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Grade Ryan Pace’s draft:

Call me in three years … no two years — or better yet, Week 6 of the 2021 season. Justin Fields obviously is the key to this draft. Until we see the results, Pace gets a solid A for attacking the Bears needs as well as he possibly could — a potential Russell Wilson-type of game-changing quarterback in Fields and a Week 1 starter at tackle in Teven Jenkins. Four years ago, Pace’s first two picks were Mitch Trubisky and Adam Shaheen. Enough said.

How many games will Justin Fields start in 2021?

None. The Bears will meander through the 2021 season with Andy Dalton being good enough to keep the job and the offense won’t be near the disaster it was in 2017 when Mike Glennon was benched after four games. The Bears are determined to stick to the Patrick Mahomes/Alex Smith development plan, and as long as Pace’s and Nagy’s jobs are safe, they won’t rush Fields into the lineup.

Best-case scenario for Justin Fields:

He wins the No. 2 job in training camp, replaces Andy Dalton in Week 1 after Dalton leaves with a minor injury, invigorates the offense and sparks the Bears to victory; starts the following week as an intrigued Matt Nagy gives Dalton time to heal, and leads the Bears to another victory that forces Nagy’s hand. Fields has his ups and downs, but learns well and gets a baptism by fire that ultimately proves more valuable than a non-playing apprenticeship behind quarterbacks who aren’t as good as he is.

Worst-case scenario for Justin Fields:

He is unprepared for an earlier-than-expected opportunity after the offense stalls under Andy Dalton in the first four weeks of the season and is overwhelmed by the responsibility of lifting a dead-weight offense on his shoulders; his confidence is shattered, his developmental arc is ruined and his failure confirms that Chicago is a place where quarterbacks go to die.

Their best Day 3 addition was:

North Carolina wide receiver Dazz Newsome in the sixth round. A 5-10 receiver who’s tough enough — mentally and physically — to work the middle of the field has a great chance to succeed in a well-designed offense. And if Justin Fields eventually takes the Bears and Matt Nagy to another level, Newsome is the kind of receiver who takes to coaching and has the skill to ride that wave.

The Bears still need this:

A happy Allen Robinson.

Where do the Bears rank in the NFC North?

Third behind the Packers and Vikings. With Justin Fields slated to sit behind Andy Dalton in 2021, the Bears’ best hope to leapfrog anybody is if Aaron Rodgers sticks to his guns and doesn’t play for the Packers.

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CINCINNATI – Center fielder Ian Happ was removed during the eighth inning of Sunday’s 13-12 loss to the Reds after colliding with second baseman Nico Hoerner.

The collision occurred on a popup to shallow center field with Happ and Hoerner converging on the ball. As Hoerner reached out to make the over-the-shoulder catch, a sliding Happ collided with him, leaving both players lying on the ground in pain.

The Cubs’ medical staff immediately came out along with manager David Ross to check on Happ, who took the brunt of the hit. He was on the ground for several minutes, before being able to get to an upright seated position and being assisted onto the cart.

“Hearing the two of them coming together like being close to it. I don’t want to see that again,” Kris Bryant said. “Thankfully, he’s in there. I was talking to him and made sure to let him know that he had a great game.”

Hoerner would stay in the game and move to left field with Bryant moving to center field.

“I have not talked to the trainer’s yet,” manager David Ross said after the game. “I talked to Ian. He feels fine. Pretty, pretty good. blow to the face. I haven’t heard the doctor’s report yet, but I did talk to Ian and he’s in good spirits.”

Hoerner stays hot

Hoerner is playing like he has something to prove and since being recalled from the team’s alternate site on April 22, he’s been a man on a mission.

The 23-year-old infielder has picked up right where he left off during spring training and provided a spark in a lineup that needed one. He’s hitting .389 (14-for-36) with six doubles, eight walks, seven strikeouts and three stolen bases in 11 games.

“He’s a baseball player, man. He’s a really good baseball player. That’s what I love about him,” Ross said. “He’s always studying and trying to be better. He’s got a plan and he’s willing to do anything we ask. It’s a really consistent at-bat. You think a lot of us knew who he was and he’s out to prove something which is a really powerful thing.”

“Over the course of the season comes a lot of different feels,” Hoerner said. “But the good thing is that the work has been really consistent and pretty much maintained the same routines as the beginning of spring, which I haven’t always done. I have a great support staff here and really feel like I’m in a spot where I’m both learning on the fly in a really healthy way as well as helping the team win on a daily basis and that’s my priority moving forward.”

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So much for the Cubs catching the Dodgers at the right time.

The champs were in a 2-8 tailspin heading into Sunday’s 16-4 victory in Milwaukee. Then A.J. Pollock walked to the plate in the first inning and belted a grand slam off Alec Bettinger. Then Matt Beaty walked to the plate in the second inning and belted another grand slam off Bettinger.

Two in a game? It was only the third time in Dodgers history. Two in consecutive innings? That was a first. No major league team had pulled that off since 1984, when Bill Buckner and Tony Armas hit first- and second-inning grannies off Detroit’s Jack Morris, a future Hall of Famer.

It’s hard to imagine anything that could get a struggling offense going better than that — thanks for nothing, Bettinger — but enough about the Dodgers’ hitters. It’s their trio of aces whose mouths must be watering heading into a three-game series that starts Monday at Wrigley Field.

The Cubs’ bats finally started to heat up on a losing road trip through Atlanta and Cincinnati, but this is still a deeply flawed lineup that never seems incapable of putting nine innings of goose eggs on the scoreboard. And now come — in frightening succession — Walker Buehler, Clayton Kershaw and 2020 National League Cy Young winner Trevor Bauer.

It’s the best trio of starters in baseball, and it really isn’t all that close. No offense to — lots of luck, fellas — Kyle Hendricks, Adbert Alzolay and Jake Arrieta, the Cubs starters who will oppose them. Here’s what’s happening:

MON 3

Warriors at Pelicans: Marvel’s Arena of Heroes (6:30 p.m., ESPN2)

The regular telecast is on ESPN, but this version promises to “integrate elements from an original Marvel story and iconic characters including Iron Man, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Black Widow and Doctor Strange throughout the live game.” Look, don’t blame the messenger.

Dodgers at Cubs (6:40 p.m., Marquee)

Hendricks — 1-3 with a 7.54 ERA — is having a “perfect storm” of problems on the mound, as he put it after his last start. Perhaps he should spend his afternoon watching Game 6 of the 2016 NLCS.

76ers at Bulls (8 p.m., NBCSCH+)

Are we still doing that thing where we pretend the Bulls have a chance to make it into a postseason play-in game?

TUE 4

Champions League: Manchester City vs. Paris-St. Germain (2 p.m. CBSSN, Paramount+, Univision)

As if romping to a Premier League title wasn’t enough for City, which won 2-1 in Paris in the first leg of this semifinal matchup.

White Sox at Reds (5:40 p.m., NBCSCH+)

Ten homers flew out of Great American Ball Park in Sunday’s Cubs-Reds game. The Sox aren’t on much of a long-ball pace yet themselves, so, yeah, time to change that.

Dodgers at Cubs (6:40 p.m., Marquee)

Here’s a thought: Can somebody make Kershaw spend his afternoon watching Game 6 of the 2016 NLCS?

WED 5

White Sox at Reds (11:35 a.m., NBCSCH)

Dallas Keuchel goes against Sonny Gray, who finally seems fully ramped up after getting over a bit of back trouble.

Champions League: Chelsea vs. Real Madrid (2 p.m. CBSSN, Paramount+, Univision)

American Christian Pulisic scored Chelsea’s goal in the first leg in Madrid, a 1-1 draw. Remember, away goals are the tiebreaker in an aggregate format.

THU 6

Blackhawks at Hurricanes (6 p.m., NBCSCH+)

It’s the last road game of the season for the Hawks. Carolina, meanwhile, is trying to get its mitts on the Presidents’ Trophy.

Lakers at Clippers (9 p.m., TNT)

You can throw out the records when these rivals meet. Especially the Lakers’ record considering they’ve been mailing it in all season.

FRI 7

Celtics at Bulls (6:30 p.m., ESPN)

Wait, are those real, live fans in the stands at the United Center? It sure has been a while.

White Sox at Royals (7:10 p.m., NBCSCH)

We don’t know what kind of silly stunt the Royals think they’re pulling with this first-place business, but we’ve frankly had quite enough of it.

SAT 8

Philadelphia at Fire (noon, Ch. 9)

Each team lost twice and drew once over its first three games. If that doesn’t light your wick, soccer fans, we don’t know what will.

Pirates at Cubs (1:20 p.m., Marquee)

The Cubs have barely scratched out three runs per game over their first six meetings with the Pirates. That’s no way to avoid the NL Central cellar.

SUN 9

Stars at Blackhawks (6 p.m., NHLN, NBCSCH)

Wait, are those real, live fans in the stands at the United Center? Hawks diehards sure waited a long time, too.

FCS quarterfinal: Southern Illinois at South Dakota State (8 p.m., ESPN2)

The Salukis take on the No. 1-seeded Jackrabbits in a little thing we like to call good ol’ American football. Which reminds us of Justin Fields …

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CINCINNATI – In what might go down as one of the wildest games of the 2021 season, the Red and Cubs had themselves a slugfest at Great American Ballpark and a game with that much action had to have extra innings.

But after taking haymaker after haymaker and delivering a few of their own, the Cubs came up short in Sunday’s series finale as the Reds came up with the game-winner in the 10th inning to take the series.

“It felt like a playoff game to be honest with you back and forth and tense nobody given in guys to do to fight,” manager David Ross said. “I’m so proud of my team. That’s one of the more intense games I’ve probably ever been a part of, especially as a manager.”

Between the two teams there were 25 runs, 30 hits, 10 home runs and if it not for the new extra-innings rule, who knows how long the game, that felt more like a boxing match, would have gone.

The Cubs’ offense has started to come to life over the last week. In the three-game set against the Reds, the lineup showed that they’re still capable of putting together some big performances.

“Just a great game,” third baseman Kris Bryant said. “I know we didn’t win, but if I’m a fan going to a baseball game, that’s what I want to see. What did we hit, 10 home runs combined? Great plays, lead changes. It was just a great game.”

A big performance was exactly what they needed in Sunday’s game after starter Treveor Williams was hit hard and tagged for six runs over 2 2/3 innings in the loss, allowing three third-inning homers to Nick Castellanos, Mike Moustakas and Eugenio Suarez.

Bryant played the role of catalyst for the offense, getting things started with an RBI-double on his big day before crushing his team-leading eighth and ninth homers off the season in the third and fifth inning.

“These guys didn’t give away an at-bat today. I’m just super proud of my team,” manager David Ross said.

First baseman Anthony Rizzo got in on the action in the third inning by hitting a solo shot of his own. Shortstop Javy Baez added a 434-foot, two-run shot in the seventh.

Despite all the offense, things didn’t look good as the Cubs’ bullpen struggled to stop the Reds’ offense and after the Baez homer, scored three more runs in the bottom of the inning to take a three-run lead. But after scoring one in the eighth inning, center fielder Ian Happ sent a no-doubt three-run shot to the bleachers in right field to tie the wild game at 12.

The Reds would have the last laugh in the game as former Cub Nick Castellanos singled off closer Craig Kimbrel in the bottom of the 10th inning to give Cincinnati the 13-12 victory. It was the first time since May 28, 2006 vs. Atlanta that the Cubs played a game where they scored 12-plus runs and lost.

“This is one of those games where it really felt like it was back and forth all game. It was really who’s gonna blink first,” Williams said. “And as a Cub, it was incredible to see the guys pick me up and pick each other up along the way.

“Man, if we played a 15-inning ballgame, it would have been entertaining until the last out. So I think it’s one of those where we would have loved to be on the winning side of that, but aside from the loss, it was really great to see everybody pick each other up, especially the guys that that, including myself, didn’t have a great day.”

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Northwestern will promote Mike Polisky to athletic director to succeed Jim Phillips, according to multiple reports. The school will make the announcement Monday.

Polisky has been Northwestern’s deputy athletic director for external affairs since 2010. Previously, he was president and general manager of the Arena Football League’s Chicago Rush and president of business operations for the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League.

Phillips took the ACC commissioner job in December and finished his time at Northwestern in February.

The school’s search for a replacement was delayed as it investigated a federal lawsuit filed by a former cheerleader who named Polisky as one of four defendants, as well as the university. Northwestern filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit Friday.

Hayden Richardson claims she and her teammates were “presented as sex objects” at numerous events, including football tailgates, and were forced to interact with drunk and belligerent fans for the university’s financial gain. Some were sexually harassed on numerous occasions while wearing their Northwestern uniforms, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint states that Polisky accused Richardson of fabricating her claims and didn’t allow her to meet with Phillips.

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While smaller sites can cost less to run, it can be exceedingly expensive, on a per-shot basis, to vaccinate those in more rural or underserved areas of the country. 

The Oakley-Lindsay Center in Quincy — a five-hour drive from Chicago — became an unlikely go-to spot during the pandemic. The regional convention center along the Mississippi River has distributed 25,000 vaccine doses per month, including thousands to Chicagoans who had trouble booking shots here.

But the costs to run the mass vaccine site, even with new, reduced hours and lower demand lately, still run into the thousands each day, said Jerrod Welch, the public health administrator of the Adams County Health Department.

It’s $50,000 a month to lease the convention center. Staff are paid $20 per hour. At its peak, the total operating cost to run the mass vaccine site every month is $175,000.

Still, that’s far less than the estimated price tag for the largest mass vaccine sites across Illinois — about $400,000 a day. That’s according to a spreadsheet featuring internal calculations prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and obtained by the Documenting COVID-19 project in collaboration with the Chicago Sun-Times.

As millions in federal relief money flows to local governments, the spreadsheet provides a detailed look at how much it costs to run such facilities — from a small clinic handling just 250 daily doses to “megasites” handling 6,000. So far, Illinois has received hundreds of millions in FEMA reimbursements during the pandemic, including nearly $8 million to distribute vaccines at the United Center.

A megasite — defined as a facility at least 15,000 square feet in size — could employ as many as 304 people, including security, traffic control, vaccinators, pharmacists, IT support, translators and even legal affairs officers, according to the internal state estimates. Although the vaccination site set up outside the United Center meets the guidelines for the largest sites, officials have not released its daily costs of operations or indicated whether they approach the $400,000 estimate.

The state portion of the costs for the largest mass vaccination sites is $156,240 per day, the Illinois Department of Public Health said. The Illinois National Guard, which staffs many sites including the United Center, is currently deployed under Title 32 orders, which means their pay and benefits are provided by the federal government.

“These expenses are 100% reimbursable by the federal government, resulting in zero impact to the state’s budget,” IDPH said in an email.

The bigger the site, the cheaper the per-unit cost of the vaccine dose. Megasites can average $62 per dose per day, while the smallest sites, averaging 2,500 square feet, approach nearly $200 per dose.

Then there’s the one-time costs, assuming the vaccine sites are open for three months: the freezers, the message boards in the parking lots, chairs and tables, Internet hotspots. For a megasite, the one-time costs can reach nearly $1.5 million. For the smallest sites, $140,000.

And finally the materials: needles, syringes, alcohol prep pads, Band-Aids, gloves, masks, shields, oxygen, Epi-Pens, antihistamines. The range from small to mega, each day: $3,000 to $22,000.

What the spreadsheet and the Adams County figures underscore: It can be considerably expensive, on a per-shot basis, to vaccinate those in more rural or underserved areas of the country.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Demand for shots slows statewide

As demand slows to a crawl in some locations, some are asking if it makes sense to close the clinics — or move them to spots with higher demand. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker expanded eligibility to all adult Illinois residents on April 12, and “softening” demand across the state has allowed Chicago to get doses to most anyone who wants one.

There are at least 20 statewide vaccination clinic sites throughout Illinois that have appointments available to any Illinois resident regardless of the ZIP code they live in, according to IDPH. It’s unclear how long those mass vaccine sites will stay open or if they will reduce hours and staff.

In Adams County, for example, the health department is experimenting with pop-up vaccine sites — in rural villages, in thrift stores, bus stops, churches or food kitchens, with spaced tables, moving nurses and some car vaccinations. A pop-up in a town 13 miles from Quincy, with a population of just 750, vaccinated 50 mostly elderly residents in one event. Health officials said they were surprised by the numbers who showed — and how many said they “did not want to come to Quincy, the ‘big city,’ with its big processes,’” Welch said.

Other communities are trying to make the mass vaccine sites more accessible and appealing; the Rock Island Health Department, after hearing cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s recent COVID-19 vaccine performance, is inviting a musician to perform for an hour at its mass vaccine site to reduce post-vaccination anxiety. The Quad Cities Symphonic Orchestra is working at other sites.

But public health experts say the costs of mass vaccine sites or smaller pop-up sites can still weigh on some communities and, even with federal and state reimbursement, might not last.

“We will start seeing these clinics slow down,” said Dr. William Parker, an assistant professor of pulmonary critical care medicine who is assistant director for the University of Chicago MacLean Center for Medical Ethics. “If demand for these, sometimes difficult-to-access vaccination sites start to go down, I’m sure they’ll close up shop.”

Still, as vaccine supply increases and more people get vaccinated, the use of such megasites is slowing. The week of April 12, the Adams County Health Department opened the Oakley-Lindsay Center for just 16 hours. It’s now been reduced to 12 hours.

Some appointments cancelled

Robert Davies, the emergency preparedness planner at the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, said while the department is still calculating vaccination costs, it is seeking FEMA public assistance reimbursement for $130,000 to cover expenses from late January to mid-March. Davies said the reimbursement is intended to go to the health district’s community partners, who provided labor and a facility to run the community’s clinics.

Davies said as some of the initial vaccine demand has slowed, clinic staffing has also downsized.

“Some days, we have 250 appointments, other days, we have 200,” Davies explained. “Some weeks, we have a clinic four or five days a week. Other weeks, we have clinics just on one or two days.”

For those trying to schedule staffers and clinics, it can be a lesson in ever-fluctuating supply and demand.

On the Champaign-Urbana’s department’s busiest days, there are 16 vaccinators working on the ground, vaccinating about 1,300 people. The department has tried to plan for a larger number of vaccinations per day, but Davies said vaccine dose allocations have been unpredictable.

Sun-Times files

At one point this spring, in Springfield, upwards of 40% of those seeking the vaccine came from outside Sangamon County, said Gail O’Neill, director of public health for Sangamon County Department of Public Health.

That has slowed to just a few people from northern Illinois traveling upwards of three hours to get a vaccine dose, O’Neill said. But on a single day in mid-April, the department saw more than 300 vaccine appointment cancellations.

It was unclear how many of the canceled appointments were attributed to the pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — which was found to be associated with blood clots in a very small fraction of cases — or other factors, including residents who may have gotten the vaccine elsewhere.

“At least they canceled, but in addition to no-shows, we’ve been seeing fewer numbers,” O’Neill said. “So either people have gotten it elsewhere or have decided against vaccinating that day.”

Vaccine appointments in suburban and rural sites across the state are aplenty. Hundreds of next-day, second-dose appointments are available in Kane County, in a former Sam’s Club store. At the shuttered Shabbona Middle School in Morris, there are dozens of same-day appointments available, all the way until 6 p.m.

Kyra Senese is a reporter for the Brown Institute for Media Innovation’s Documenting COVID-19 project, a collaborative open-records journalism initiative made up of researchers from Columbia and Stanford universities.

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Set primarily on the court at the U.S. Open and punctuated by flashbacks that fill in the players’ histories, “The Last Match” feels like it’s missing a final, climactic scene.

Playwright Anna Ziegler defaults with ‘The Last Match” by creating nail-biting tension over a denouement she doesn’t deliver. What follows isn’t a spoiler, it’s a deeply disappointing dramatic flaw, made all the more frustrating because Writers Theatre’s otherwise all-aces streaming production makes you feel deeply for the players.

But after building relentlessly toward the make-or-break outcome of the titular tennis match that frames the four-character play, “The Last Match” cops out. Imagine watching a breathlessly close Wimbledon final, only it culminates without a winner being declared. That’s the sense of deflation “The Last Match” ultimately serves.

Fromm’s cast scores nonetheless because it is so intensely watchable. For Russian challenger Sergei (Christopher Sheard), American world champion Tim (Ryan Hallahan) and their romantic partners Galina (Heather Chrisler) and Mallory (Kayla Carter), everything rides on the U.S. Open match. Its outcome will be life-changing for all involved, its consequences lifetimes in the making. Tim, once named the best tennis player in the world by the New York Times, is now 34 and plagued by injury, self-doubt and personal tragedy. Sergei is the volatile young upstart who once idolized the American player but is hellbent on taking him down.

Set primarily on the court and punctuated by flashbacks that fill in the players’ histories, “The Last Match” feels like it’s missing a final, climactic scene.

Choreographer Steph Paul has Hallahan and Sheard in constant, kinetic motion as they spar and volley and relive key moments of their lives. William Boles’ set is net-less tennis court, a looming electronic backboard broadcasting neon scores (lighting by Christine Binder) as the players dart back and forth. Nobody actually holds a racket or lobs a ball. But between Hallahan and Sheard’s exquisite form and the whiz and thunk of Pornchanok Kanchanabanca’s sound design, it sure looks and sounds like they’re actually playing.

Throughout, Fromm uses tennis to explore themes that transcend sport: Failure, ambition and death, tennis as a metaphor for all. As the match progresses, “The Last Match” becomes both a joyful celebration of being alive and a grim look at the inevitable breakdown and decay of our bodies. Aging is inherently dramatic for everyone, but for elite athletes, it can spiral into a bona fide tragedy and an existential crisis. Ziegler mines the topic for all its drama.

Screen shot courtesy Writers Theatre

As the legendary veteran, Hallahan is a hyper-focused, tightly-wound, pure type-A, ego-driven super-competitor, trained to play through pain and anything else that might distract him from winning. Where Hallahan’s Tim tries to keep his emotions as tightly sealed as an vacuum-sealed can of tennis balls, Sheard’s Sergei wears his on his sleeve, as clearly as the blood-orange Nike swoosh on his gear. (Costume designer Noël Huntzinger provides plenty of subtle clues into character with her work). Sergei’s raw ambition has him cresting the apex, just as Tim begins comes to grips with descending it.

As Mallory and Galina, Carter and Chrisler, respectively, bring nuance and layers to the underwritten romantic interests. This isn’t their story, and both are ancillary. They’re memorable nonetheless — Galina all fire and ice and ruthless pragmatism, Mallory radiating warmth and generosity.

“The Last Match” was scheduled to run live last year, pre-COVID. As a streaming show, it has a cinematic flair that’s both an attribute and a detriment. HMS Media’s sharp use of close-ups brings an intense clarity of focus to intensely emotional moment, its wider shots capturing the grace and beauty of elite athletes. As the boundaries of the set blur into blackness in the wider shots, it strengthens the feeling that court is the only place in the universe, the players in a world unto themselves. The downside is familiar at this point in COVID: Watching alone at home is no replacement for the adrenaline rush of that comes with experiencing a live show in communion with a live audience.

“The Last Match” has many attributes. It’s a shame that its conclusion — such as it is — detracts from them.

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