I’ve been asking myself lately how I’ll regard Tony La Russa if the White Sox win the World Series this season. I held his hiring as manager in low regard, so low you could have dropped a casket into it. He was too old, too far removed from the game and too tied to team chairman Jerry Reinsdorf for what seemed like the wrong reasons.

On the October day when news broke that the Sox were bringing him back 35 years after firing him, a local radio talk-show host said he would never give La Russa his due, even if the Sox were to win the title in 2021. More, he said, whatever success the team would have surely would be in spite of the Hall of Fame manager.

We’ve seen that attitude in action in regard to all things Tony this season, meaning he can’t take a step without someone asking what size clown shoe he wears. His first-place team has a huge lead in the American League Central division, but he has received much more attention for his mistakes than his successes. In May, he didn’t know about a new Major League Baseball rule until a sportswriter informed him of it during a postgame press conference. It was a very bad look after a 1-0 loss. There have been goof-ups with his use of the Sox’ bullpen, apparent obliviousness in terms of replay challenges and adherence to the unwritten rules of baseball, which is considered the club in the hands of a caveman.

Those stains have been magnified by the telescope that’s always trained on him, the one looking for signs of intelligent life and, when none is detected, at least examples of buffoonish behavior. Last month, when La Russa jogged out of the dugout to protest an accidental beaning of Jose Abreu and almost started a brawl, the video was Twitter heaven. The man wasn’t running, he was power walking at the mall! What a goober!

The totality of the negative reaction has made me almost root for the guy. And I’m the person who wrote this when the Sox’ interest in La Russa became public:

BREAKING NEWS: The Angels have granted the White Sox permission to interview Tony La Russa for their vacant managerial job.

INSTANT ANALYSIS: I think I’m about to become ill.

This can’t be real. It just can’t be. The Sox cannot be interested in a 76-year-old man who hasn’t managed in nine years. Do they really want a scowl as the face of the franchise? Of a young, exciting team? This is a guy whose response to a puppy and a 3-year-old wrestling would be to critique their form.

I’m not a TLR fan by any stretch of the imagination. So what am I doing here, at the intersection of Irritation and Sympathy, or, if you prefer, 35th and Shield La Russa?

I’m always suspicious when there’s an overwhelming public consensus of opinion on a particular matter. I get uneasy when there’s one loud chorus singing the same song. My first reaction is to zig when everybody else is doing synchronized zagging.

That doesn’t necessary lead me to a defense of La Russa, but it does make me turn and look at who’s doing the criticizing. A lot of what I see when it comes to the La Russa abuse is social-media groupthink. It feels like the cool crowd in high school handing down a mocking indictment of someone who doesn’t fit in. Lots of GIFs and very little creative thinking.

I’ve long held that a manager’s role in a team’s success is overstated, and analytics have backed up that stance the past six or seven years, leading to lower manager salaries. Plenty of general managers or personnel departments make out each day’s lineup card for their team. That used to be the skipper’s purview. What’s interesting is that, despite managers’ roles being devalued, La Russa is still getting the amount of abuse once reserved for a full-service manager. It strikes me not just as unfair, but as small and petty.

The Sox aren’t going to win a World Series because of La Russa, and they’re not going to lose one because of La Russa. How’s that? Does it quench your bloodthirstiness? I didn’t think so.

Joe Maddon almost cost the Cubs the 2016 World Series by overmanaging, something he often did. But Joe was cool, one of the first managers to embrace analytics, so the baseball Twitterati forgave him his sins. Tony is considered very uncool, which means he’ll never get a break from that group.

My original question was how I’ll regard La Russa if the Sox win the World Series this season. I think I have the answer now, and it’s a far cry from the one I would have offered when he was hired.

I’ll regard him as a little out of touch, a lot human and possibly not the spawn of Satan. Some of you might want to give it a try.

Read More

Authorities have identified a man who was shot to death Wednesday night outside a Homan Square gas station.

Johnathan Stamps was shot by someone in a passing gray car about 10:15 p.m. in the 3700 block of West Roosevelt Road, Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.

Stamps, 36, suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. No arrests were made.

Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.

Read More

The preseason rankings of Illinois high school football teams in each class, according to an Associated Press panel of sportswriters.

Class 8A

1. Warren (6) 78
2. Lincoln-Way East (2) 73
3. Marist 54
4. Maine South 50
5. Hinsdale Central 47
6. Neuqua Valley 30
7. Naperville Central 26
8. Edwardsville 25
9. Huntley 14
10. Glenbard West 9
(tie) Palatine 9

Others receiving votes: Barrington 8, O’Fallon 5, Homewood-Flossmoor 4, Bolingbrook 3, Evanston 2, New Trier 2, South Elgin 1.

Class 7A

1. St. Rita (6) 68
2. Loyola (1) 63
3. Brother Rice 58
4. Wheaton North 55
5. Mount Carmel (1) 42
6. St. Charles North 31
7. Batavia 27
8. Prospect 22
9. Willowbrook 17
10. Wheaton Warrenville South 15

Others receiving votes: Lincoln Way West 9, Hononegah 8, Normal 7, Hersey 7, Shepard 4, Bradley-Bourbonnais 1.

Class 6A

1. Cary-Grove (10) 10
2. Crete-Monee 65
3. Washington 50
4. Lake Forest 49
5. Rockford Boylan 47
6. Simeon 34
7. Antioch 31
8. Kankakee 30
9. Benet 28
10. Springfield 23

Others receiving votes: Rock Island 19, Harlem 14, Vernon Hills 11, Crystal Lake Prairie Ridge 9, Lemont 9, Crystal Lake Central 9, Chatham Glenwood 8, Niles Notre Dame 7, Kaneland 6, Wauconda 1.

Class 5A

1. East St. Louis (7) 80
2. Rochester (1) 75
3. Peoria 60
4. Sycamore 50
5. Providence 35
6. Sterling 34
7. Decatur MacArthur 23
(tie) Marion (1) 23
9. Morgan Park 20
10. Fenwick 19

Others receiving votes: Mascoutah 15, Highland 12, Hillcrest 12, Nazareth 8, St. Viator 8, Triad 7, Morris 6, LaSalle-Peru 5, Glenbard South 2, Metamora 1.

Class 4A

1. Joliet Catholic (5) 94
2. Sacred Heart-Griffin (Springfield) (5) 93
3. St. Francis 80
4. Richmond-Burton (1) 63
5. Quincy Notre Dame 43
6. Phillips 42
7. Genoa-Kingston 40
8. Coal City 39
9. Peoria Notre Dame 30
10. Mt. Zion 24
(tie) Effingham 24

Others receiving votes: Marengo 10, Johnsburg 10, Cahokia 6, Macomb 5, St. Laurence 5, Stillman Valley 4, Carterville 4, Manteno 3, Canton 1, Murphysboro 1.

Class 3A

1. Wilmington (3) 96
2. Williamsville (4) 95
3. Monticello 77
4. Princeton (1) 63
5. Tolono Unity 35
(tie) Farmington 35
7. Byron 34
8. Nashville (1) 29
9. Mt. Carmel, IL 27
10. Montini 26

Others receiving votes: Benton 17, Paxton-Buckley-Loda 12, Peotone 10, Newton 9, Carlinville 9, Fairfield 8, Fairbury Prairie Central 5, Rock Island Alleman 4, Eureka 3, DuQuoin 1.

Class 2A

1. Decatur St. Teresa 88
2. Rockridge (1) 74
3. Bishop McNamara (5) 73
4. Maroa-Forsyth (3) 70
5. Breese Mater Dei 46
6. Sterling Newman 42
(tie) IC Catholic (2) 42
(tie) Clifton Central 42
9. Downs Tri-Valley 37
10. North-Mac 29

Others receiving votes: Fieldcrest 20, Bismarck-Henning 14, Pana 10, Athens 9, Rushville-Industry 6, Althoff Catholic 2, St. Edward 1.

Class 1A

1. Moweaqua Central A&M (2) 93
2. Lena-Winslow (7) 90
3. Gibson City-Melvin-Sibley (1) 73
4. Mt. Sterling (Brown County) 46
5. Arcola 44
6. Kewanee (Wethersfield) 43
7. Fulton 36
8. Cumberland 33
9. Forreston (1) 21
(tie) Galena 21

Others receiving votes: Greenfield-Northwestern 20, St. Bede 14, Camp Point Central 14, Carrollton 14, Tuscola 13, Princeville 12, Dakota 8, Aurora Christian 4, Winchester West Central 3, Jacksonville Routt 2, East Dubuque 1.

Read More

José Andrés has been the king of Spanish cuisine in America for nearly the last 30 years, and Jaleo was his original concept in Washington, D.C. The restaurant is now nationwide (and soon to be worldwide; the Dubai location opens later this year) and the Chicago outpost opened earlier this month.

The menu is filled with Spanish classics like pan con tomate, patatas bravas, and paella, just to name a few, but these dishes have been perfected over many, many years by Andrés and his culinary team. Their man in Chicago is chef Justin DePhillips, who has worked for Andrés for years at different restaurants, most recently at the Disney Springs Jaleo in Orlando.

DePhillips joined the Chicago team when construction started in late 2019 — and then, for obvious reasons, everything was put on hold. After a long break, construction and development re-started, and the River North location was completed earlier this year. DePhillips used the time to re-examine many of the classic Jaleo recipes — the brand has a culinary “bible” filled with thousands of recipes accumulated over the decades — and worked with the team to strip them down to their base ingredients and build them back up, better than ever. “The food we are putting on plates in Chicago has the rough edges refined, and we’ve brought them back to what they are supposed to be,” explains DePhillips.

One example of this refinement is the paella, which is unlike any other I’ve seen in Chicago. At most Spanish restaurants, paella is a huge dish served for a large party, and has to be ordered an hour in advance so it has time to cook. But at Jaleo, it looks very different — rather than a pan stuffed to the brim with rice and toppings, this version is thin, dark, and incredibly flavorful. “A paella is supposed to be two grains of rice thick. Americans love seeing a dish that’s full of stuff,” laughs DePhillips. “So it’s interesting to present this massive pan with a thin layer of rice on it; it seems absurd to an American market.” The dish, he’s proud to say, now can be made from start to finish in 18 minutes but retains all the intense richness of flavor.

One refreshing aspect of Jaleo (especially for a Spanish food geek like me) is that it’s not trying to put a tortured spin on already-awesome classics. “One of the missions of Jaleo is to bring authentic Spanish food to the American guest,” explains DePhillips. “It’s not that we shy away from innovation, it’s that the authentic dishes of Spain are what they are, and we’re not trying to change them or Americanize them, but bring them over in their truest form.” Patatas bravas are just what they are supposed to be — the potatoes aren’t different shapes or covered in chorizo foam. They’re perfectly crisp double-fried potatoes served with a spicy sauce and a light aioli. Meanwhile, an heirloom tomato salad combines perfectly fresh tomatoes with Spanish tuna for a light but filling combination that would make the ideal lunch. Most of the ingredients are imported from Spain (even down to the super-crispy bread), but there’s the occasional Chicago touch. DePhillips modified one of the Jaleo classics, a market fish with stewed vegetables, to feature Lake Michigan northern pike. “It eats like a combination of a branzino and cod. It has the fattiness of cod, but the rich butteriness of branzino,” says DePhillips. “I knew it was a risk, because it’s not a Spanish fish, but it’s one of those little tips of the hat to where we’re opening, that still maintains the soul of the dish without compromising what it’s supposed to be.”

Probably my favorite dish on the menu (and this is coming from a writer who generally skips dessert) is the tarta de queso vasca, a goat’s milk cheesecake that serves two. Perfecting the recipe took DePhillips months. Making a small cheesecake that has a perfectly smooth interior and a burnt exterior is a challenge, but by using parchment paper and a special pan (and a lot of trial and error), he got it right. “It’s only five ingredients, but how you treat those five is everything,” he says. “And if that doesn’t speak perfectly to Spanish cooking, I don’t know what does.”

Read More

Read More

Read More

Read More

A sell-out crowd of 6,000 fans is expected at St. Rita on Friday. There will be cheerleaders, a band, student sections and all the familiar sights and sounds of high school football.

The schedule-makers (athletic directors) blessed the city with the perfect opening night matchup: The top-ranked Mustangs host archrival Mount Carmel. It’s the ideal return to full-throated high school football.

Kaleb Brown and his St. Rita teammates have been talked about thoroughly the past week, but what about the Caravan?

Mount Carmel begins the season ranked No. 11. That might be a bit of a stretch. The Caravan graduated 17 seniors, the heart of the team for the last several years.

By all accounts, the talent is on hand for Mount Carmel to remain one of the top teams in the area. But there might be some growing pains. Expect the Caravan to be a threat come playoff time, but the beginning of the season might be difficult.

“We are young, but they have a lot of energy,” senior tight end Joey Thompson said. “There are a lot of things to fix, but we will be ready on [Friday].”

Thompson and senior linebacker Elliott Lewis are the leaders of the new-look Caravan. Lewis has been looking forward to Friday for weeks.

“It’s going to be amazing,” Lewis said. “The energy and emotion that Mount Carmel fans, the parents and kids and whole community bring, I love it. When I’m on that field, I just feel like I don’t ever want to leave. That’s how Mount Carmel fans make me feel.”

Coach Jordan Lynch says the Caravan’s strength will be the offensive line, led by senior Ryan Boersma. Senior running back Enzo De Rosa will be expected to carry a major load as the team breaks in a new quarterback.

Lynch had a three-player quarterback competition in practice, but based on last week’s scrimmage, it appears that junior Blainey Dowling has won the job. Senior Brandon Rogers, the expected starter, is out with an injury. Rogers has committed to Oklahoma for baseball, and it’s unknown if he will play football at all this season.

There’s a lot of excitement around the younger classes at Mount Carmel. One of the players to watch is sophomore running back/defensive back Darrion Dupree.

“He’s doing a good job for us on both sides of the ball,” Lynch said. “He’s one of the hardest workers on the team and a very good young talent that just needs to get tons of reps.”

The senior class is thin, consisting of just 12 players. But it’s a group that has experienced great success and has bought into the school’s culture.

“It doesn’t matter who the head coach is at Mount Carmel,” Lynch said. “From day one when you come here, the culture is set. You know exactly what you are getting yourself into. It is a player-driven team. My time of leading and doing all that is done. It is up to the kids, it is up to the seniors. [Thompson, Lewis and De Rosa] are carrying on that culture and bringing the young guys with them.”

Mount Carmel’s culture faces a massive test Friday. The Mustangs will be looking to make an opening night statement.

“That’s why you come to St. Rita, to play in the big games,” quarterback Tommy Ulatowski said. “You come to play in the big games, and there is nothing bigger than St. Rita vs. Mount Carmel, so I’m excited.”

Read More

In a sense, it’s almost a cruel joke Illinois and Nebraska are playing on themselves by meeting Saturday for a “Week Zero” opener in Champaign: The loser of the very first game of the college football season won’t even wait until Week 1 to put a first “L” on the board.

Don’t the Illini, 10 years removed from their last winning season, and the Huskers, mired in a miserable four-season bowl-less streak, have enough stacked against them as it is?

But excuse me for lacing the punch bowl with negativity again. Old habits die hard.

It’ll be a beautiful day for the winner, and especially for the winning coach in either case.

Illinois’ Bret Bielema is steering a ship for the first time since 2017, his fifth and final season of a 29-34 comeuppance at Arkansas. Last time Bielema was on a field as a head coach, he was fired before exiting the stadium.

As for Frost, a Huskers hero as a national title-winning quarterback in 1997? Warm and fuzzy have exited the equation. He’s on the hot seat — with a 12-20 record and a new, no-nonsense boss in athletic director Trev Alberts — and his program is under NCAA investigation.

This game was supposed to be played across the pond in Dublin, which has witnessed about as many must-see Illini and Huskers contests in recent years as the folks in Champaign and Lincoln. But maybe this situation is better for Bielema, whose nationally televised debut comes at noon on Fox-32 with fans — and recruits — in the Memorial Stadium stands for the first time since 2019.

After meeting the media Thursday on Zoom, Bielema followed up a game-week radio blitz with an appearance on ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”

“The name of the game is recruiting, right?” he said. “That’s probably what drives my decisions to do media more than anything.”

The word “unsexy” — which Bielema used a lot during a successful run at Wisconsin that included three straight Rose Bowl appearances — still applies. As do “tough,” “smart” and “dependable,” three words he says these days on a loop. Old habits die hard, too, for a former defensive lineman who walked on at Iowa and became a team captain.

But Bielema is an image-conscious coach, so much so that he dove into what the Illini will wear Saturday. He says he “attacked” the team’s orange helmets, ordering stripes down the middle and white trim around the blue block “I.” He changed the facemasks to white because he remembered how white ones “popped” three decades ago when he played against the Illini. There will be white gloves, socks and shoes and a block “I” with trim on the pants — all new details.

None of which would seem to amount to a whole lot in the 60-minute swirl, but who’s to say?

” ‘I can do things to the uniform,’ ” he told his players, “but you guys have to take care of the uniform. I gave it to you. Now you have to represent it. Now you have to go out on the field and make everybody understand what that uniform represents.”

Late Wednesday night, after a long time at the office, Bielema steered his car to the edge of a parking lot. His mind on football, he almost got clipped by a van rolling down the street that turned out to be an Uber. The van was festooned with Illini flags and, across its back, orange and blue lights. Bielema turned and sped after it, catching up at a stoplight and lowering his window.

“I love the flags!” the big man on campus yelled.

But he went unrecognized.

“He had no idea who the hell I was,” Bielema said. “I was excited to see him giving a little bit of Uber love, displaying the flags on game week, but obviously I didn’t make an impression on him.”

There’s really only one way to win everybody over, and that’s by winning. And winning more than losing at Illinois hasn’t happened for any coach since John Mackovic, whose teams were 30-16-1 from 1988 to 1991.

The last Big Ten game Bielema coached was against the Huskers was in the 2012 league title game. Wisconsin hung 70 points on their humiliated foes, with the obscenely good running back trio of Montee Ball, James White and Melvin Gordon rushing for 539 yards.

An outing like that is beyond Illinois’ capability now. Maybe someday?

“We haven’t played a game yet, right?” Bielema said. “It’s easy to get excited about something you haven’t seen. But I would say this: I hope there’s equal excitement after we get done playing. …

“For people to support us, they have to believe in what we’re doing and they have to see hope. I’m not sure where we’re going to land Saturday, but I hope to instill a lot of hope in a lot of people that have been looking for it here in the Illinois program for the immediate future and for years to come.”

Zero in, everybody. A new Illini era is upon us.

Read More

Some bands have listening parties for their new albums at a record store or the watering hole where they got their start. But Kanye West rented out Chicago’s Soldier Field, hired fabricators to build a to-scale model of his South Shore childhood home in the middle of the stadium, and invited 38,000 people to witness the “experience.”

Thursday night’s extravaganza created buzz from the minute its coming was announced just eight days ago, complete with relaxed COVID-19 safety restrictions requiring no proof of vaccination or negative COVID test results (1,500 does of the vaccine were available on-site for attendees seeking a convenient vax site).

Chicago’s “Donda Album Experience” followed two stadium listening events in Atlanta, and is presumed to be the final live preamble to the release of Kanye’s upcoming 10th studio album named, for his late mother.

A house (church?) was being constructed this week at Soldier Field for Kanye West’s “Donda” listening event on Thursday night. Recent social media posts showed a building resembling the blue South Shore house West was raised in by his late mother, Donda, who is the inspiration for the singer’s upcoming album.ABC7 Chicago

Anticipation over “Donda” has been swirling for more than a year and there were rumors that Kanye, or “Ye” as he officially may soon go by, was set to finally drop the album at midnight in conjunction with his massive homecoming event. That of course didn’t happen. (September 3 is allegedly the new date.)

By now we should be used to the fact that delays and surprises are just part of Kanye’s M.O. It was much the same at Soldier Field on Thursday night as the rapper kept the audience waiting nearly two hours past his advertised 9 p.m. start time with no opener nor a trace of background music to fill the air. This afforded the crowd two hours to just stare at the “house” in the center of the field, begging the questions: How did it have running electricity? What demise would it meet after the show? Was there maybe some kind of family dinner going on inside with Kanye’s kids and ex-wife Kim Kardashian in attendance?

In truth, the re-creation was a breathtaking marvel and one of the most impressive props used in a concert in recent memory. If only Kanye had interacted with it a bit more rather than relegating himself to the front porch with some questionable guest company, it might have had more purpose. The setup also completely forgot about the fans in the “backyard” who basically watched the entire event on the stadium’s sideline screens that carried a video feed formatted like CNN Breaking News with a series of Bible verses acting as story headlines.

Once Kanye and his entourage did emerge — at 10:49 p.m. — it was a nonstop affair that began with a montage of black-and-white video featuring Donda West, her name repeated in monotone, and then quickly devolving into a chaotic mock crime scene that was hard to turn away from over the next 90 minutes.

Kanye, disguised most of the night in a full face mask as his arms gyrated to the beats of tracks like “I Know God Breathed On This,” looked like a villain lording over Gotham. In the setup, he and his cronies — a rather distasteful and controversial crew that included Marilyn Manson and DaBaby — were surrounded as a cavalry of dancers dressed in SWAT gear and a lineup of trucks worthy of a monster rally, continuously circling the perimeter of the house. It was rife with the chaos and controversy that Kanye likes to invoke, including a heavy play on the religious themes that have long been his muse.

Truth be told, the fabricated childhood home resembled a church, with a beaming cross on top and, early on, a crew of dark-cloaked “clergy” were seen lighting candles one by one on the lawn that burned out by the time the tardy Kanye got on stage. In this instance, the Jesus cult vibe of his Sunday Service gatherings was replaced with more sacrilegious fodder, with Kanye inviting the Antichrist Superstar himself. That may have been a cool look in 1996 when Marilyn Manson was the poster boy for Satanic panic. But in 2021, with Manson facing allegations that now include sexual assault and abuse against women, it was crass. Add in the case of DaBaby — recently dropped from a string of events including Lollapalooza amid homophobic remarks — it’s clear Kanye was going for the moral jugular.

Whether it was Kanye’s embedded commentary on cancel culture or perhaps just his own version of shock rock, clearly it all worked, as those guest appearances will likely make more headlines than the music. So did the incendiary final five minutes of the show when Kanye wrapped up the affair by being set on fire (safely) before recreating his nuptials with ex-wife Kardashian herself strutting down the field in a wedding dress to the evening’s final song, “No Child Left Behind.” It’s one of the more promising tracks from the upcoming album that Kanye continues to tinker with and reportedly will include guest stars The Weeknd, Travis Scott, Roddy Rich, and DaBaby who now looks to have taken Jay-Z’s guest spot on “Donda” track “Jail.”

Though the night offered traces of Kanye’s roots to Chicago and those more innocuous “College Dropout” days, the anticipated homecoming show seemed much more reliant on the excess that too often shrouds his creative prowess and has the airs of a forced marketing ploy.

If he was looking to up the ante and wow a crowd (and maybe make current rival Drake shudder a bit), Kanye for sure accomplished that in a night that was performance art on a scale we’ve never really seen before. But there’s also something to be said about creating meaningful replicas, reconnecting with family past and present, and bringing it home to the city he adores so much that he named one of his children after it, that suggests beneath the pomp there is sincere authenticity. If only Kanye could realize it doesn’t always need the next big stunt to make us pay attention.

Selena Fragassi is a local freelance writer.

Read More