Nassib could become the first openly gay player to play in an NFL regular-season game. | Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports
Nassib made the announcement in an Instagram post.
Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib made history Monday by coming out as the first active openly gay NFL player.
Nassib made the announcement in an Instagram post.
“I just wanted to take a quick moment to say that I’m gay,” Nassib said in a video recording. ”I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now but finally feel comfortable getting it off my chest. I really have the best life, the best family, friends and job a guy can ask for.
“I’m a pretty private person, so I hope you guys know that I’m not doing this for attention. I just think that representation and visibility are so important. I actually hope that one day, videos like this and the whole coming out process are not necessary, but until then I will do my best and my part to cultivate a culture that’s accepting and compassionate.”
Nassib added that he is donating $100,000 to the Trevor Project, which he called “the No. 1 suicide prevention service for LGBTQ youth in America.”
Nassib, 28, is a five-year NFL veteran who was selected in the third round of the 2016 draft by the Cleveland Browns. He played college football at Penn State. Nassib is entering his second season as a backup defensive end for the Raiders and spent 2018-19 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
He appeared in 14 games last season, including five as a starter. He has 20 1/2 career sacks.
Nassib could become the first openly gay player to play in an NFL regular-season game. Former Missouri defensive end Michael Sam came out in 2014 before being selected in the seventh round by the St. Louis Rams, but he did not make the cut for the final 53-man roster. Several NFL players have come out after they retired.
Debris from a home destroyed by severe weather is shown in Naperville, Monday, June 21, 2021. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times
The tornado appeared to start in Naperville, then cut a destructive path through Woodridge, Darien and Downers Grove.
In the early morning hours Monday, neighbors in suburbs across the Chicago area emerged from their homes after a tornado ripped through the area late Sunday night, damaging more than a hundred homes and injuring several people, including a woman in critical condition.
“Unbelievable,” a homeowner said while staring at a home missing its roof and a wall in Woodridge. The “craziest 45 seconds of my life,” said another. “You could hear the metal literally ripping off of the buildings,” said a woman in Darien. Others said it sounded like a train went by — overhead.
And then, “as fast as it came, it was gone,” as Joseph Palacios, of Woodridge, recalled.
The neighbors came together hours after a tornado touchdown was confirmed about 11:10 p.m. near Route 53 and 75th Street in Woodridge, according to the National Weather Service said. The tornado — packing winds of up to 135 mph — also hit portions of Naperville, Downers Grove, Darien and Burr Ridge, smashing cars, ripping roofs off homes, downing power lines, shearing off garage doors, uprooting large trees and spewing debris thousands of feet into the air.
Naperville reported at least five people taken to Edward Hospital, one of them in critical condition. At least 125 homes were damaged, 16 of them considered uninhabitable. In Woodridge, three adults were taken to hospitals, according to Lisle-Woodridge Fire District Deputy Fire Chief Steve Demas.
“It’s shocking to see the devastation — all the trees are just gone, [as well as] people’s houses,” Palacios said.
Palacios comforted his wife as she wiped tears from her eyes. “It’s hard seeing it in the daylight,” she said.
“It definitely is because it’s home,” her husband added. “Just to see it torn up, it’s obviously never going to look the same ever again.”
Earlier in Woodridge, Nate Casey, 16, strummed his guitar as he sat in a lawn chair with his mother, Bridget Casey, in their driveway around 4 a.m. Monday. The entire second floor of their house was gone, and their garage was destroyed.
The home is in the 7800 block of Woodridge Drive, one of the areas hit hardest by the storm.
Nate said he was watching TV when the storm rolled through. “I just heard a loud crash and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, what are my brothers up to?’ I go look and I see the sky, and then I hear my brothers screaming from the room.”
Nate, a student at Downers Grove South High School, helped his mother get his three younger siblings to the basement. He grabbed some of his camping equipment and scout gear just to be safe before going down himself.
“I just can’t believe it happened, you know? It’s not something that you see too often or at all, and it’s just scary that everything just comes crashing in,” Nate said. “Something that I was happy to see, that was not broken, was my dad’s ashes, but there’s really nothing else.”
Bridget Casey said she plans to live with her sister while their house gets repaired, though she doesn’t know how long that will take.
“I was just happy that everybody was OK,” she said.
A person who lives behind Casey brought her some personal items, including pictures and her children’s birth certificates, that he found in his backyard. “That means the world to me,” she said. “They didn’t have to do that.”
Down the street, Donna Suchecki joined a few of her neighbors in a driveway around 3:30 a.m. They sipped wine and moonshine out of blue plastic cups and talked about the damage.
“It’s overwhelming. All of us are like, ‘Oh my God, this really happened.’ It’s kind of a dream, you see it on TV, you see shows, you see stuff like that on tornados and … then you come out here and you see the cops, you see the fire trucks and stuff and you’re just like, ‘Wow,’” Suchecki said.
Heaps of trees covered Suchecki’s front lawn, but “luckily nothing hit” the house, she said. Her fence was smashed under a tree, though she said it needed to be replaced anyway.
Across the street, two cars sat on a slab of cement where the garage once was. Suchecki said it was uprooted and tossed into the backyard, where it hit a power line, leaving the block without power.
Rich Hein/Sun-TimesStorm damage in Naperville’s Ranchview neighborhood Monday, June 21, 2021.
“It’s crazy to go through this,” she said. “That’s a traumatic event.”
Debris 10,000 feet in the atmosphere, winds up to 135 mph
The tornado lifted debris 10,000 feet into the atmosphere, “a clearcut sign to us that we have a tornado of some significance,” said weather service meteorologist Matt Friedlein.
Based on the damage, the tornado’s wind speeds were likely between 111 and 135 mph, Friedlein said. Surveyors were inspecting damage Monday to confirm if other potential tornados hit areas including Aurora and Hobart, Indiana.
In Naperville, officials said there were power outages and gas leaks reported.
Crystal Porter was on her way home from her mother’s home in Joliet when she got a tornado warning alert. She said it took her five attempts to find a way to her home in the 2700 block of Everglade Avenue.
Ultimately, the retired military veteran had to move a tree to do so. After checking her dogs, Porter walked around the streets to assess the damage.
Porter, 27, noticed firefighters doing a search and rescue at a partially destroyed home and removing a cage filled with doves. With the owners not home, Porter grabbed a dog crate from her garage and rescued the birds.
“At least they’re not left out in the street,” she said.
Southwest suburbs hit, too
In Darien, Maureen Malloy recalls the lights going off around 11:15 p.m. Sunday as the winds picked up.
“You could hear the metal literally ripping off of the buildings,” Malloy said. “The wind was so strong that it was coming through the bottom and side of my door and it was blowing my hair back.”
She said that only lasted for about two minutes, but she waited until close to 1 a.m. to assess the damage. The entire street was blocked with trees, and a five-story weeping willow fell inches from her home.
“We are all very fortunate,” Malloy said. “These trees seriously could have killed somebody.”
Nicole Poletti was in the basement of her house in Burr Ridge with her husband and two kids when she heard a loud bang.
“It sounded like an explosion, and it happened in a split second,” she said. It was not until a bit later into the night that her husband was able to walk upstairs and see that noise was a tree falling onto their house.
She left with her kids to stay with her parents for the night, but Monday morning she saw the full extent of the damage.
“We have broken windows, damage to our roof, and actual branches going through our ceiling to our attic. A couple of trees fell onto our house,” she said. Their front yard and driveway were littered with so many broken branches it was hard to see the ground, she said. Her car was also completely destroyed.
Last year, a tornado touched down on Chicago’s North Side and traveled three miles into Lake Michigan. Winds of 110 mph took down trees and cut power to thousands, but no serious injuries were reported.
In 1990, the strongest tornado ever recorded in the Chicago area tore through Plainfield, killing 29 people and injuring more than 300. The twister cut a 15-mile swath on its way to Crest Hill.
A man was fatally shot June 19, 2021, in Goose Island. | Sun-Times file photo
He was in a parking lot about 6:45 p.m. Saturday in the 700 block of West Evergreen Avenue when someone got out of a gray sedan and opened fire, striking him in the arm, groin and leg, Chicago police said.
A man was killed in a shooting Saturday in Goose Island on the North Side.
He was in a parking lot about 6:45 p.m. in the 700 block of West Evergreen Avenue when someone got out of a gray sedan and opened fire, striking him in the arm, groin and leg, Chicago police said.
The 27-year-old was was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 2:42 a.m. Sunday, police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.
He was identified as Kenneth Hammond, the medical examiner’s office said. An autopsy released Monday ruled his death a homicide.
No arrests have been made. Area Three detectives are investigating.
An ordinance introduced Monday would give so-called social equity applicants the ability to set up pot shop in the restricted area that includes some of Chicago’s most sought after real estate. | AP file
An ordinance filed Monday would allow new cannabis dispensaries to move into the downtown “exclusion zone” Mayor Lightfoot fought for and has continued to defend.
An ordinance filed Monday could allow a flood of new cannabis dispensaries to move into a downtown “exclusion zone” where Mayor Lori Lightfoot has blocked pot sales.
In addition to giving so-called social equity applicants the ability to set up shop in the restricted area that includes some of Chicago’s most sought after real estate, the proposal sponsored by Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th) would allow those groups to bypass some of the onerous zoning requirements for cannabis businesses.
Villegas told the Sun-Times that his plan would help “level the playing field” for the social equity applicants, a designation created to diversify the state’s lily white weed industry.
Those social equity applicants await Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s signature on a recently passed bill that will unleash a flood of new licenses allowing some of those applicants to open 120 new dispensaries. Another 75 licenses created earlier are in limbo until the state holds a lottery to determine the winners.
Villegas’ proposal has already drawn the ire of some social equity applicants and it could set the stage for a battle with Lightfoot, who rebuffed another plan earlier this year to allow pot sales downtown. “We’re not turning Michigan Avenue into pot paradise,” Lightfoot told the Sun-Times in January.
Villegas, who previously served as Lightfoot’s City Council floor leader, argued that some cannabis businesses wouldn’t be out of place in the Loop.
“Some of the stores that are currently in place look like Apple stores,” he said. “Everything’s open for discussion. If the mayor doesn’t want to have Michigan Avenue, there are other locations that are near Michigan Avenue.”
Lightfoot’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The initial proposal has already come under heavy fire from members of the influential Cannabis Equity Illinois Coalition, which is pushing the city to first address other zoning issues and to offer waivers allowing “true social equity applicants” to open downtown.
Former state Sen. Rickey Hendon, a dispensary applicant and coalition spokesman, claimed Villegas’ plan offers an undue edge to firms like Green Renaissance Illinois, or GRI Holdings, a clouted applicant group that he doesn’t believe should have qualified for social equity status.
“They gamed the system, so we don’t accept them even to this moment as a social equity applicant,” Hendon said of the company.
GRI Holdings has been lobbying for the changes in Villegas’ proposal and others on the state level. Partner Thomas Wheeler, a former high-ranking Chicago cop, said he’s been working with advocates and policymakers for months “to ensure that we have the opportunity to succeed and compete in an industry that is currently dominated by corporate multi-state operators.”
Under Villegas’ proposal, social equity players notably wouldn’t be bound to a specific area or hindered by the dispensary caps placed on the city’s cannabis regions. The businesses would simply have to hold a community meeting and receive a special-use permit from the Zoning Board of Appeals. The plan would also allow social equity shops to open within 1,500 feet of existing dispensaries, a provision that mirrors a rule change included in the trailer bill.
Villegas said the changes could help maximize the city’s returns from the booming cannabis industry, which he noted is “ripe for generating revenue.” Chicago currently boasts just 19 of the state’s 110 licensed weed stores.
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A federal investigation led early last year to charges against Todd Blanken, Mettawa Mayor Casey Urlacher, and eight others. On Monday, a prosecutor even hinted that a well-known sports figure “whose name we all know” participated.
The feds say Todd Blanken played a key role in “an absolutely massive, long-term, very profitable” international Chicago-based gambling ring.
Their investigation led early last year to charges against Blanken, Mettawa Mayor Casey Urlacher, and eight others. On Monday, a prosecutor even hinted that a well-known sports figure “whose name we all know” participated.
But Blanken is now the latest defendant in the case to avoid prison time, as U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall sentenced Blanken on Monday to six months of community confinement, as well as two years of probation.
Though Kendall said the “absolute breadth of this case was remarkable,” she noted that Blanken had moved to Arizona, “made some tough decisions” and has “broken from this community.”
“I think that is admirable,” Kendall said.
The judge told Blanken his sentence means he will be living in a community center, but he will be able to work.
“I fully understand what I did was wrong,” Blanken said before he was sentenced, apologizing to his family and the judge.
Last fall, Kendall also gave three months of home detention to Eugene DelGiudice, an elderly defendant who Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Kinney described Monday as “seriously, seriously ill.”
Blanken pleaded guilty on Feb. 12. Kinney later wrote in a court memo that Blanken “played a critical role in the operation and management” of the gambling ring led by Vincent “Uncle Mick” DelGiudice, which involved more than 1,000 gamblers around Illinois and in other states. On Monday, Kinney said the ring’s reach was international.
Vincent DelGiudice is the son of Eugene DelGiudice.
The prosecutor wrote that Blanken served “as a trusted runner” for Vincent DelGiudice and two of his most significant agents — Matthew Knight and Justin Hines — and also recruited gamblers for Vincent DelGiudice.
Vincent DelGiudice pleaded guilty in February. Knight pleaded guilty in March, but charges are still pending against Hines.
Kinney said Blanken managed a number of gamblers and shared with Vincent DelGiudice “a generous portion of their losses.” He collected from two of the most significant gamblers who bet with Vincent DelGiudice, collecting regular payments of $1,500 from one gambler who owed about $600,000 to Vincent DelGiudice.
Vincent DelGiudice gave Blanken Christmas bonuses of $7,000 in 2017 and $12,000 in 2018, according to the prosecutor.
Meanwhile, Kinney said Blanken worked in the mandatory arbitration office of the Cook County courts, calling it “blatant hypocrisy” that “an employee of the court system was a key player in this illicit gambling enterprise.”
Blanken’s defense attorneys insisted in their own memo that “there is no evidence that any threats were made by him to collect any gambling losses.” They said Blanken has been working at Costco to support his family.
Debris from a home destroyed by severe weather is shown in Naperville, Monday, June 21, 2021. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times
The tornado appeared to start in Naperville, then cut a destructive path through Woodridge, Darien and Downers Grove.
In the early morning hours Monday, neighbors in suburbs across the Chicago area emerged from their homes after a tornado ripped through the area late Sunday night, damaging more than a hundred homes and injuring several people, including a woman in critical condition.
“Unbelievable,” a woman said while staring at a home missing its roof and a wall in Woodridge. The “craziest 45 seconds of my life,” said another. “You could hear the metal literally ripping off of the buildings,” said a woman in Darien. Others said it sounded like a train went by — overhead.
And then, “as fast as it came, it was gone,” Naperville homeowner Joseph Palacios said.
The tornado touchdown was confirmed about 11:10 p.m. near Route 53 and 75th Street in Woodridge, the National Weather Service said. The tornado — packing winds of more than 100 mph — also hit portions of Naperville, Downers Grove, Darien and Burr Ridge, smashing cars, ripping roofs off homes, downing power lines, shearing off garage doors, uprooting large trees and spewing debris thousands of feet into the air.
Naperville reported at least five people taken to Edward Hospital, one of them in critical condition. At least 125 homes were damaged, 16 of them considered uninhabitable. In Woodridge, three adults were taken to hospitals, according to Lisle-Woodridge Fire District Deputy Fire Chief Steve Demas.
In Naperville, while emergency crews continued going door to door check on residents, residents came in and out of their homes to survey the damage.
“It’s shocking to see the devastation — all the trees are just gone, [as well as] people’s houses,” Palacios said.
Palacios comforted his wife as she wiped tears from her eyes. “It’s hard seeing it in the daylight,” she said.
“It definitely is because it’s home,” her husband added. “Just to see it torn up, it’s obviously never going to look the same ever again.”
In Woodridge, Nate Casey, 16, strummed his guitar as he sat in a lawn chair with his mother, Bridget Casey, in their driveway around 4 a.m. Monday. The entire second floor of their house was gone, and their garage was partially destroyed.
The home is in the 7800 block of Woodridge Drive, one of the areas hit hardest by the storm.
Nate said he was watching TV when the storm rolled through. “I just heard a loud crash and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, what are my brothers up to?’ I go look and I see the sky, and then I hear my brothers screaming from the room.”
Nate, a student at Downers Grove South High School, helped his mother get his three younger siblings to the basement. He grabbed some of his camping equipment and scout gear just to be safe before going down himself.
“I just can’t believe it happened, you know? It’s not something that you see too often or at all, and it’s just scary that everything just comes crashing in,” Nate said. “Something that I was happy to see, that was not broken, was my dad’s ashes, but there’s really nothing else.”
HIs mother Bridget Casey said she plans to live with her sister while their house gets repaired, though she doesn’t know how long that will take.
“I was just happy that everybody was OK,” she said.
A person who lives behind Casey, brought her some personal items, including pictures and her children’s birth certificates, that he found in his backyard. “That means the world to me,” she said. “They didn’t have to do that.”
Down the street, Donna Suchecki joined a few of her neighbors in a driveway around 3:30 a.m. They sipped wine and moonshine out of blue plastic cups and talked about the damage.
“It’s overwhelming. All of us are like, ‘Oh my God, this really happened.’ It’s kind of a dream, you see it on TV, you see shows, you see stuff like that on tornados and … then you come out here and you see the cops, you see the fire trucks and stuff and you’re just like, ‘Wow,’” Suchecki said.
Heaps of trees covered Suchecki’s front lawn, but “luckily nothing hit” the house, she said. Her fence was smashed under a tree, though she said it needed to be replaced anyway.
Across the street, two cars sat untouched on a slab of cement where the garage once was. Suchecki said it was uprooted and tossed into the backyard, where it hit a power line, leaving the block without power.
Rich Hein/Sun-TimesStorm damage in Naperville’s Ranchview neighborhood Monday, June 21, 2021.
“It’s crazy to go through this,” she said. “That’s a traumatic event.”
Debris 10,000 feet in the atmosphere, winds up to 135 mph
The tornado lifted debris 10,000 feet into the atmosphere, “a clearcut sign to us that we have a tornado of some significance,” said weather service meteorologist Matt Friedlein.
Based on the damage, the tornado’s wind speeds were likely between 111 and 135 mph, Friedlein said. Surveyors were inspecting damage Monday to confirm if other potential tornados hit areas including Aurora and Hobart, Indiana.
In Naperville, officials said there were power outages and gas leaks reported.
Crystal Porter was on her way home from her mother’s home in Joliet when she got a tornado warning alert. She said it took her five attempts to find a way to her home in the 2700 block of Everglade Avenue.
Ultimately, the retired military veteran had to move a tree to do so. After checking her dogs, Porter walked around the streets to assess the damage.
Porter, 27, noticed firefighters doing a search and rescue at a partially destroyed home and removing a cage filled with doves. With the owners not home, Porter grabbed a dog crate from her garage and rescued the birds.
“At least they’re not left out in the street,” she said.
Southwest suburbs hit, too
In Darien, Maureen Malloy recalls the lights going off around 11:15 p.m. Sunday as the winds picked up.
“You could hear the metal literally ripping off of the buildings,” Malloy said. “The wind was so strong that it was coming through the bottom and side of my door and it was blowing my hair back.”
She said that only lasted for about two minutes, but she waited until close to 1 a.m. to assess the damage. The entire street was blocked with trees, and a five-story weeping willow fell inches from her home.
“We are all very fortunate,” Malloy said. “These trees seriously could have killed somebody.”
Nicole Poletti was in the basement of her house in Burr Ridge with her husband and two kids when she heard a loud bang.
“It sounded like an explosion, and it happened in a split second,” she said. It was not until a bit later into the night that her husband was able to walk upstairs and see that noise was a tree falling onto their house.
She left with her kids to stay with her parents for the night, but Monday morning she saw the full extent of the damage.
“We have broken windows, damage to our roof, and actual branches going through our ceiling to our attic. A couple of trees fell onto our house,” she said. Their front yard and driveway were littered with so many broken branches it was hard to see the ground, she said. Her car was also completely destroyed.
Last year, a tornado touched down on Chicago’s North Side and traveled three miles into Lake Michigan. Winds of 110 mph took down trees and cut power to thousands, but no serious injuries were reported.
In 1990, the strongest tornado ever recorded in the Chicago area tore through Plainfield, killing 29 people and injuring more than 300. The twister cut a 15-mile swath on its way to Crest Hill.
A man was shot dead June 21, 2021, in East Garfield Park. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
The 23-year-old was in a vehicle about 3:40 p.m. in the 3400 block of West Walnut Street when another vehicle pulled up alongside and someone inside opened fire, Chicago police said.
A man was killed in a shooting Monday in East Garfield Park.
The 23-year-old was in a vehicle about 3:40 p.m. in the 3400 block of West Walnut Street when a vehicle pulled up alongside and someone inside opened fire, Chicago police said.
The man was struck in the neck and back, police said. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
A month before the rescheduled 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the USA women’s basketball roster was announced in front of a national audience on NBC’s Today show.
The team, playing for its seventh straight Olympic gold medal, is headlined by now five-time Olympians Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi and three-time Olympic gold medalist and the first Black woman to lead the national team, coach Dawn Staley.
Bird, Taurasi and Staley’s Olympic experience together goes way back. The 2004 games in Athens, Greece, were Bird and Taurasi’s first Olympics and Staley’s last as a player.
“They had the time of their lives,” Staley said laughing. “They partied. They stayed up all night. They did it all because they relied on us to get us where we needed to go. But there are also some lessons in that.”
Staley said the veterans on the 2004 Olympic team had conversations with Bird and Taurasi ahead of the medal rounds and told them this is when they needed to focus because they could be tapped to contribute. Staley expects the younger players on this team will play immediately.
Taurasi said Staley is the best person to lead this team into Tokyo.
After fracturing her sternum in late May, Taurasi had some minor anxiety about what that meant for her Olympic future. When she sat with doctors who told her she’d be back weeks before the Olympics, she knew she’d be fine. Staley said Taurasi, who expects to be back playing for the Phoenix Mercury on Sunday, has always been able to beat the odds when it comes to injury.
She didn’t question if Taurasi would be ready.
“She’s mentally tougher than any player I’ve been around,” Staley said.
Taurasi and Bird join an elite list of just six other athletes worldwide that have competed in five Olympic basketball competitions.
This 2020 team features six first-time Olympians (Jewell Loyd, A’ja Wilson, Ariel Atkins, Napheesa Collier, Skylar Diggins-Smith and Chelsea Gray), two who will be competing in their second (Brittney Griner and Breanna Stewart), one three-time Olympian (Tina Charles) and a four-time Olympian (Sylvia Fowles).
Diamond DeShields, Kahleah Copper and Stefanie Dolson who all participated in the national team’s minicamp in March did not make the final roster. Dolson could still represent Team USA for the 3×3 competition. That final roster is forthcoming.
The frontcourt is where most of the experience lies with former Sky second-overall pick and three-time WNBA All-Star in a Sky uniform, Sylvia Fowles leading the way.
Sylvia Fowles made her Olympic debut in 2008, her rookie year, and if someone had told her 13 years later she’d be playing for her fourth gold medal she would have called their bluff.
There are a lot of different combinations that the frontcourt can establish.
“I definitely wouldn’t want to go up against us that’s for sure,” Griner said.
Olympic veterans like Taurasi, Fowles and Griner noted that every time they have received the call saying they will once again represent Team USA at the Olympics, it’s special and no two Olympic experiences are the same.
Team USA’s final training camp will take place from July 12-18 in Las Vegas. They will play the WNBA All-Stars on July 14 and finish up Pre-Olympic play with two exhibition games against Australia on July 16 and Nigeria on July 18.
The 2020 Olympic games run from July 23 to Aug. 8.
“Once we’re there, we’re there for a reason,” Taurasi said.
PITTSBURGH — Dallas Keuchel, Lance Lynn and Adam Eaton have World Series rings. White Sox manager Tony La Russa has three.
Closer Liam Hendriks and everyone else on the Sox roster?
None.
That will have to change, Hendriks said.
“My nearest taste of it was getting into the ALCS in 2015 with the Athletics, the DS [division series] last year and the wild card in 2018,” Hendriks said “I want to make sure I get that ring and put it on a wall. That’s what everyone strives for.”
Signed by the Sox to a four-year, $54 million contract in the offseason as a measure to make that happen, Hendriks is set financially. He doesn’t want to be known as someone with deep pockets, though. He wants to be known as someone who wants to pocket a championship ring.
“The guys who go into a season looking to get paid, get a contract, they tend not to be the guys everyone respects in the clubhouse,” Hendriks said. “The guys who want to get a trophy are the guys everyone gravitates toward. That’s been my goal the last how many years. Numbers don’t matter, it’s making sure you’re getting that last out of the season and being on top.”
The American League Reliever of the Month for May, Hendriks has numbers that matter to the Sox, though. He has an AL best 18 saves in 21 save opportunities with a 2.08 ERA, although he hasn’t had a game to close since a 3-0 win over the Rays on Wednesday. Opening a stretch of 18 games to the All-Star break against teams under .500, the AL Central-leading Sox take on the Pirates for two games in Pittsburgh. The Sox are coming off a four-game sweep in Houston that presented no save chances for Hendriks, who pitched a scoreless ninth inning with two strikeouts in an 8-2 loss Sunday just to get some work in.
Early on in spring training, Hendriks made it clear he wants to pitch a lot, and he made his personality known, needling team leader Tim Anderson (and getting it back from the Sox shortstop) and screaming profanities on the mound, in live batting practices, bullpen warmups and games. It’s hard on the ears, but it’s the Hendriks way of getting himself engaged in the heat of competition.
Fellow reliever Codi Heuer said he likes how Hendriks brings energy every day.
“He’s electric,” Heuer said.
“That’s who he is, that’s how he works. Everyone has their own alter ego out on the mound, you have to. He might be crazy, but he’s our crazy guy. I love watching him close out a game and lose his mind. The emotion, it’s contagious. You see guys like Evan Marshall go out there and pitch with emotion, too, and I try to go out and do the same.”
Hendriks knows he will grate on teammates, too. That’s one reason why he took his Lego hobby into the home clubhouse and puts the earbuds on, knowing his teammates handle him better in limited doses. He waits to join the others in the bullpen till later in the game, too.
Assistant pitching coach Curt Hasler, who is stationed in the bullpen during games, says Hendriks is “a breath of fresh air.”
“He’s a huge asset, that’s obvious, because of his ability,” Hasler said. “But he keeps things light. When it comes time to prepare, he watches a ton of video and come the seventh, eighth inning he gets more serious. He knows how to do it, when to do it.”
“I hope I give off that aura,” Hendriks said. “Winning is the most important thing to me and has been for many years. That’s why the White Sox were a great fit, regardless of the contract. This is a chance to win not only this year but the next four.”
SOX AT PIRATES
Tuesday: Lucas Giolito (5-5, 3.86) vs. Tyler Anderson (3-7, 4.89), 6:05 p.m., NBCSCH, 1000-AM
Wednesday: Dylan Cease (5-3, 3.99) vs. Chase De Jong (0-1, 4.26), 11:35 a.m., NBCSCH, 1000-AM
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