’t winning games, all is well in Chicago because of the quarterback.

Fields is giving Bears fans a legitimate reason to be excited about the future of this franchise. Finally, it appears that Chicago has the guy under center. After years of quarterback purgatory, Fields has come to the rescue.

He hasn’t just been good, though. He has been dynamic. He has been flat-out impressive; lethal, even.

With the way Justin Fields is developing, the rest of the league should be terrified of the Chicago Bears second-year pro going forward.

Again, Fields hasn’t only been good, he has been historically good.

Some of the accolades Fields has earned to this date:

Most rushing yards by a quarterback over a five-game span in the Super Bowl eraOnly quarterback in the Super Bowl era with multiple rushing touchdowns of 60+ yardsTwo longest touchdown runs by a quarterback in franchise historyOnly player in NFL history to have two rushing touchdowns, two passing touchdowns and 100 rushing yards in a regular season gameMost carries beyond 20 MPH this season, so far, per Next Gen StatsLeads the NFL in rushing yards by a quarterback (749)Tied for the NFL lead in rushing touchdowns by a quarterback (6)

All of these numbers are astounding, and prove why Fields has been lethal as a runner.

However, here’s the number one reason why the rest of the league should be completely terrified of Fields going forward…

Fields is an excellent passer. In fact, he came into the league so good, as a passer, that he was the most accurately graded college quarterback in the history of Pro Football Focus‘ grading system.

One of the best things that can be said about Fields, coming out of Ohio State, was that he had a higher CPOE (completion percentage over expected) than any other quarterback in the PFF era; higher than Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, Trevor Lawrence, Kyler Murray, Justin Herbert — higher than any of them.

Fields was so good at completing the difficult passes, in part, yes, because he was fortunate enough to have some phenomenal wide receivers. At the moment, Fields doesn’t even have the true alpha wideout in Chicago that he was used to having plenty of in college, and he’s continuing to make due with what he has.

At this stage, Fields is taking what defenses are giving him. Luke Getsy is calling more designed runs and option-type plays because that’s what the offense does best without having that DeAndre Hopkins or Justin Jefferson type of receiver on the outside.

But, notice that in recent games, Fields has actually gotten tight end Cole Kmet involved more and more. Kmet has become a go-to target for Fields, and is looking like he will finally pan out as that second-round stock type of guy the Bears were hoping he would.

If Fields has a lethal ground game, plus a go-to tight end and some decent wide receiver two types, he’s just missing the alpha wideout and some additional help up front.

Should the Bears get him those things next offseason, the sky is the limit for Fields, and the rest of the league should be on notice.

Read More

It may seem like one shouldn’t be too upset about the loss. The Chicago Bears are thinking big picture and the team’s front office has been clear that this year is all about rebuilding the roster to better position the team to compete for the postseason in future years.

It is about developing second-year quarterback Justin Fields. Indeed, general manager Ryan Poles has traded away the team’s two best defensive players in order to increase draft capital.

So, with the bigger picture in mind, it would be logical not to be upset about the loss to Detroit as long as Fields played well. For the most part he did save for a brutal pick-six and an anemic final drive in which his wide receiver corps and the offensive line didn’t do much to help him.

One could even argue that every loss is actually better for the Bears long term as the more the team loses, the higher it will draft next season.

Your humble author understands that. But I am bothered by the loss nonetheless. Some of it is pure emotion — it’s never fun to lose a divisional rival, particularly one like Detroit that the Bears have treated as a perennial punching bag.

The Chicago Bears allowed the Detroit Lions to come back and beat them.

It’s even harder to stomach when the Lions are arguably a worse team than the rebuilding Bears with a head coach who is on the hot seat and previously had never won on the road.

All that aside, what really bugs me is how they lost. A well-played game in which the Lions were one or two play better than the Bears? I could handle that. Same with a blowout. But the Bears blew a 24-10 lead in the final quarter.

They did it with some self-inflicted wounds such as dumb penalties and a missed extra point on a go-ahead touchdown. The defense also was shredded by a Lions attack that is competent but not particularly feared.

This kind of loss is hard to stomach for any team and it’s definitely hard to accept when you have a young rebuilding team that needs to learn how to win.

Some will say that the Bears aren’t at that point of the rebuild yet (many of the defensive players and perhaps a good chunk of the offensive line and receiving corps won’t be here when the Bears are ready to compete for the playoffs again)

Fair point. But some of the players who will be here when the Bears are expected to be good again were part of the problem. Jaylon Johnson had a bad day on defense.

New acquisition Chase Claypool was more ghost than wide receiver and he is young enough that he is likely part of the plan moving forward.

Rookie Braxton Jones had a key holding penalty that stalled the opening drive and forced the Bears to settle for a field goal. Only Fields and tight-end Cole Kmet stood out as future core players who had good days.

What really bugs me though is that rebuilding teams need to learn, at some point, how to win. How to close out games. Again, maybe the Bears aren’t there yet and maybe too many players on the roster just don’t matter right now.

But some of the ones that are supposed to matter in the next one to five seasons were part of the problem. Further, I believe that had the Bears held on yesterday, it could’ve instilled confidence in young players who are part of the future. Even at the possible expense of draft order.

I realize I am arguing a nebulous point here. It’s hard, if not impossible, to quantify how a game like yesterday’s affects future success.

It’s possible that it won’t matter at all and that it won’t be remembered by any of the future core if and when the Bears are back on the winning track. I also realize the frustration could fuel players and coaches (or at least teach lessons).

All that said, it still stung worse than earlier losses this season, regardless of Fields once again showing that is almost certainly taking the next step forward.

And not just for the “meatball” reasons — division rival, et cetera — but because it felt, at least when observed from the safe distance of my couch across town from Soldier Field, that while the Bears may have some foundations for future success, the team’s mental toughness is nowhere near where it needs to be. Especially when it comes to players not wearing the number 1 on their jersey.

Bad teams lose games they should win and that’s not always simply because of a talent disparity. Mentality and mindset play a part.

Yes, a loss like this will sting more when the Bears are closer to being good or if and when they actually are. But it’s still frustrating, even acknowledging the bigger picture, to see this team lose games like this.

Hopefully, those who pointed out that the big picture outweighs any given Sunday this year will be proven right. Perhaps I will be proven wrong over time. But it can’t help but feel like while this game was another step forward for Fields, it was a step backward for the Bears as a whole.

Read More

Read More