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“It’s a testament to him and the work he’s put in,” Ethan Katz said.

Carlos Rodon’s attempt to join Johnny “No-Hit” Vander Meer will come Monday morning. That’s when he’s scheduled for his next start, against the Red Sox in Boston in a 10:10 a.m. start from Fenway Park.

Vander Meer is the only pitcher to throw consecutive no-hitters. He did it with the Reds in 1938 against the Boston Bees and Brooklyn Dodgers. And while the odds of Rodon pulling off that feat are astronomical, the expectations for a pitcher who had to win a job as the White Sox’ No. 5 starter in spring training are beginning to soar.

A no-hitter and near-perfect game will do that.

“He can be really good,” pitching coach Ethan Katz said Thursday after Rodon came within two outs of a perfect game while pitching the 20th no-hitter in Sox history against the Indians on Wednesday night. “He could be one of the best pitchers in the American League, or baseball, if he stays healthy.”

That was the expectation when Rodon was drafted third overall by the Sox in 2014. Injuries ruined his chances of meeting it. But throughout a healthy spring and in two starts without allowing a run, Rodon looks like a bargain for the $3 million he was signed for in the offseason.

He is the first pitcher in AL history to win his first two starts of a season while allowing two hits or fewer.

“It’s a testament to him and the work he’s put in,” said Katz, who tweaked Rodon’s delivery after he was hired during the offseason. “He’s had a lot of adversity. He battled. I’m really excited to see, as this year goes on, what he’s able to do because obviously last night was unbelievable. But he’s been throwing the ball really well since the first day of spring training.”

Rodon, known for a premium slider, did not strike out a batter his first time through the Indians’ lineup. He relied more on his changeup early, mixed in some sliders and commanded his fastball, which improved as the game wore on. Such diversification — he threw 57 four-seam fastballs, 28 sliders, 27 changeups and three curveballs.

He touched 98 mph in the ninth inning, reaching velocity numbers he hasn’t seen in years.

“His direction toward home plate is significantly better to where he has the ability to be in the strike zone consistently as well as being able to shape his secondary stuff in and out of the zone where he wants it,” Katz said.

“He made a lot of delivery changes, but I also think the one thing for him is he’s feeling good all the time.”

Rodon is the sixth pitcher in MLB history to throw a no-hitter with the only baserunner reaching on a hit by pitch (former Sox right-hander Joe Horlen is on that list). And he’s the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter within two years of having Tommy John surgery.

Rodon, who also had shoulder surgery, had his Tommy John procedure on May 15, 2019.

“There’s a good list of people that go into this,” Rodon said. “I’m blessed to be able to still play this game. I was non-tendered. A lot of people were out on me. I know this is just the second start of the year, and hopefully there’s more to come. It’s a special moment. A lot of people should be proud because they helped me do this.”

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Four people were wounded in a shooting Thursday night in Humboldt Park on the West Side.

The group was standing outside about 9:10 p.m. in the 600 block of North Sawyer Avenue when someone fired shots, Chicago police said.

An 18-year-old boy was struck in the lower back and was transported to Norwegian Hospital in good condition, police said.

A woman, 20, was struck in the foot and taken to the same hospital in good condition, police said.

A 23-year-old man was shot in the hand and another man, 24, was struck in the foot, police said. Both were taken in good condition to the same hospital.

No one is in custody as Area Four detectives investigate.

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Five people, including four police officers, were injured in a house fire Thursday in Beverly on the South Side.

About 7:45 p.m., fire broke out in a garage about 7:45 p.m. in the 9300 block of South Oakley Avenue and it spread to the adjacent house, according to Chicago police.

A 31-year-old man was injured and was transported to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in serious-to-condition, Chicago Fire officials said.

A police officer who was reponding to the fire suffered smoke inhalation and was taken to the same hospital in serious-to-critical condition, fire officials said.

Three other officers, also suffered smoke inhalation and were taken in good codition to Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Evergreen Park, fire officials said.

Police did not immediately have details on how the man and officers suffered their injuries.

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The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement is to be awarded at the 78th edition of the world’s oldest film festival, scheduled for Sept. 1-11 on the Lido.

ROME — The Venice Film Festival said Thursday it will give its lifetime achievement award this year to Oscar-winning director and actor Roberto Benigni.

The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement is to be awarded at the 78th edition of the world’s oldest film festival, scheduled for Sept. 1-11 on the Lido.

Benigni wrote, directed and starred in “La Vita e Bella,” (“Life is Beautiful”), which won the Oscar for best foreign language film, best actor and best musical score in 1999.

In announcing the decision, Venice director Alberto Barbera called Benigni “one of the most extraordinary comedy actors in an admittedly rich gallery of Italian performers,” and noted his more recent solo performances reading Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”

Benigni, perhaps best remembered for climbing on top of the audience chair when he won the Oscar, was more restrained on Thursday. “My heart is full of joy and gratitude,” he said in a statement.

Venice was one of the few international film festivals to be held fully in-person last year amid the coronavirus pandemic, using reserved seating arrangements and extra screenings to ensure socially distanced viewing.

Benigni’s most recently starred as Geppetto in Matteo Garrone’s “Pinocchio,” based on Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel “The Adventures of Pinocchio.”

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You can celebrate Carlos Rodon’s historic no-hitter with a new bobblehead from FOCO.

The post Celebrate Carlos Rodon’s no-hitter with new bobblehead from FOCO first appeared on CHI CITY SPORTS l Chicago Sports Blog – News – Forum – Fans – Rumors.Read More

“The veil has been lifted, and what we’re seeing is that the Chicago police feel like they can go out in the streets and kill any boy, any one person,” a resident said about the killing.

Protesters took to the streets Thursday to condemn the police killing of Adam Toledo after the release of graphic video footage showed the 13-year-old appeared to be empty-handed when he was shot last month in Little Village.

A group of more than 50 people met in Millennium Park before marching downtown and shouting some of the slogans that were previously staples of the protests that roiled the city last summer.

“Lock the cop up!” they chanted.

Jose Herrera, who said Toledo was his cousin, drove around blasting Banda music and waving a Mexican flag, which he said was shattered by Chicago police officers.

“Those cops took my flag and broke it!” Herrera said, holding the busted staff in his hands. “I’m out here protesting the killing of my cousin. He doesn’t and didn’t deserve any of this.”

Herrera said a piece of him was lost when he saw the videos of Adam’s killing — a void, he said, that won’t ever be filled.

“My family is shattered right now, and, like this flag, it came at the hands of the police,” he said.

At a news conference in front of Public Safety Headquarters, 3510 S. Michigan Ave., activist and former mayoral candidate Ja’Mal Green began an impassioned speech by tearing down a piece of police tape that cordoned off the entrance. Green notably called for the dismantling of the Police Department and urged Mayor Lori Lightfoot to resign over her handling of the shooting.

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

He claimed the mayor “demonized” Adam following his killing and mocked her appeals for peace ahead of the release of the video footage from the March 29 shooting. He also told reporters that he plans to march to the mayor’s house as part of a protest Friday in Logan Square.

“Lori Lightfoot herself said, ‘Oh, we need to figure out why he had a gun. He shouldn’t have been out there,’” Green said. “Now you want to say let’s calm the city down. But when do you say let’s calm these killings down that the Police Department are doing each and every day?”

Green and others in his group later goaded the roughly dozen officers holding a line in front of the station. But after a few tense interactions between officers and demonstrators, the crowd of roughly two dozen people left peacefully.

Earlier Thursday, the city — and Little Village especially — were on edge in the hours before the videos of the fatal shooting were released.

At the scene where Adam was killed, people walked past his memorial, decorated with stuffed animals, candles, flowers and a large white bow. People were anxious to see what the video showed and whether Adam was holding a gun when he was fatally shot by a police officer. While the video footage appears to show Adam with a gun moments before the shooting, his hands were raised and seemingly empty when he was struck by a single bullet.

Pastor Ramiro Rodriguez of Amor De Dios United Methodist Church kept busy by mowing the lawn around Adam Toledo’s memorial just an hour before the videos were released.

The videos dropped around 2:30 p.m. Thursday, and after he watched the footage, Rodriguez said, his thoughts were of his family.

“When I saw [Adam] with his hands up, my own children came to my mind. They grew up here, and it’s thanks to God they didn’t have any problems,” Rodriguez said in Spanish. “But now I have grandchildren who are growing up and they come to visit me happily, and I don’t want anyone to do that to them. It would break my heart.”

As a vehicle drove by blasting “F-k the Police” by rap group NWA, 69-year-old Francisco Herrerra said: “I understand that this kid left the house without permission while his parents slept … and it’s a tremendous pain. I understand what they’re going through.”

About 10 community activists took to 26th Street to demand the mayor’s resignation, some gathering for a tearful embrace as passing vehicles honked in support.

“The veil has been lifted, and what we’re seeing is that the Chicago police feel like they can go out in the streets and kill any boy, any one person,” said Rey Wences, who said they attended the same middle school as Adam. “I don’t care who Adam was or what he was doing at 2:30 in the morning, I’m tired of all of that. The question is, why do police shoot to kill — and that has to be answered.”

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

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I watched the video several times of a Chicago police officer fatally shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Little Village, and I doubt the video will change any minds.

Those who blame Black and Latino youth for the city’s rise in crime will see a policeman who was doing the dangerous work of getting illegal guns off the street.

They will say: “The police officer was doing his job. See. There was no foot on the boy’s neck like what happened in the George Floyd case. There were no 16 shots like in the Laquan McDonald case. There was no chokehold like in the Eric Garner case. If the boy had not run away, he would be alive today.”

And those who think police officers unfairly harass Black and Latino youth will look at Adam’s bloodied body and point to the gentle way Kenosha police handled 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse.

Rittenhouse, a white teen, carried a high-powered rifle in plain sight, in the midst of a protest last year without one police officer confronting him–even as bystanders warned them the teen had just shot three people, two of them fatally.

While Adam went to the morgue, Rittenhouse was allowed to go home to his mother.

Frankly, the bodycam video that shows an unidentified Chicago police officer pursuing Adam down an alley, and fatally shooting him, raised more questions than it answered.

It also shows why there should be no rush to judgment on either side.

For one thing, while it looked like the teen might have had a gun when he was running away from the police officer, I didn’t see a gun in either hand when the fatal shot was fired.

Did he drop the weapon or throw it away during the chase? When the police officer shouted: “Stop, stop right f***** now,” and Adam didn’t stop, did that give the police officer the right to discharge his weapon?

And when the officer yelled “Show me your f****** hands,” and Adam turned toward him with both hands visible, should that have ended the confrontation?

These are questions that the Civilian Office of Police Accountability will have to answer, and why there has to be a thorough investigation.

A couple of hours before the video’s release, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, became emotional talking about what she called the systemic failures that led to the deadly confrontation between the boy and a police officer in a dark alley in the middle of the night.

“We have to do more,” she kept saying–more to get rid of “too many damn guns” on our streets, and more to help children who have been traumatized.

“They experience that every day, every day. We’ve got to do things differently,” the mayor said as she pleaded with the city to remain calm after the video’s release.

The video likely did not give Adam’s family the answers they were looking for, but I hope it gave them some comfort knowing police and paramedics on the scene tried to save him.

“Stay with me. Look at me. Come on big guy, stay with me,” they said as paramedics worked in vain to keep him alive.

The video was heartbreaking.

In this place, at this time, it should not have come to this.

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A Little Village woman who says she witnessed the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo believes the newly released body camera video supports what she saw that night from her second-floor apartment window — the boy was unarmed and complying with the officer when he was shot.

Margarita Gomez had told the Sun-Times earlier this month how she watched the fatal event from her living room window, insisting even then that Adam was turning around, with his arms raised, when the officer fired.

She dreaded watching the video after it was released Thursday but needed to confirm that what she had seen that night was real. When a Sun-Times reporter showed her the video for the first time, she choked back tears.

“I feel angry. I feel sad and heartbroken. That boy’s life was stolen from him by that officer,” Gomez said. “Even if the kid had a gun and tossed it, you still shot him with no gun in his hands while he is following your orders.”

On March 29, Gomez said, she was up late binge-watching “Vikings” on Hulu in her second-floor apartment when she heard about half a dozen gunshots. She ran to her living room window to see what was going on.

“From my window in my apartment you can see everything in that alley since it overlooks this wooden fence,” Gomez said at the time. “And that alley is lit up pretty good.”

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Within a minute, she said, she saw two people enter the alley from the gangway of a building. A police cruiser arrived from the north end of the alley and officers jumped out and grabbed a man, later identified by police as 21-year-old Ruben Roman Jr.

At this point, she said, Adam took off south on the alley toward 24th Street and the officer began chasing him and shouting at him to stop running.

“All I heard was the police officer telling him ‘Hold or I’ll shoot’ and the person was turning around while putting his hands up and the officer shot him,” Gomez said at the time. “He shot him one time — at least, I heard one gunshot.”

The fence alongside Farragut Career Academy’s parking lot has a large gap where several slats are missing, allowing Gomez to see into the alley from her living room. That’s where she said she saw Adam fall after he was shot.

She showed a Sun-Times reporter and photographer the view from her living room window, pointing to the spot in the alley near the 2400 block of South Spaulding.

Several days after the shooting, a police detective visited her home to interview her and her family about what they saw that night.

“I let the detective into my home and he asks us a few questions, then he goes to my living room window and says ‘You can’t see s— from here, how can you see over the fence?'” Gomez said Thursday.

“I don’t care what the cops say. I know what I saw and I’m telling you that boy was shot without a gun in his hand.”

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

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The Sky selected Shyla Heal with the eighth overall pick in the WNBA Draft, shocking many in the process.

But Sky coach James Wade thinks Heal was a steal.

“She’s a true point guard that we’ve been looking at for a long time,” Wade said. “She didn’t have the eyes on her like the [players in the] NCAA tournament, but she did a lot of damage playing in Australia.”

Heal, a 19-year-old guard from Australia, is one of the youngest players in this year’s draft class but plays like an experienced veteran. It’s a quality Wade credits to the fact she’s been playing professional basketball since she was 16.

The Sky’s new guard had an impressive WNBL season last year with the Townsville Fire leading the team to the grand final against Liz Cambage’s Southside Flyers. She averaged 16.7 points per game, 3.4 assists and 4.8 rebounds. Her assist-to-turnover ratio was 1.3, in line with top point guards in this draft class, Aari McDonald and Dana Evans.

Wade said he knows the WNBA is a big jump, but because of Heal’s experience, he’s confident she’ll quickly find her stride.

“She’s a professional,” Wade said. “She acts like a 25-year-old or 26-year-old. Normally players in the league come in and don’t get it right away; they have to see. She’s been doing it since she was 16.”

She’s a player that can space the floor, is great at the pick and roll game and can match the Sky’s fast-paced style of play. She shot 31% from the three-point range last season but most impressive, Wade said, is her basketball IQ.

She’s coming into an ideal situation with Courtney Vandersloot as her mentor. Because both are thinking point guards, Wade believes she’s the best player to learn from Vandersloot.

Ultimately, Heal will be tasked with running the Sky’s second unit. Most importantly, she needs to maintain Vandersloot’s productivity. The Sky’s offensive rating was 110.6 with Vandersloot on the court last season and fell to 81.6 with her on the bench.

Heal’s father, Shane, played for the Minnesota Timberwolves during the 1996/97 season, but he’s better known for his decorated career with the Australian National Team and the NBL. He famously went head-to-head with Charles Barkley during warmups at the Olympic games in 1996.

Heal carries that same toughness her father played with.

“If you watch her games in Australia, she plays with a chip on her shoulder,” Wade said.

Coming off a disappointing 2020 season that saw the Sky leaving the bubble after a first-round loss to the Sun, Wade stressed the importance of improving on defense. The Sky’s 102.7 defensive rating last year was sixth in the league. They upgraded that end of the court when they signed the reigning defensive player of the year, WNBA Champion and two-time WNBA MVP Candace Parker.

With one season separating Wade and several players on his roster becoming unrestricted free agents in 2022, the Sky need to capitalize on the roster they have now in pursuit of the franchise’s first WNBA Championship. Heal can help them do that.

Early in the night, a league source told the Sun-Times the Sky weighed several trade options that included Gabby Williams. Ultimately, they ended up keeping their eighth overall pick.

Still, Williams committed to play for the French National Team Thursday morning and will not be with the Sky to start the 2021 season. It’s unclear how that will impact her season with the Sky. The team will know more before training camp begins at the end of April.

Northwestern guard, Lindsey Pulliam was listed going to the Sky with the 16th overall pick on multiple mock drafts. Ultimately, Chicago selected forward Natasha Mack out of Oklahoma State. Pulliam was taken 27th overall by the Atlanta Dream.

With limited cap space, Wade said it’s going to be an interesting training camp.

“They’re going to come in and battle,” Wade said.

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Reliving the awful details of George Floyd’s slow suffocation is brutal and emotionally draining. As always in matters touching on race, the thrum of ethnic hostilities is the background noise.

Some have been eager, since the trial began, to cite George Floyd’s drug use or heart trouble as the true cause of death (arguments the prosecution has effectively debunked). Others have argued that if Floyd had simply agreed to enter the squad car, he would be alive today — as if that exonerates the officers.

But it seems that the shadow of Derek Chauvin is obscuring our ability to make distinctions and respond rationally to other, similar cases.

Similar is the operative word. In the space of a few days, we’ve seen a police officer shoot and kill Daunte Wright in Minnesota and learned of a December case in which two police officers pointed guns at and pepper-sprayed Army Lt. Caron Nazario. They may be similar on the surface, but they are quite different in the details.

When I first heard of the Wright case, it was described as a “traffic stop” for expired tags, so I was stunned to see a video of the police attempting to handcuff Wright. Was this a case of driving while Black? Were the police harassing the young man because, as another account put it, he had “air freshener” tags hanging from his rear-view mirror?

Well, Minnesota law does forbid hanging items from car mirrors, and the Minnesota ACLU says these laws are sometimes pretexts to stop Black drivers. But in this case, it doesn’t seem that the police needed a pretext. The tags were expired. After checking on the vehicle through their database, the police found that there was an outstanding arrest warrant for Wright. He had failed to appear in court (via Zoom) for a “gross misdemeanor” charge of carrying a pistol without a permit, and for fleeing police on another occasion.

As the police were attempting to take Wright into custody, he pulled away. Officer Kim Potter shouted, “Taser, taser, taser!” before tragically firing her gun at him instead. As soon as the deed was done, she cried, “Holy s—, I shot him.”

This is a tragedy. Clearly, the officer who fired the gun made a grievous mistake. But that’s a far cry not just from Chauvin’s depraved conduct but from many other recent cases of police violence, as in the cases of Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner.

Intent matters, as the jurors in the Chauvin case will soon be instructed. Chauvin had nine and a half minutes to consider the consequences of his actions. Officer Potter, though she committed a horrible error by reaching for her gun instead of her taser, pretty clearly did not intend to kill. She should never again be in a position to harm anyone, but this was not, it seems to me based on the known facts so far, a case of murder.

Nor is the rush to judgment about Potter fair. The demand that Potter be summarily fired, voiced by reporters at the mayor’s press conference on Monday, is unjust. Remember the rule of law? The city manager, responding to calls for her dismissal, said that she was entitled to due process first. He has now been fired. That’s how mobs work, not well-functioning polities. Potter announced her resignation on Tuesday.

Another case of police overreaction concerned Lt. Caron Nazario, an Army medic. He was driving to his home in Virginia in a new SUV that lacked a rear license plate. He had taped a temporary one to the inside of the back window, but that wasn’t visible to police until they got close. According to several accounts, officer Daniel Crocker attempted to pull Nazario over but Nazario didn’t stop. This prompted Crocker to put out a call that a vehicle was “eluding police.”

On the rare occasions that I’ve been flagged down by police, I pull over right away — or as soon as it is safe to do so. To keep driving for a mile or more seems likely to arouse the cops’ suspicion. It’s reasonable to drive to a well-lit place before stopping. But signaling compliance to cops seems important. Did he slow down and turn on his hazard lights? The drawn guns were probably excessive, though it’s important to note that the police pulled their guns before knowing the identity of the driver.

Watching the video, you see overheated cops with guns screaming at Nazario to exit the car, and Nazario weirdly declining to comply yet carefully placing his cellphone camera on the dashboard to capture the whole encounter. To their repeated demands that he exit the car, he gives odd responses like, “What’s going on?” They keep screaming at him to get out of the car and get on the ground and he keeps saying, “Calm down” or, “Can I speak to your supervisor?”

Of course, Nazario was right that he did nothing wrong. But he invited some degree of escalation by failing to comply.

It’s not news that we have a serious problem with violence in this country — by citizens and police alike. But we compound that problem by forcing every new incident — videotape preferred — into a predigested narrative. Both the Wright and Nazario cases are examples of human weakness, poor judgment and tragedy, but it’s not clear that they are morality plays.

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