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The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in little over a week and came at the end of a burst of violence that saw more than 25 people shot across the city in 10 hours.

One by one, the family of Denice Mathis walked up to the police tape on the block in Englewood and reached out to each other. Some sobbed, others cursed.

Down the street, inside a two-story house with a gray stone front, lay Mathis and the bodies of two women and a man killed in a shooting that seriously wounded four other people early Tuesday.

Mathis, in her early 30s, was a mother of four boys and a girl, and had just taken her children to Six Flags over the weekend.

Also killed was Shermetria Williams, 19 and the mother of a 2-year-old daughter. She was set to graduate from Country Club Hills Trade & Tech Center on Tuesday.

The third woman who died in the attack was identified as Ratanya Aryiel Rogers, 28, who lived in Rogers Park, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s officer.

The fourth fatality was Blake Lee, who lived in the home and did odds jobs in the neighborhood, relatives said. He had recently lost his mother and grandmother.

The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in a little over a week and came at the end of a burst of violence that saw more than 25 people shot across the city in 10 hours.

The attack prompted Mayor Lori Lightfoot to say Chicago has joined a “club of cities to which no one wants to belong: Cities with mass shootings.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Lightfoot — as she repeatedly has done — decried lack of federal action aimed at “eliminating opportunity for criminals, for children, to get access to illegal guns so that petty disputes turn into mass shooting events, as we’ve seen over and over and over again.”

The Rev. Donovan Price, who regularly goes to shooting scenes to provide support for gun violence victims and their loved ones, said he’s never seen anything like the last 10 days in the more than five years he’s worked as a street pastor.

“This is the worst ever,” said Price, whose voice quivered at times as he spoke of Tuesday’s tragedy. “It’s worse now than it’s ever been. It’s devastating.”

Chicago police released few details of how the eight people were shot, but said it occurred when an argument broke out inside the home.

Four of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene shortly before 6 a.m., and four others were taken to hospitals, at least two of them in critical condition. A 2-year-old girl in the home at the time was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital for observation. She was not shot.

A witness told police there were two volleys of gunshots inside the home, hours apart.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

The first was around 2 a.m., when the ShotSpotter system alerted police to gunfire near the Morgan address, according to Police Superintendent David Brown. He did not say if police responded to the alert.

The witness heard shots again around 5 a.m., around the time officers arrived to find the victims. Police recovered shell casings inside the house and a large capacity “drum magazine.”

There was no sign of forced entry, Brown said. At least one of the victims lived at the address, a barber who cut hair out of the house.

Brown did not elaborate on the relationships of the victims and the shooter, or what the argument was about.

Brown said the victims taken to hospitals had not yet been interviewed by detectives, and the investigation still was “very preliminary.”

“All we know about this residence is there’s been several calls there for disturbances,” Brown told reporters. “Overall, the block where this residence is located is fairly quiet, not much activity going on that requires a police response.”

As officers worked the scene into the late morning, a crowd of distraught relatives and neighbors gathered along the police tape blocking off Morgan Street.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Mathis’ family said she was a devoted mother. “She was a good person — a free-spirited person,” said a cousin, Vickie Smith. “She loved her family.”

Mathis lived on the South Side, but the family didn’t know what brought her to the gathering on South Morgan.

A man who said he was Mathis’ brother said his sister had been to the house many times before. “She was a good girl — none of these knuckleheads,” the brother said.

Demetrius Williams said he was at home in Maywood, putting on a shirt and tie for his daughter’s graduation, when he heard she had been killed.

“This is unbelievable — a massacre,” said Williams, struggling to compose his thoughts as officers took down the crime tape around the Englewood house. “Why? Why did this have to happen?”

Williams still held the ticket for his daughter’s graduation. Back home were red roses and balloons that said “Congratulations.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

“All she wanted to do was take care of her daughter and be successful in life,” the father said. “She meant the world to me. That was my baby girl.”

Also standing and waiting for answers outside the police tape was Raheem Hall, who grew up in Englewood and always had words of caution for his nephew Blake Lee.

“I told him just to be careful out here. Stay away from the wrong crowd,” Hall said.

Blake lived in the house where the attack occurred. “He was a good guy,” said Hall, who now lives in Indiana. “He did no harm to no one. He was just trying to live his life as an ordinary guy.”

Blake had had a hard life, his uncle said, but he was also enjoying things recently, having traveled to Miami on vacation, his uncle said.

Price, founder and executive director of solutions and Resources|Street Pastors, spent most of the morning on the Morgan block, praying over the victims and their families as well as comforting people who lived in the area.

He said he spoke to a young boy who said his mother was one of the victims who died. “The whole thing is bad. There’s a lot of family,” Price said. “This is a terrible situation and a lasting and damaging situation for the South Side [and] for the city.”

Similar scenes played out through the day at the hospitals where the wounded were taken.

A group of about 10 people waited outside the University of Chicago Hospital, where a woman in her mid-20s was taken after being shot on Morgan.

A 45-year-old man said his daughter remained in surgery as of 12:45 p.m. The man said his daughter worked at Lawrence’s Fish & Shrimp.

After he walked away, several women began to weep. One woman dropped to the ground and buried her face in her hands.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

One person wrapped her arms around another and rubbed their back to comfort them as they stood against a chain-linked fence and faced the emergency room entrance.

“She got shot in the head,” another person sobbed on the phone as they walked away.

Outside Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, relatives said the man who lived in the home, James Tolbert, was “alert and coherent.”

Tolbert operated a barbershop from his home after COVID-19 restrictions closed down the shop where he worked. The 2-year-old girl taken to Comer’s for observation is his daughter, according to Tolbert’s sister, Michelle Tolbert.

Waiting outside the emergency room entrance, Michelle Tolbert said she learned her brother had been shot from a Facebook post and feared the worst.

“There were a lot of people putting up ‘RIP’ posts, so I was worried,” she said.

Hospital staff would not let her up to her brother’s room, but said Tolbert no longer was in critical condition. “They told me he’s awake, he’s responsive.”

Michelle Tolbert said her brother had a jovial “barbershop” personality and had studied to be an EMT before going to barber college.

“He’s a good person,” she said. “He definitely didn’t deserve this.”

The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in little over a week, and came just hours after gunfire erupted at a party in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side, killing a man and wounding two women wounded.

Early Saturday, a woman was killed and nine others wounded near 75th Street and South Prairie Avenue. Kimfier Miles, 29, a mother of three, was out with a group of girlfriends when two men opened fire about 2 a.m. Saturday.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

The weekend before, six men and two women were wounded when someone in a silver car opened fire in a shooting in the 8900 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue in the Burnside neighborhood.

There have been 390 homicides in Cook County so far this year, according to the medical examiner’s office, nearly 300 of them in Chicago. This time last year, the county had recorded 342.

Lightfoot blamed the violence on the lack of national laws that would curb the flow of illegal guns.

“When gun [laws] are so porous that they can come across our borders with such ease, as we see every single day in Chicago, we know that we have to have a multi-jurisdictional, national solution to this horrible plague of gun violence,” she said. “And that starts with eliminating opportunity for criminals, for children to get access to illegal guns so that petty disputes turn into mass shooting events, as we’ve seen over and over and over again—not just this year, but every year.”

Lightfoot bristled when asked how the steady stream of mass shootings might impact her efforts to reopen the city and encourage Chicagoans to come downtown to dine and shop and patronize the stores and restaurants in their own neighborhoods.

She noted that the Englewood shooting happened “inside a single residence” — not out on the street or in a large outdoor gathering.

“The reality is, our city is safe,” the mayor said. “And I stand by that. We have done yeoman’s work over the course of a very difficult year where every major city—New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Atlanta and on and on the list goes—has seen similar surge in violence.”

Pressed about the perception of safety, she said, “What I’m concerned about is the fact that people lost their lives this morning. I’m concerned about the fact that there are people who are dead in an act of violence that makes no sense to me.”

Asked whether she believes Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is doing a good job prosecuting gun offenders, Lightfoot pointed to what one of the state’s attorney’s top aides said about the Chicago Police Department during a recent webinar for reporters.

“The conclusion of her policy person was that the Chicago Police Department is arresting the wrong people who possess guns. I fundamentally disagree with that,” she said. “We are a city that’s awash in illegal guns. Those illegal guns cause deep pain and injury and death.”

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The Bears tight end walked away from a March accident.

Bears tight end Jimmy Graham was driving down a Miami turnpike in the early morning of March 4 when he saw a police car backing down an offramp. He moved his SUV over two lanes as he reached the top of a hill — only to see a disabled car in the center lane.

Graham, who said he was driving about 90 mph, had about 15 yards to avoid the car. He swerved left and was headed toward a bridge when he decided the only way to slow down in time was to flip his car. He turned hard right, tumbling four times before skidding for 100 yards on his roof, police told him.

When his SUV stopped after scattering sparks and glass, Graham, in his seatbelt, was fine. So was his vizsla, Ginger, who was in the backseat.

“It really felt like a game,” Graham, who was not charged in the single-car accident, said before mandatory minicamp Tuesday. “Everything was really slow. I can remember making every decision. I can actually remember my phone floating up in the air. I could see the time.”

Later, Graham checked the heart monitor on his smartwatch. His heart rate never got above 87.

Why would it? Graham is a stunt pilot in the offseason. In fact, he had his car towed to the airport, which was his early-morning destination, and did flips in the sky.

“I think football and a little bit of flying and all the aerobatics I do kinda trains the body and trains the mind to be calm and focused during those moments,” he said. “So I’m pretty lucky, just extremely blessed. …”

Graham decided around that same time he wanted another year of adrenaline. The 34-year-old thought about retirement. He even had a walk-off moment: as the clock expired in the Bears’ playoff loss at Superdome, his home for his first five seasons, Graham caught a one-handed touchdown pass and walked directly up the player tunnel.

The loss, though, bothered him. As he talked to Bears general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy, Graham realized he wanted to play another year. His body still felt healthy.

“I never want to outlive my time,” he said. “I feel like I can still be used and I can still be a weapon and I can still be a leader for this team. And help these young kids to make a run and to share some of my knowledge of what I’ve learned in this league.”

Graham’s 699 career receptions are tops among active tight ends, while his 82 touchdowns trails only Rob Gronkowski. Graham, though, has never reached the Super Bowl; he’s played in only one conference championship game.

“He wants to win the Super Bowl,” Nagy said. “That’s the only thing he cares about. So for him to decide to come back here and continue to play, he’s not doing it for records. He’s not doing it because he just wants to play a little bit more or get one more year in. He’s doing it because he believes we have the ability to be really good. He knows that.

“And he is a valuable, valuable piece of this offense in so many different ways — in the classroom, in practice and on game day — that just is worth every penny.”

In his two seasons with the Packers, Graham averaged 46.5 catches and 541.5 receiving yards. In the first season of a two-year, $16 million deal with the Bears, he had 50 catches for 456 yards. He caught eight touchdowns, though, after totaling only five in two years in Green Bay, and mentored rookie tight end Cole Kmet.

The Bears consider Kmet’s growth during the season a validation of Graham’s influence. Ten years from now, Nagy said, Kmet will consider Graham one of the best things to ever happen to his career.

Graham will be retired and doing airplane flips by then. Just not yet.

“I’ve got a lot of unfinished business,” he said.

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The Chicago Bears were handcuffed this off-season with the moves that they could make as they were already near the salary cap when the off-season began. The Bears operated the off-season  with an addition by subtraction  approach as they would often cut a defensive player to make room for an offensive addition. One candidate that […]

Chicago Bears News: Jimmy Graham considered retirement – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & More

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One person was listed in serious-to-critical condition and five others in fair-to-serious condition, Chicago fire officials said.

Six people were injured after a porch collapsed Tuesday afternoon in Austin on the West Side.

They were on the back stairs of a building in the first block of South Lavergne Avenue when the porch collapsed, Chicago fire officials said.

One person was transported to an area hospital in serious-to-critical condition, officials said. Five more people were transported in fair-to-serious condition, officials said.

This is a developing story. Check back for details.

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The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in little over a week and came at the end of a burst of violence that saw more than 25 people shot across the city in 10 hours.

One by one, the family of Denice Mathis walked up to the police tape on the block in Englewood and reached out to each other. Some sobbed, others cursed.

Down the street, inside a two-story house with a gray stone front, lay Mathis and the bodies of two women and a man killed in a shooting that seriously wounded four other people early Tuesday.

Mathis, in her early 30s, was a mother of four boys and a girl, and had just taken her children to Six Flags over the weekend.

Another one of those killed was Shermetria Williams, 19 and the mother of a 2-year-old daughter. She was set to graduate from Country Club Hills Trade & Tech Center on Tuesday.

A third woman who died in the attack lived in the home and was the mother of a 2-year-old girl who was there when the shots were fired, relatives said. She was not hit.

The fourth fatality was Blake Lee, who also lived in the home and did odds jobs in the neighborhood, relatives said. He had recently lost his mother and grandmother.

The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in a little over a week and came at the end of a burst of violence that saw more than 25 people shot across the city in 10 hours.

The attack prompted Mayor Lori Lightfoot to say Chicago has joined a “club of cities to which no one wants to belong: Cities with mass shootings.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

As she repeatedly has done, she decried lack of federal action aimed at “eliminating opportunity for criminals, for children, to get access to illegal guns so that petty disputes turn into mass shooting events, as we’ve seen over and over and over again.”

Chicago police released few details of how the eight people were shot, but said it occurred when an argument broke out inside the home.

Four of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene shortly before 6 a.m., and four others were taken to hospitals, at least two of them in critical condition.

The 2-year-old girl found in the home was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital for observation.

A witness told police there were two volleys of gunshots inside the home, hours apart.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

The first was around 2 a.m., when the ShotSpotter system alerted police to gunfire near the Morgan address, according to Police Superintendent David Brown. He did not say if police responded to the alert.

The witness heard shots again around 5 a.m., around the time officers arrived to find the victims. Police recovered shell casings inside the house and a large capacity “drum magazine.”

There was no sign of forced entry, Brown said. At least one of the victims lived at the address, a barber who cut hair out of the house.

Brown did not elaborate on the relationships of the victims and the shooter, or what the argument was about.

Brown said the victims taken to hospitals had not yet been interviewed by detectives, and the investigation still was “very preliminary.”

“All we know about this residence is there’s been several calls there for disturbances,” Brown told reporters. “Overall, the block where this residence is located is fairly quiet, not much activity going on that requires a police response.”

As officers worked the scene into the late morning, a crowd of distraught relatives and neighbors gathered along the police tape blocking off Morgan Street.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Mathis’ family said she was a devoted mother. “She was a good person — a free-spirited person,” said a cousin, Vickie Smith. “She loved her family.”

Mathis lived on the South Side, but the family didn’t know what brought her to the gathering on South Morgan.

A man who said he was Mathis’ brother said his sister had been to the house many times before. “She was a good girl — none of these knuckleheads,” the brother said.

Demetrius Williams said he was at home in Maywood, putting on a shirt and tie for his daughter’s graduation, when he heard she had been killed.

“This is unbelievable — a massacre,” said Williams, struggling to compose his thoughts as officers took down the crime tape around the Englewood house. “Why? Why did this have to happen?”

Williams still held the ticket for his daughter’s graduation. Back home were red roses and balloons that said “Congratulations.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

“All she wanted to do was take care of her daughter and be successful in life,” the father said. “She meant the world to me. That was my baby girl.”

Also standing and waiting for answers outside the police tape was Raheem Hall, who grew up in Englewood and always had words of caution for his nephew Blake Lee.

“I told him just to be careful out here. Stay away from the wrong crowd,” Hall said.

Blake lived in the house where the attack occurred. “He was a good guy,” said Hall, who now lives in Indiana. “He did no harm to no one. He was just trying to live his life as an ordinary guy.”

Blake had had a hard life, his uncle said, but he was also enjoying things recently, having traveled to Miami on vacation, his uncle said.

Similar scenes played out through the day at the hospitals where the wounded were taken.

A group of about 10 people waited outside the University of Chicago Hospital, where a woman in her mid-20s was taken after being shot on Morgan.

A 45-year-old man said his daughter remained in surgery as of 12:45 p.m. The man said his daughter worked at Lawrence’s Fish & Shrimp.

After he walked away, several women began to weep. One woman dropped to the ground and buried her face in her hands.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

One person wrapped her arms around another and rubbed their back to comfort them as they stood against a chain-linked fence and faced the emergency room entrance.

“She got shot in the head,” another person sobbed on the phone as they walked away.

Outside Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, relatives said the man who lived in the home, James Tolbert, was “alert and coherent.”

Tolbert operated a barbershop from his home after COVID-19 restrictions closed down the shop where he worked. The 2-year-old girl taken to Comer’s for observation is his daughter, according to Tolbert’s sister, Michelle Tolbert.

Waiting outside the emergency room entrance, Michelle Tolbert said she learned her brother had been shot from a Facebook post and feared the worst.

“There were a lot of people putting up ‘RIP’ posts, so I was worried,” she said.

Hospital staff would not let her up to her brother’s room, but said Tolbert no longer was in critical condition. “They told me he’s awake, he’s responsive.”

Michelle Tolbert said her brother had a jovial “barbershop” personality and had studied to be an EMT before going to barber college.

“He’s a good person,” she said. “He definitely didn’t deserve this.”

The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in little over a week, and came just hours after gunfire erupted at a party in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side, killing a man and wounding two women wounded.

Early Saturday, a woman was killed and nine others wounded near 75th Street and South Prairie Avenue. Kimfier Miles, 29, a mother of three, was out with a group of girlfriends when two men opened fire about 2 a.m. Saturday.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

The weekend before, six men and two women were wounded when someone in a silver car opened fire in a shooting in the 8900 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue in the Burnside neighborhood.

Lightfoot blamed the violence on the lack of national laws that would curb the flow of illegal guns.

“When gun [laws] are so porous that they can come across our borders with such ease, as we see every single day in Chicago, we know that we have to have a multi-jurisdictional, national solution to this horrible plague of gun violence,” she said. “And that starts with eliminating opportunity for criminals, for children to get access to illegal guns so that petty disputes turn into mass shooting events, as we’ve seen over and over and over again—not just this year, but every year.”

Lightfoot bristled when asked how the steady stream of mass shootings might impact her efforts to reopen the city and encourage Chicagoans to come downtown to dine and shop and patronize the stores and restaurants in their own neighborhoods.

She noted that the Englewood shooting happened “inside a single residence” — not out on the street or in a large outdoor gathering.

“The reality is, our city is safe,” the mayor said. “And I stand by that. We have done yeoman’s work over the course of a very difficult year where every major city—New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Atlanta and on and on the list goes—has seen similar surge in violence.”

Pressed about the perception of safety, she said, “What I’m concerned about is the fact that people lost their lives this morning. I’m concerned about the fact that there are people who are dead in an act of violence that makes no sense to me.”

Asked whether she believes Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is doing a good job prosecuting gun offenders, Lightfoot pointed to what one of the state’s attorney’s top aides said about the Chicago Police Department during a recent webinar for reporters.

“The conclusion of her policy person was that the Chicago Police Department is arresting the wrong people who possess guns. I fundamentally disagree with that,” she said. “We are a city that’s awash in illegal guns. Those illegal guns cause deep pain and injury and death.”

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Marvin Flanagan and his cohort apparently planned to rob Miguel Perez on Dec. 21 when they attacked him outside his home in the 2500 block of West Cortez Street, Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Kevin DeBoni said.

A 28-year-old man was ordered held without bail Tuesday for a murder that allegedly took place during a home invasion in Humboldt Park over the winter.

Marvin Flanagan and his cohort apparently planned to rob Miguel Perez on Dec. 21 when they attacked him outside his home in the 2500 block of West Cortez Street, Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Kevin DeBoni said.

Before Perez was gunned down, Flanagan’s brother’s girlfriend allegedly texted Flanagan, saying she was at a party at Perez’s home and that Perez had on chains and jewelry.

When Perez got a phone alert from his surveillance system, he stepped out of his garden apartment to check on the movement in the alley behind his building about 2:30 a.m., DeBoni said. Surveillance cameras from the alley showed Flanagan walking toward the building with a rifle, DeBoni said. Perez was also captured on surveillance cameras looking down the gangway of his building before he is seen raising his arms and falling to the ground, DeBoni said.

Perez didn’t have a gun in his hands when he was shot, but he did pull out a weapon and returned fire afterward, DeBoni said. Flanagan was shot twice during the encounter. After the shooting, he jumped over a fence into the alley and landed on Perez’s BMW, leaving his blood on the car, DeBoni said.

Perez, who was struck in the abdomen and arm, later died at Stroger Hospital.

Three different caliber shell casings were recovered, including a shell casing investigators believe came from Perez’s gun, DeBoni said.

Cook County sheriff’s office

Flanagan’s blood was found in other parts of the alley and inside the stolen Nissan SUV that he rode in before he was dropped off at St. Mary’s Hospital a half hour after the shooting, DeBoni said.

Flanagan’s uncharged co-defendant was allegedly behind the wheel of the SUV when Flanagan got to the hospital. The SUV was recorded by license plate readers traveling in the direction of Perez’s home before the shooting and later away from the direction of the hospital, DeBoni said.

The SUV, which was later found abandoned, sustained damage to its body and a piece of the vehicle was found near the crime scene, where the gunmen had apparently crashed as they sped away, DeBoni said. A “blood soaked” Nissan key fob was also found on Flanagan when he was taken into custody after he was treated for his wounds for an escape warrant in an ongoing 2019 armed habitual criminal case, DeBoni said.

While in jail, Flanagan allegedly discussed Perez’s shooting on a monitored phone line, saying he was struck by “friendly fire” and had initially tried to drive himself to the hospital, but lost consciousness and was moved to the back seat by his partner.

Flanagan also said Perez wasn’t supposed to come out of the house and that Perez’s gun “got real fast off his hip,” DeBoni said.

Flanagan told a caller he “should have just speared [Perez’s] ass as soon as [Perez] came out,” DeBoni said.

Flanagan had also been charged with home invasion in the deadly encounter.

Flanagan is also facing aggravated battery to a peace officer charges related to incidents during his latest jail stint. He also has prior convictions for burglary, armed robbery and unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, DeBoni said.

Flanagan’s assistant public defender argued that there was no evidence to suggest Perez was “ambushed.”

“What we do know is [Perez] fired a number of shots … there is really nothing to address what really happened out there on the street that night,” the defense attorney told Judge Mary Marubio.

Marubio told Flanagan he cannot contact any witnesses while he awaits trial for Perez’s murder, prompting Flanagan to say, “I don’t even know who the witnesses is.”

Flanagan then asked how he could know who not to talk to before he was told to stay silent by his lawyer.

He is expected back in court July 6.

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The Cy Young winner and longtime ESPN analyst knew of a team in need and, well, let’s just say it was a family affair he’ll never forget.

What else was Ryder Benson’s dad supposed to do when a team of 8-year-olds — signed up to play kid-pitch for the first time — suddenly found itself without a head coach?

Hunter Benson raised his hand because that’s just the kind of guy he is. Then again, the former Arkansas tennis player was no baseball expert. So he did one more thing: call on a San Diego-area neighbor, who just so happened to be his father-in-law, and offer the coveted position of Encinitas Braves assistant.

“And that’s how I became a coach,” said Rick Sutcliffe, the ESPN analyst, Marquee contributor and ex-Cubs Cy Young winner who turns 65 next week.

Technically, it wasn’t Sutcliffe’s first time coaching ball. After then-Cubs general manager Ed Lynch declined his request in 1995 to coach in the organization, the Red Baron trucked out with his family to Idaho Falls, Idaho, for a job with the Padres. They had a rookie-league squad there, and Padres president Larry Lucchino had been in Baltimore when Sutcliffe pitched for the Orioles and served as a mentor to Ben McDonald and Mike Mussina. Who better, then, to work with the pitchers?

But that assignment led quickly to a TV job in San Diego, and the rest is broadcast history. Coaching Ryder was an unexpected development, albeit a simple and sweet one. For Sutcliffe, it simply meant leaving wife Robin’s, daughter Shelby’s and younger grandson Austin’s sides in the bleachers, getting out on the dirt and grass and imparting both a ballplayer’s experience and some grandfatherly wisdom.

OK, so things at Ecke Sports Park weren’t quite that easy for the youngest team — by far, according to Sutcliffe — in a league for 8- to 10-year-olds.

“This was the first year any of them played kid-pitch,” he said. “We had three kids to begin with who, when the pitcher would throw it, would turn the other way or duck down. We got off to an 0-4 start.”

The roster also included a 7-year-old, who had to squint into the sun to see the faces of 10-year-old opponents, as well as a player with a prosthetic lower leg whose three-time big-league All-Star assistant coach calls him “as tough a kid as there is on Earth.” It also included Ryder, a right-hander whose arm is, well, take a guess.

“Electric,” Sutcliffe said. “He throws like a 12-year-old.”

But what did Ryder do on his first pitch of the season? Drill a guy, and not on purpose. Rattled, Ryder started walking one batter after another because he didn’t want to hit anyone else. It didn’t make things any easier that his mom had told him he’d have to apologize to anyone else he plunked. What to do?

“I moved him to the first-base side of the rubber,” Sutcliffe said, “which got him away from those right-handed hitters and kind of opened up the zone.”

Eureka! Before long, Ryder was starting to lock in and the whole team was coming around. Sutcliffe told them stories of being 17 in rookie ball — along with similarly young Dodgers hotshot prospects Pedro Guerrero and Jeffrey Leonard, to name two — and that team losing loads of games before turning the corner and becoming a big winner. Benson, meanwhile, hit on the perfect slogan, playing on his team’s nickname:

“Be Brave.”

It became the Braves’ rallying cry before every practice and every game. Hands in the middle. All together: “One, two, three, BE BRAVE!”

It took a while, but every last kid on the team dented the hit column and — lo and behold — some actual wins began to occur. That hadn’t looked so likely on opening day, when Sutcliffe sent photos from the diamond to a few pals on a text chain: ex-Cubs president Theo Epstein, Red Sox president Sam Kennedy and noted Encinitas Little League veteran Eddie Vedder, perhaps slightly better known for his work with Pearl Jam.

“Eddie went crazy,” Sutcliffe recalled with a laugh.

The Braves made the playoffs as the sixth-place team out of nine, then upset the third- and second-place teams. Only one “W” to go … but no. It didn’t happen. No championship for the Braves this time.

“But if you’d have been at our team party, you’d have thought we won it,” Sutcliffe said. “I know what the Cubs’ parade was like in 2016. I’m telling you, those kids out there had every bit as much fun.”

That party was Monday at a small community park in Encinitas. The kids sat together, ate, drank and received awards. Then, something special happened: the little ballfield there opened up. A game of Wiffle ball broke out.

Sutcliffe watched it all and remembered when, early in his big-league career, someone involved with a Big Brothers mentoring program in Cleveland advised him that five minutes of his time with young people was worth more than $5,000.

“For some reason,” Sutcliffe said, “that always stuck with me.”

At the party, he was presented with a gift: a coffee cup with “Thank you Coach Rick!” on it. And above those words, in big, bold letters?

“Be Brave.”

It’s exactly what he’ll be. After all, that’s his team.

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Notre Dame tests found 56% of foundations and eye products, 48% of lip products and 47% of mascaras contained high levels of fluorine — an indicator of PFAS.

More than half the cosmetics sold in the United States and Canada likely contain high levels of a toxic industrial compound linked to serious health conditions, including cancer and reduced birth weight, according to a new study.

University of Notre Dame researchers tested more than 230 commonly used cosmetics and found that 56% of foundations and eye products, 48% of lip products and 47% of mascaras contained high levels of fluorine — an indicator of PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals” that are used in nonstick frying pans, rugs and countless other consumer products.

Some of the highest PFAS levels were found in waterproof mascara (82%) and long-lasting lipstick (62%), according to the study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

Twenty-nine products with high fluorine concentrations were tested further and found to contain between four and 13 specific PFAS chemicals, the study found.

Only one item listed PFAS as an ingredient on the label.

The study results were announced as a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to ban the use of PFAS — perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — in cosmetics and other beauty products.

The move to ban PFAS comes as Congress considers wide-ranging legislation to set a national drinking water standard for certain PFAS chemicals and clean up contaminated sites across the country, including military bases where high rates of PFAS have been discovered.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also is moving to collect industry data on PFAS uses and health risks as it considers regulations to reduce potential risks caused by the chemicals.

“There is nothing safe and nothing good about PFAS,″ said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who introduced the cosmetics bill with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. “These chemicals are a menace hidden in plain sight that people literally display on their faces every day.″

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who has sponsored several PFAS-related bills in the House, said she has looked for PFAS in her own makeup and lipstic, but could not see whether they were present because the products weren’t properly labeled.

“How do I know it doesn’t have PFAS?” Dingell said, referring to the eye makeup, foundation and lipstick she was wearing. “People are being poisoned every day.″

Graham Peaslee, a physics professor at Notre Dame and the principal investigator of the study, called the results shocking. Not only do the cosmetics pose an immediate risk to users, but they also create a long-term risk, he said.

“PFAS is a persistent chemical,” Peaslee said. “When it gets into the bloodstream, it stays there and accumulates.”

The chemicals also pose a risk of environmental contamination associated with manufacturing and disposal, he said.

“This should be a wake-up call for the cosmetics industry,” said David Andrews, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, a Washington nonprofit that has worked to restrict PFAS.

The products tested in the study “are applied each and every day by millions of Americans. It is critical that we end all non-essential uses of PFAS,” Andrews said.

The man-made compounds are used in countless products, including nonstick cookware, water-repellent sports gear, cosmetics and grease-resistant food packaging as well as firefighting foams.

Studies on exposed populations have associated the chemicals with an array of health problems, including some cancers, weakened immunity and low birth weight. Widespread testing in recent years has found high levels of PFAS in many public water systems and military bases.

“PFAS chemicals are not necessary for makeup,” said Arlene Blum, a co-author of the study and executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute, an advocacy group in Berkeley, Calif. “Given their large potential for harm, I believe they should not be used in any personal care products.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates cosmetics, had no comment.

The Personal Care Products Council, an association representing the cosmetics industry, said that a small number of PFAS chemicals might be found as ingredients or at trace levels in products such as lotion, nail polish, eye makeup and foundation. The chemicals are used for product consistency and texture and are subject to safety requirements by the FDA, according to Alexandra Kowcz, the council’s chief scientist.

“Our member companies take their responsibility for product safety and the trust families put in those products very seriously,″ Kowcz said.

She said the group supports prohibition of certain PFAS from use in cosmetics.

Brands that want to avoid likely government regulation should voluntarily go PFAS-free, Blumenthal said: “Aware and angry consumers are the most effective advocate” for change.”

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