Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) likely said it best as she watched her colleagues approve a multi-million dollar training center for the Chicago Fire soccer team on West Side land originally set aside for public housing:

“The [Chicago Housing Authority’s] Plan for Transformation has failed,” she said.

Is there any other way to look at it?

The City Council voted 36 to 11 Wednesday to allow the privately-owned soccer team to build an $80 million training center on 26 acres of CHA-owned land bounded by Roosevelt Road, Ashland Avenue, 14th Street and Loomis Street.

The vote adds insult to a very old injury. The CHA’s Plan for Transformation, launched in 2000, has fallen years — if not decades — behind on its promise to build new mixed-income communities that would include public housing residents.

As a result of this backlog, the CHA sits on acres of undeveloped land where new housing is supposed to be built. At least 30,000 people are on its waitlist for a place to live.

The Chicago Fire soccer facility will be good for the community, its aldermanic supporters said during the City Council meeting.

Perhaps. The potential is there. But honoring the promise to build housing there would have been far better.

CHA giving up on providing housing for ‘most vulnerable’?

The bright spot here is that the land, part of the old ABLA Homes site that was demolished in 2007, won’t be just given away to build the soccer facility.

The Chicago Fire will pay the CHA $8 million up front, then nearly $800,000 a year in rent under a 40-year lease that has two 10-year renewal options.

The site’s alderperson, Jason Ervin (28th), said the plan has the support of those living nearby.

And although the facility is just a portion of the former ABLA’s undeveloped acreage, it can’t be lost that the land was set aside for housing and already should have been used for that.

According to the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, the CHA and developer Related Midwest have built only 245 of the 775 housing units pledged for the ABLA site, which has been rebranded Roosevelt Square.

“We have an agency, the Chicago Housing Authority, that is supposed to provide housing for the most vulnerable, and instead of building housing they want to give that land to a soccer team,” Rod Wilson, executive director of the Lugenia Burns Hope Center, an affordable housing advocate, told WTTW and ProPublica last June.

“It seems that the CHA wants to get out of the business of providing quality housing for families,” Wilson said.

Next stop: Washington D.C.

The Chicago Fire “deserves to have a high-quality training facility,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a statement after the City Council vote.

She’s right. The team, which plays its home games in Soldier Field, is an asset to Chicago.

But those who are eligible for public housing are equally deserving of the residences that were promised them two decades ago in what was supposed to signal a new day for the CHA.

It’s unfair that potential residents face decades-long waitlists for housing, while a sports team gets ushered behind the velvet rope onto public housing land.

At a time when affordable and low-income housing that’s close to transit and jobs is becoming increasingly scarce, the city should be trying harder to clear up the Plan for Transformation’s backlog, rather than stumping for a soccer facility on CHA land.

The City Council doesn’t have final word on the issue, fortunately. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development must approve the Fire’s land lease with the CHA.

It’s up to the feds to ask serious questions about how the soccer facility will fit with the CHA’s stated mission of building better housing and neighborhoods for those most in need.

The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.

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PITTSBURGH – With an immaculate inning on the line, Cubs rookie Hayden Wesneski went back to his slider down and away. Pirates catcher Jason Delay swung over it, securing Wesneski’s place in the club’s record books.

In just his fourth major-league outing, he threw the fifth immaculate inning on record from a Cubs pitcher. It was the first since LaTroy Hawkins’ in 2004 against the Marlins. Lynn McGlothen (1979), Bruce Sutter (1977 and Milt Pappas (1971) are the only other Cubs pitchers known to have thrown an immaculate inning, according to team historian Ed Hartig.

In the Cubs’ 3-2 win against the Pirates Thursday, Wesneski achieved the feat by striking out Jack Suwinski, Zack Collins and Delay in the fifth inning, on nine straight strikes.

The pitch that dealt the final blow was also one Wesneski worked to refine last week.

“That’s what makes me excited about him is it’s not just the pitcher that we’re getting,” assistant pitching coach Daniel Moskos said in a conversation with the Sun-Times before Wesneski held the Pirates to two runs in 6 1/3 innings. “It’s the pitcher that we could potentially have in the future. Because when he’s not good at something, he wants to work on it, he wants to find the problem, what didn’t lead to success or what led to success. Let’s continue to do that, or let’s work on the adjustment. He’s just got a good head on his shoulders.”

Moskos had worked closely with Wesneski when they overlapped in the Yankees organization. But the rookie has made a strong early impression since the Cubs acquired him the day before the trade deadline for reliever Scott Effross.

Wesneski threw five shutout innings out of the bullpen in his major-league debut against the Reds early this month. But in his second outing, he kept leaving his slider over the plate, and the Giants got ahold of it for a pair of home runs.

“That’s an issue he’s run into at times previously in his career,” Moskos said.” And you see just how impactful the difference is. He had a good strike slider, but he didn’t have the put-away slider, he just wasn’t able to get it to his glove side.”

Wesneski has made the adjustment by his outing, in his first major-league start. He made sure his early misses with the slider were comfortably off the plate, and then he worked in from there. He generated five whiffs with his slider, on his way to seven innings of one-run ball against the Rockies.

In a conversation with the Sun-Times this week, Wesneski shrugged off the quick adjustment as something he’d done before, with an array of pitches.

“It’s one of those things that you keep tally of in your head,” he said. “Like, ‘Hey, this pitch is going here a lot. Look, I’m tired of it going there. Let’s move it.’ Right? Eventually you’ve just got to stop being so stubborn and say, ‘I’m not throwing it here. I don’t care if it goes to the backstop, I don’t care if it goes 40 feet; it’s not going where it’s been going.'”

The slider, in all of its forms, played a big role in Wesneski’s immaculate inning. He struck out Suwinski, a left-handed hitter, on a backdoor slider that hooked into the zone for a called third strike.

Facing Collins, another lefty, Wesneski followed a first-pitch changeup and two sliders down and in. After watching the changeup, Collins whiffed on the first slider. He let the second go for a called third strike.

Against Delay, a right-handed hitter, Wesneski threw a 0-1 slider that ended over the heart of the plate. Delay froze. Then, it was time for Wesneski’s put-away slider.

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The White Sox played the Cleveland Guardians Thursday in a game that didn’t matter. You could feel it in the clubhouse, on the field and in the crisp autumn air that re-introduced itself to Guaranteed Rate Field.

While not mathematically eliminated from the postseason, the Sox were essentially dumped from contention when they lost the first game of the series in 11 innings Tuesday. The body bags on a disastrous season were zipped shut Wednesday by a lackluster 8-2 loss.

For some fans, there was a sense of relief, like losing an aging loved one who had suffered too long. In this case, fans were put out of their misery, having watched what many say is the most disappointing Sox season in memory.

World Series expectations, trumpeted by the front office itself, are at the root of it. The owner hired a manager who was supposed to bring his rebuilt franchise to baseball’s upper tier, but the manager did nothing to elevate the assembled talent.

There were injuries, as acting manager Miguel Cairo lamented Thursday. A plethora of them. But every team had injuries, and when healthy the 2022 Sox didn’t play well enough to win perhaps the weakest division in baseball. They were lucky to be in contention as long as they were and openly admitted it.

As Lance Lynn succinctly put it Wednesday, “Nothing surprises me, especially when you play like [crap] all year.”

They left the good playing to the youngest team in the major leagues, the Guardians, who showed them up with 11 wins in the first 18 games between them, out-hustling and out-performing them for six months of the season.

So now what?

It’s hard to imagine under any scenario, for the good of the players, the franchise or the manager himself at age 78 and with heart issues that Tony La Russa will return in 2023. Moving to an advisory role upstairs in some capacity for the final year of his contract seems to make sense. Whether general manager Rick Hahn returns would be open to more serious debate if not for the loyalty of chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, that renown loyalty which prompted him to hire La Russa again two years ago.

Look no further than Kansas City where the Royals, who won back to back American League titles and a World Series in 2015, dismissed general manager Dayton Moore Wednesday. Hahn and executive vice president Ken Williams should be held to equally high standards for fans who waited patiently through a rebuild and have enjoyed all of three playoff game victories since the 2005 World Series championship.

Williams, as GM, and Hahn, as assistant GM, remain in charge, watching Reinsdorf’s store.

While Hahn and Williams added Elvis Andrus on Aug. 19, the lone addition of lefty reliever Jake Diekman at the trade deadline wasn’t enough to make a difference, especially for a roster scoffing at the notion that defense matters, and one that often left its baseball smarts on the bus. Perhaps Reinsdorf, already shelling out for his highest payroll ever, reached his limit.

Discussions have already begun internally about what to do next. When payroll is seventh in baseball and the 27th team in payroll beats you going away, when La Russa is hired and it all fails, change is inevitable.

Players, management, ownership, they’re all responsible.

Meanwhile, Miguel Cairo managed again in La Russa’s place, carrying a 13-8 record into Thursday. Perhaps he’s a candidate to be a full-time manager. It’s one of many topics of conversation going on upstairs at 35th and Shields.

“Some other teams after the All-Star break, they got better, they made some trades,” Cairo said. “We made the playoffs last year, we came up short against Houston. And this year, all the injuries that we’ve been having, it’s been tough.”

Cairo’s focus then shifted to a game that didn’t mean much, if anything.

“You’re a professional baseball player, playing in the big leagues, you’ve got to be ready to come and work and play hard,” Cairo said. “This is not over.”

It sure doesn’t feel that way.

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Amundsen is on the rise. That’s the consensus around the city. The North Side school was overshadowed academically and athletically by several rivals over the past couple of decades but that is changing.

The Vikings’ football team has mirrored the school’s overall progress. Coach Nick Olson’s program has qualified for the Illinois High School Association state playoffs for the past three seasons.

Amundsen was 5-5 in 2018-19, then 7-2 in 2019-20 and 8-2 last season. The Vikings haven’t managed to win a state playoff game yet, but every program has to start somewhere. Those three state appearances, the first in school history, have changed the team’s focus.

“We need to get better as a team and we need to get in the weight room,” Olson said. “The kids did that the last six months. The got right to work to get bigger and stronger and faster. That’s what separated us from Crystal Lake Central in that playoff game last year.”

Amundsen dominated Sullivan 42-0 on Thursday at Winnemac Park. The Vikings (3-2, 3-0 Red-North Central) have a star in wide receiver Adam Muench.

The 6-2, 200-pound senior had five receptions for 124 yards and four touchdowns. The second touchdown was the most spectacular. Muench made a leaping one-handed grab and then ran past or through nearly every player on Sullivan’s defense for a 55-yard TD.

“The kid catches everything,” Olson said. “I’m baffled that he doesn’t have offers pouring in. He’s super coachable and I think he leads the state with 18 or 19 receiving touchdowns. [Quarterback Chris Clark] trusts him and knows that he will make a play every time we need it.”

Muench also caught touchdown passes from Clark of six, 38 and 18 yards. Clark was 9-for-16 passing for 196 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions.

“We are playing on a whole different level this season,” Muench said. “We have some young dogs on the line and a new quarterback has made a big difference.”

Clark missed all of last year with an injury. He’s forged a solid connection with Muench this season.

“[Muench] is obviously very talented and athletic,” Clark said. “He’s also a very smart dude and that makes things easier.”

Clark has enjoyed watching and taking part in Amundsen’s recent rise.

“Every year I’ve seen the spirit grow and change in the school,” Clark said. “Everybody wants to be here and come to games. It’s a fun and safe environment and I love it. I’m glad I chose Amundsen.”

The Vikings’ defense, led by linebacker Jaime Garfias, held Sullivan (2-3, 2-1) to just 23 rushing yards.

“We just had to play physical and fill the gaps,” Garfias said. “As long as we do that and don’t make mistakes we will have a good day.”

The Tigers advanced to the state playoffs in Class 4A last season, but find themselves facing much larger schools in the regular season. Sullivan has fewer than 700 students.

“It’s kind of crazy but I’m all about no excuses,” Sullivan coach Calvin Clark said. “We are going up against schools double, triple and quadruple our size but at the end of the day we have to play ball. It’s an honor to be the only Class 4A school on this side of the town. We’ve been to the state playoffs four years in a row.”

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Could this be the end of Mitch Trubisky’s career as a starter?

Former Chicago Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky is starting his third game for the Pittsburgh Steelers Thursday night. Trubisky will lead the Steelers’ offense against the Cleveland Browns on the road. Trubisky, who has struggled in his first two games with the Steelers, might have a quarterback controversy in Pittsburgh sooner than he’d like.

Per Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, the Steelers coaches are paying close attention to tonight’s Week 3 performance by Trubisky as they decide what course to take the team for the rest of the season. The Steelers expect Trubisky to take chances throwing down the field to save his starting job.

Mitch Trubisky’s performance in the Steelers’ first two weeks has fans agitating for rookie Kenny Pickett to replace him. (They were already doing that in early training camp.) It would be a sweet sort of irony if Pickett were to relieve Trubisky following Thursday Night Football. Trubisky took the job away from Mike Glennon following Glennon’s awful performance in TNF against the Packers in Week 4 of the 2017 regular season.

We’ll see what passes Trubisky makes on prime-time streaming Thursday night. If he’s unable to chuck the ball downfield against the Browns, we can anticipate seeing Pickett shortly for the Steelers. According to Rapoport, the Steelers have determined that Pickett will be the future of the team in the future. But Trubisky has an opportunity to put up good tape this season for another starting job.

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PITTSBURGH – Cubs shortstop Nico Hoerner fielded the ground ball and, for the first time since straining his right triceps a week and a half ago, threw across the diamond to first base.

“It was solid,” he said before the Cubs series opener against the Pirates on Thursday. “I feel like I wasn’t changing my throwing motion or anything and felt healthy doing it.”

The Cubs classified the strain as “mild to moderate,” and have not put Hoerner on the injured list. Hoerner confirmed Thursday that he still expects to return before the end of the season.

“I’m not going to do it if it doesn’t make sense physically,” he said. “But if I’m in a place where I’m healthy and there’s a good chunk of games left – if it’s 30 or 40 at bats left to have, I think that’s valuable time, and it’s fun, and just a chance to finish the year on the field and take that in the offseason.

“It’s not a need to check this or that box statistically or anything like that. It’s just, you really only get to play for so long. So, when you do have the chance and you’re healthy, I do want to be out there.”

Hoerner has already played a career-high 125 games this season. His previous season high came in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when he played 48 games. Last year, he was limited by a series of injuries, including a strained left hamstring and a strained right oblique.

“Those are core baseball muscles, you hear those words all the time, and those are ones that you want to be on top of and know how to take care of yourself,” Hoerner said.”So, it’s too bad that I had to miss time to learn that process. But I’m really proud of how I played throughout [this] year physically, being able to play every single day, going through the long stretch we had in August pretty much playing every game and feeling good physically. I mean, honestly, the best I felt physically [all season] was in early September.”

South Bend champions

The Single-A South Bend Cubs claimed the Midwest League title in a 7-4 win against Lake County on Wednesday.

“Putting your organization and your players in the championship environment, in the playoff environment, is extremely helpful,” Cubs manager David Ross said. “Because there’s a development process that you go through in the minor leagues and things that you do throughout a season that may not be all about just winning that day.

“And once you get to that winning environment, you get to learn those little details about what it takes to do that. And the more we get guys in that space, the better off we’ll be.”

Three Cubs minor-league affiliates made their respective playoffs this year. The Low-A Myrtle Beach Pelicans fell in their division series. The Double-A Tennessee Smokies played Game 2 of their division series on Thursday.

Suzuki not expected in Pittsburgh

Rightfielder Seiya Suzuki is not expected back during a four-game series. As of Thursday afternoon, he and his wife were still awaiting the birth of their child. The Cubs put Suzuki on the paternity list last Saturday, and when he reached the three-day maximum, they transferred him to the restricted list as a procedural move.

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Fresh off scoring just 10 points in a loss to the Packers, Bears offensive coordinator Luke Getsy defended a game plan that resulted in the least productive passing game of the young NFL season.

Regardless of the opponent, regardless of having a young quarterback in Justin Fields and regardless of Getsy being just two games into his coordinating career, this is a time for adjustments rather than stubbornness.

Fields threw 11 passes against the Packers, including only one on the opening drive of the fourth quarter when the Bears still had a chance, and completed seven for 70 yards. He is the only NFL starter to throw fewer than 20 passes in a game this season and has done so twice.

Fields said he doesn’t care how many passes he throws as long as the Bears win, but there was neither prolific passing nor victory in Green Bay. The Bears ran for 203 yards, but all it gained them was a 24-7 deficit at halftime and a thudding loss to their archrival.

Getsy said he called 19 or 20 pass plays — three were lost to sacks, one was negated when Fields crossed the line of scrimmage before throwing and the rest morphed into scrambles — out of the Bears’ meager 41 snaps on offense.

“I know that it’s the NFL [and] everyone’s throwing it 30 or 40 times a game, but we only had 41 snaps,” Getsy said Thursday. “And when you run the ball the way that we did … That’s part of it.

“What gives us the best chance to succeed? Were our matchups favorable to us? Last week we felt like there were parts of the run game that we felt like we had a pretty good matchup, and we were able to get seven [gains of 10-plus yards]. That’s a lot of explosives in the run game.”

Sure, but again, where did it get the Bears? And where will that type of game plan get them going forward? Playing that way probably won’t beat even the lowly Texans on Sunday.

The reason “everyone’s throwing it 30 or 40 times a game” is because that’s how to win in the modern NFL. Over the past decade, teams that threw for fewer than 100 yards went 41-91-1.

Fields needs a legitimate opportunity to show he can drive the Bears’ offense, as opposed to letting defenses dictate that. The best quarterbacks can overcome any scheme, and the most important thing for the Bears this season is determining whether Fields has that capacity.

And getting only 41 plays isn’t some misfortune that inexplicably befell Getsy and the Bears. It’s directly tied to how bad their offense was. There’s no one else to blame for that.

That was the fewest offensive plays by any team this season and the fifth-fewest over the last five. They went three-and-out on four consecutive possessions beginning in the second quarter.

Despite their many missteps offensively, the Bears opened the fourth quarter with an opportunity to get back in the game, down 24-10. They drove 89 yards, powered mostly by running back David Montgomery, before facing fourth-and-goal from about a foot and a half out.

Getsy calleda run for Fields out of the shotgun, and he was stopped short by no more than a couple inches. He said he’d call it again if given a do-over.

“Yeah, we love that play,” Getsy said.

“That was our plan. We talked about it all week… That was exactly what we wanted; we just didn’t execute it well enough. We’ve got to get them coached up a little bit better so that they don’t make that mistake.”

Ultimately, even a touchdown would’ve left the Bears trailing by seven. After the Packers’ ensuing field-goal drive, they would’ve gotten the ball back down 10 with 2:28 left.

Too much went wrong and the outcome was too dismal to be this certain about that game plan.

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The Chicago Bears have some question marks on defense with the new injury report

Reports came out Wednesday that Chicago Bears linebacker Roquan Smith was not practicing with a hip injury. Smith is the leader of the Bears’ defense, and an injury to the All-Pro linebacker would be a significant blow to the team. Smith’s backup is undrafted free agent Jack Sanborn, who won over the hearts of Bears fans for his excellent play against opponent’s backups in the preseason.

The Bears’ latest injury report shows that Smith did not participate in Thursday’s practice either. He wasn’t the only linebacker on the list Thursday. Matthew Adams was added to the list as well with a hamstring injury.

The Bears’ defense, already struggling against the run, will have more problems if Adams and Smith cannot go Sunday. Sterling Weatherford might be the replacement for Adams.

Four Chicago Bears players DNP Thursday

The Chicago Bears had four players not participating in practice Thursday, with Dane Cruikshank and Ryan Griffin joining Adams and Smith. Griffin’s injury is concerning for the offense, as he’s the Bears’ most productive tight end on the season through two weeks. His one catch for 18 yards leads all Bears tight ends, including Cole Kmet. Griffin has also been more efficient as a pass-and-run blocker than Kmet, according to PFF. (Kmet’s grade was hurt by the hit on quarterback Justin Fields he gave up.)

Cornerback Jaylon Johnson was a new name added to the list Thursday. He was limited in practice Thursday with a quad injury. Johnson is a vital part of the Bears’ secondary, as he has not yet been targeted while in coverage this season. Johnson’s status on Friday’s injury report will be something to monitor.

The Bears did get good news about rookie wide receiver Velus Jones Jr. Jones was seen practicing Thursday. It’s not immediately clear if he will be cleared to play the Texans in Week 3. The 25-year-old rookie has yet to play for the Bears in the regular season.

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