The Chicago White Sox still have a faint chance at backing into the Major League Postseason as an American League Wild Card team but after consecutive sweeps against the Cleveland Guardians and Detroit Tigers, chances are the White Sox will be done playing baseball after October 5.

Managing the White Sox for the final week and a half of regular season games will be interim manager Miguel Cairo.

White Sox manager Tony La Russa has not managed a game since August 30 due to health concerns and the team announced earlier this week that La Russa will not be returning this season but a decision regarding 2023 hasn’t been made.

La Russa is under contract to be the White Sox manager in 2023 but after a disappointing postseason exit in 2021 and the team likely missing the postseason in 2022, speculation has centered around the Hall of Famer’s job security.

Speculation has turned into the first credible report being made regarding La Russa’s status for 2023.

Dan Bernstein of 670 The Score is reporting that La Russa will not be brought back as the White Sox manager in 2023 and will have no affiliation with the organization.

Once the White Sox makes the news official, that’ll be confirmation that the team has made the decision that La Russa is so much of a deterrence to their chances of winning that they do not want him involved with the organization in any capacity.

Tony La Russa reportedly will not return to the Chicago White Sox in 2023.

La Russa was not the sole reason for the failure that was the White Sox season in 2022. The White Sox core underperformed throughout the entire season and coupling that with injuries and a manager in La Russa that was incapable of adapting to modern baseball and you have a recipe for the dumpster fire that was the White Sox season.

All eyes will now turn toward the White Sox front office structure. White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf opened the possibility of a dangerous precedent when he overruled general manager Rick Hahn prior to the 2021 season and hired La Russa as manager instead of A.J. Hinch.

Reinsdorf was attempting to right a wrong in his decision to bring back La Russa and now he has to go to Hahn with his tail between his legs and admit that the general manager needs to have full autonomy over managerial decisions.

It goes without saying that Hahn can not miss on the hiring of the next White Sox manager. The White Sox competitive window is already teetering on closing and that is with a team still having not won a postseason series in 17 years.

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Willson Contreas has been the subject of just about every rumor involving the Chicago Cubs since the 2022 Major League Baseball season started.

Contreras is in the final year of his contract with the Cubs and there was an expectation that the veteran catcher would be moved at the trade deadline this season on August 2. To the surprise of just about everyone within Major League Baseball, Contreras was not traded at the deadline and will be finishing the season with the Cubs.

Contreras is having an impressive season with the Cubs as he currently has a slash line of .246/.351/.471/.822 to go along with 21 home runs and 126 wRC+.

Contreras is set to play in the final week of games for the Cubs this season after missing some time with an ankle injury but come October 5, the focus will shift completely to his future with the team.

Over the course of the past few years, the Cubs have given every indication that they do not value Contreras as their long-term answer at the catcher position.

The Cubs have refrained from having any discussions with Contreras regarding a contract extension since 2018. The Cubs signed veteran catcher Yan Gomes to a starting-catcher caliber contract this past offseason. The Cubs desperately tried to trade Conteras at the trade deadline this season until the Juan Soto trade thwarted their market.

The Cubs do not want Contreras on their team for the long term.

Sahadev Sharma echoed that sentiment in the latest Chicago Cubs’ mailbag at The Athletic:

Right now, knowing all that, I’d be surprised if Contreras accepts the qualifying offer. I think he wants to catch and he wants the security of a big, long-term deal. And like anyone, he probably wants to be wanted. I’m not sure that’s the case in Chicago right now. I think what’s best for everyone is for Contreras to find that big deal elsewhere and for the Cubs to spend aggressively this winter, adding in other areas.

Ironically enough, the same reasons why the Cubs were unable to trade Contreras at the trade deadline are the same reasons why the team does not value bringing the catcher back next season.

The indicator remains that Willson Contreras’ time with the Chicago Cubs is coming to an end.

There is no questioning Contreras’ offensive talent. There is a case that could be made about the Cubs being interested in Contreras returning as a designated hitter but such a case would quickly lose merit when realizing Contreras still is very much interested in catching regularly and having a player such as Patrick Wisdom as a designated hitter gives the Cubs much more roster flexibility.

The questions with Contreras surround his ability to handle a pitching staff and call a game defensively. That is the reason why teams were unwilling to meet the Cubs’ asking price for Contreras at the deadline and is one of the reasons why it is unlikely he is back with the team next season.

The reality is, Contreras isn’t the type of catcher they want. This isn’t to say he isn’t a good one or can’t positively impact another team. It’s just not the direction the Cubs are going with the position. So I don’t see how he should be the top priority over adding one of the shortstops and a top-of-the-rotation starting pitcher.

Gomes would seemingly have the inside track on being the Cubs’ everyday catcher in 2023 with P.J. Higgins behind him or a defensive-minded veteran backup to be named later. Unfortunately, for the Cubs, catching prospect Miguel Amaya suffered a fractured ankle towards the end of the Double-A season. Amaya’s ankle injury came after he had already missed a majority of the 2023 baseball season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. Amaya has yet to return to catching since undergoing Tommy John Surgery last year.

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When Lonzo Ball was first injured back in January of 2022, the Chicago Bulls certainly didn’t anticipate an extended absence.

But, that’s exactly what happened when Ball was ruled out for the remainder of the season. Sadly, Ball has not yet been able to resume basketball activities. Bulls fans have seen many injury updates over the past few months, and each one has seemed to offer similar worries.

The majority of updates have seemed as though Ball’s progress has been stagnant, with hope that eventually, he’d be able to ramp up. Each time he’s tried to ramp up his recovery, pain has been staggering and Ball has not been able to get past it.

Tuesday, Ball spoke to media via Zoom and offered us all another update. This time, it seemed far more serious than before and has many questioning whether or not he’ll play at all this coming season.

Ball’s comments about his knee are concerning, to say the least, but that’s nothing new. What’s more alarming is that he went on to say that he can barely go up the stairs without pain.

“It’s every day. Even going up the stairs and stuff, it’s painful.”

Over his career, Ball has endured quite a bit in terms of injuries. At just 24 years old, one would think and hope he still has plenty of basketball left in the tank.

But, just in case he doesn’t, the Bulls come into this season well-prepared.

When Chicago drafted Arizona point guard Dalen Terry in the first round this year, some wondered why they would make a move like that. Terry is eerily similar to Ball, which is great to have another tall point guard who excels in all the little areas.

But, with Ayo Dosunmu, Coby White and Alex Caruso still on the roster, along with Ball, it started to look a little crowded in the back court.

Then, the Bulls also signed veteran Goran Dragic — which came as a surprise, too.

The Dragic signing truly put a different view on Ball’s future, because there was no way the Bulls were going into this season knowing Ball would play, while also keeping three other point guards (you could argue four) on the roster.

With Ball’s most recent update, and straight from himself, this offseason is shaping up to look like a wise one. The Bulls protected themselves by going into the season with plenty of point guard depth, including veteran depth with the Dragic signing.

Hopefully, Ball’s surgery will end successfully and with a positive trajectory from there on out. But in the mean time, the Bulls’ point guard depth is going to allow the team to breathe a bit easier while they wait for their star.

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Two emotionally intense woman-centered productions are among the offerings at this fall’s fifth Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, with the first focusing on the psychological pitfalls in a tested relationship, while the second delves into a brilliant, neurodiverse woman’s challenges and triumphs. 

Enough to Let the Light In Through 10/23: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Steppenwolf 1700 Theater, 1700 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $25-$45. Presented in English.

Blanco Temblor9/29-10/2: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, clata.org, $31. Presented in Spanish with English subtitles.

Billed as a thriller, Teatro Vista’s Enough to Let the Light In (see Emily McClanathan’s review), written by Los Angeles-based Paloma Nozicka, presents girlfriends Marc (Melissa DuPrey) and Cynthia (Lisandra Tena) as an engagement celebration is transformed into an evening of life-transforming revelation. 

Director Georgette Verdin says Nozicka was writing about “a classic case of ‘opposites attract’ with these two women. It sort of is looking at how the things that draw us closer together are the same things that tear us apart and what happens when someone we love threatens our most deeply held beliefs.”

She admits that Enough to Let the Light In will probably be emotionally challenging for audiences, and calls staging the production (which is presented at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater) “setting the dominoes up while making sure that we don’t knock them over too soon.” 

Verdin explains, “When you’re in the process of something like a thriller that has a lot of twists and turns, it’s important to remember that the audience is coming in for the first time. It can be really easy to lose sight of what is surprising when you’ve spent weeks on this. A lot of what we’re doing right now [in technical rehearsals] is a lot of calibrating, to make sure that we’re not getting ahead of ourselves and thus ahead of the audience.” 

Melissa DuPrey (left) and Lisandra Tena in Teatro Vista’s production of Paloma Nozicka’s Enough to Let the Light In Credit Joel Maisonet

Verdin enjoys intimate stories with small casts and appreciated that Enough to Let the Light In plays out in real time, adding that she enjoys “the fact that it is by a woman and it’s about a lesbian couple, although it doesn’t really focus on it. I really appreciated that it is an exploration of love, in a very unexpected and surprising way.”

She further says that she and the author “spoke the same language.”

“It felt very easy for us to just talk about the play,” Verdin recalls. “It was clear that this idea that love, and the lengths that we’re really willing to go for love, was important to the both of us.”

DuPrey and Tena, she adds, threw themselves “wholeheartedly” into that love story. 

“They portray them as fully charming, flawed characters,” Verdin says. “It will be impossible for people not to like them. I hope people come to experience the work that they’ve done because they are just throwing it all out on the table in this production. It’s a beautifully haunting and unexpected play in the best of ways,”

Carola Garcia, the director and playwright of San Juan, Puerto Rico-based Teatro Público’s Blanco Temblor, says her play, while a work of fiction, contains numerous autobiographical elements. 

“I wrote it after a very deep crisis that I had,” explains Garcia, who also appears in Blanco Temblor. “I survived a suicide attempt—I am bipolar—and I came back from the dead.”

The play is about Marina del Mar, a Puerto Rican astrophysicist who is living with bipolar disorder and, thanks to a specific birth disorder, is incapable of trembling. Blanco Temblor depicts meetings between Marina and the people from her life, living and dead, as well as “her transit through the abysses and the lights of her psyche,” according to Teatro Público.

The suicide attempt left Garcia in a contemplative state. 

“I’m supposed to be dead, but I’m alive,” she says. “It was very interesting to recover my mind, intelligence, and thinking. I recovered my emotional world. When you are in this kind of crisis—when you are bipolar, it is for life—it is beyond your control.”

Garcia is a native of Puerto Rico; I spoke with her by phone shortly before she traveled to Chicago for Blanco Temblor’s debut here. She had relocated to a relative’s home because of the blackouts and damage from Hurricane Fiona.     

She wants Blanco Temblor to capture the diversity of her own family, she explains. Garcia’s mother was a creative professional, and her father was a scientist who also was an opera singer.

“He was a crazy man,” she says, laughing. “My mother died of COVID, and my father died after Alzheimer’s. This play is a tribute to my relatives, to the people who made me. I’ve been an artist since I was very little.”

Garcia also views Blanco Temblor as a metaphor for mental health. 

“I was so lucky, and I think it was a mission, like an ethical, artistic mission,” she says. “The main character is bipolar and survives a suicide attempt. This is a journey through darkness and into light. It’s not heavy. People will cry a lot, but they will laugh. When we had the opening in Puerto Rico, so many people of different ages came. It was a mixture of generations, and for me that was amazing. I felt like a rock star.”

She started writing Blanco Temblor at a workshop she took in Ecuador, finishing the piece during the pandemic. 

“I’m so happy, because the actor who plays Marina [Isel Rodriguez] was a student of mine at university,” Garcia adds. “Now she’s a university professor and a very, very popular actor in Puerto Rico. Most of the people who work with me have been my students. It is an act of love.”

Garcia will be in Chicago for the first time for Blanco Temblor’s premiere here and is proud her work is part of Destinos. 

“I’m very excited to share this with you guys,” Garcia says. “I know it’s a hard thing. People can think, ‘Oh my God, it’s about mental health?’ But people will enjoy it. It’s a journey, and there’s a lot of love there.”

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Two emotionally intense woman-centered productions are among the offerings at this fall’s fifth Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, with the first focusing on the psychological pitfalls in a tested relationship, while the second delves into a brilliant, neurodiverse woman’s challenges and triumphs. 

Enough to Let the Light In Through 10/23: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Steppenwolf 1700 Theater, 1700 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $25-$45. Presented in English.

Blanco Temblor9/29-10/2: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, clata.org, $31. Presented in Spanish with English subtitles.

Billed as a thriller, Teatro Vista’s Enough to Let the Light In (see Emily McClanathan’s review), written by Los Angeles-based Paloma Nozicka, presents girlfriends Marc (Melissa DuPrey) and Cynthia (Lisandra Tena) as an engagement celebration is transformed into an evening of life-transforming revelation. 

Director Georgette Verdin says Nozicka was writing about “a classic case of ‘opposites attract’ with these two women. It sort of is looking at how the things that draw us closer together are the same things that tear us apart and what happens when someone we love threatens our most deeply held beliefs.”

She admits that Enough to Let the Light In will probably be emotionally challenging for audiences, and calls staging the production (which is presented at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater) “setting the dominoes up while making sure that we don’t knock them over too soon.” 

Verdin explains, “When you’re in the process of something like a thriller that has a lot of twists and turns, it’s important to remember that the audience is coming in for the first time. It can be really easy to lose sight of what is surprising when you’ve spent weeks on this. A lot of what we’re doing right now [in technical rehearsals] is a lot of calibrating, to make sure that we’re not getting ahead of ourselves and thus ahead of the audience.” 

Melissa DuPrey (left) and Lisandra Tena in Teatro Vista’s production of Paloma Nozicka’s Enough to Let the Light In Credit Joel Maisonet

Verdin enjoys intimate stories with small casts and appreciated that Enough to Let the Light In plays out in real time, adding that she enjoys “the fact that it is by a woman and it’s about a lesbian couple, although it doesn’t really focus on it. I really appreciated that it is an exploration of love, in a very unexpected and surprising way.”

She further says that she and the author “spoke the same language.”

“It felt very easy for us to just talk about the play,” Verdin recalls. “It was clear that this idea that love, and the lengths that we’re really willing to go for love, was important to the both of us.”

DuPrey and Tena, she adds, threw themselves “wholeheartedly” into that love story. 

“They portray them as fully charming, flawed characters,” Verdin says. “It will be impossible for people not to like them. I hope people come to experience the work that they’ve done because they are just throwing it all out on the table in this production. It’s a beautifully haunting and unexpected play in the best of ways,”

Carola Garcia, the director and playwright of San Juan, Puerto Rico-based Teatro Público’s Blanco Temblor, says her play, while a work of fiction, contains numerous autobiographical elements. 

“I wrote it after a very deep crisis that I had,” explains Garcia, who also appears in Blanco Temblor. “I survived a suicide attempt—I am bipolar—and I came back from the dead.”

The play is about Marina del Mar, a Puerto Rican astrophysicist who is living with bipolar disorder and, thanks to a specific birth disorder, is incapable of trembling. Blanco Temblor depicts meetings between Marina and the people from her life, living and dead, as well as “her transit through the abysses and the lights of her psyche,” according to Teatro Público.

The suicide attempt left Garcia in a contemplative state. 

“I’m supposed to be dead, but I’m alive,” she says. “It was very interesting to recover my mind, intelligence, and thinking. I recovered my emotional world. When you are in this kind of crisis—when you are bipolar, it is for life—it is beyond your control.”

Garcia is a native of Puerto Rico; I spoke with her by phone shortly before she traveled to Chicago for Blanco Temblor’s debut here. She had relocated to a relative’s home because of the blackouts and damage from Hurricane Fiona.     

She wants Blanco Temblor to capture the diversity of her own family, she explains. Garcia’s mother was a creative professional, and her father was a scientist who also was an opera singer.

“He was a crazy man,” she says, laughing. “My mother died of COVID, and my father died after Alzheimer’s. This play is a tribute to my relatives, to the people who made me. I’ve been an artist since I was very little.”

Garcia also views Blanco Temblor as a metaphor for mental health. 

“I was so lucky, and I think it was a mission, like an ethical, artistic mission,” she says. “The main character is bipolar and survives a suicide attempt. This is a journey through darkness and into light. It’s not heavy. People will cry a lot, but they will laugh. When we had the opening in Puerto Rico, so many people of different ages came. It was a mixture of generations, and for me that was amazing. I felt like a rock star.”

She started writing Blanco Temblor at a workshop she took in Ecuador, finishing the piece during the pandemic. 

“I’m so happy, because the actor who plays Marina [Isel Rodriguez] was a student of mine at university,” Garcia adds. “Now she’s a university professor and a very, very popular actor in Puerto Rico. Most of the people who work with me have been my students. It is an act of love.”

Garcia will be in Chicago for the first time for Blanco Temblor’s premiere here and is proud her work is part of Destinos. 

“I’m very excited to share this with you guys,” Garcia says. “I know it’s a hard thing. People can think, ‘Oh my God, it’s about mental health?’ But people will enjoy it. It’s a journey, and there’s a lot of love there.”

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The Chicago Blackhawks are expected to be a very bad team in 2022-23. It is obvious that they have their eyes on the lottery to help them along in their rebuild. However, as it stands, they still have some great players on the team that want to win.

They are not going to win on this team anytime soon but they could end up going to win somewhere else.

They have to show themselves with the Hawks to start the year and it begins in the preseason. The Hawks will take on the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday night at 7:30 PM CT.

A lineup for the game with lines, defense pairs, and goalies has already come out. They are going to be using a lot of exciting players in this game which should be a lot of fun to watch. The fans at the United Center are in for a nice preseason treat ahead of what promises to be a hard year.

The Chicago Blackhawks have a fun lineup for their first preseason home game.

As you can see, Patrick Kane, Seth Jones, and Jonathan Toews are all in the first game of the exhibition season. Those are the team’s three best players that may or may not finish out the year with the team. It will be important to see how they start off as that will determine their value.

This is going to be the first time that we can see Max Domi and Andreas Athanasiou suit up for the Blackhawks. Again, we don’t know if they will be used as trade chips as well but this is their first chance to play in a game for the Hawks against an opponent in a different sweater.

There are a few nice rookies that are in this lineup but the one to be most excited about is Kevin Korchinski who was the first of three first-round picks made by Chicago at the 2022 NHL Draft.

In all likelihood, he will get a few preseason games in before being sent back to the WHL for the season. Samuel Savoie and Ethan Del Mastro will also get in this game.

Petr Mrazek and Alex Stalock are the two goalies dressing for this game. Mrazek will start but both should see some time in the crease as the game goes along. To be honest, expect it to be close to 50 percent of the time for each.

We are going to learn a lot about this team in its first preseason game. We won’t know everything about the team by any means but it is a chance to see where certain guys at compared to where we think they should be. The best news is that hockey is officially back in town.

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