MINNEAPOLIS — Jose Abreu, who plays through everything, thought he might not be able to play through this one.

“I thought it was fractured,” Abreu said of his left knee, which was hit on the side by a pitch in the White Sox’ game against the Mariners on June 27.

Abreu hit the ground, pounding the grass in pain.

“My leg went numb,” he said.

Fans expected the worst — it has been that kind of year for injuries — but two days later, Abreu was in the lineup. It’s the Abreu way.

Play through everything.

“My family,” he said via a translator, explaining what motivates him to play hurt. “They are my strength. I come here every day here to do my best and to honor them, and I know they have my back — they support me. That’s why I come here every day to play. It doesn’t matter if I’m in pain or not, soreness or not, I have to be there for them. My mom, my wife, my sons, they are my everything.”

The 2020 American League MVP did miss the Sox’ last series in Minnesota after a violent collision with the Royals’ Hunter Dozier near the first-base line. He has missed six games after playing all 60 last season and 159 of 162 in 2019.

After batting .182/.265/.307 with two homers in June, Abreu is 9-for-26 with two homers and nine RBI in the first six games of July. He collected his 63rd RBI — which ranks fourth in the AL, nine behind RBI Rafael Devers — with an eighth-inning sacrifice fly in the Sox’ 4-1 win over the Twins on Tuesday night. He’s aiming to be the first player since Cecil Fielder (1990-92) to lead the AL in RBI three straight years.

Having had his first taste of a winning season and the postseason last year, Abreu is soaking in first place.

“Winning is one of the sweetest things that you can have as an athlete,” he said.

This was one of the sweetest wins of the season for the Sox, who learned before the game that catcher Yasmani Grandal would be lost to injury for at least a month. Zack Collins, the new starting catcher, drove in the first two runs with a single, the only hit against Twins starter Jose Berrios (7-3), and later doubled and scored on Adam Eaton’s single in the eighth before Abreu’s sacrifice fly.

“I’ve been ready for it,” Collins said of his elevated role.

Michael Kopech pitched a scoreless seventh, and a well-rested Liam Hendriks struck out four in two perfect innings for his 22nd save.

Hendriks raised his arms after defensive replacement Billy Hamilton made a running catch near the wall, sliding head-first into a rained-soaked warning track.

“That might be the top one, to be honest with you,” Hamilton said when asked where the catch ranked among plays he has made in his career.

Carlos Rodon (7-3, 2.31 ERA) gave the Sox another strong outing in his last start before the All-Star Game next week, throwing six innings of one-run ball and finishing with a flurry of 99 and 100 mph pitches. The Sox have held their spot atop the AL Central despite an onslaught of injuries.

“You have to just keep moving forward,” Abreu said.

Rodon struck out eight and didn’t allow a walk. The only run against him came on Alex Kirilloff’s single in the sixth. That followed a single by Luis Arraez that glanced off Rodon’s glove and a ball that center fielder Brian Goodwin lost in a misty sky, falling for another single.

Rodon struck out Ryan Jeffers and Max Kepler to end his outing, limiting the Twins’ damage to a run.

“He can rise to the occasion and make clutch pitches,” manager Tony La Russa said.

The Sox snapped a three-game losing streak. As Abreu. 34, says, winning trumps everything.

“That’s what you work for,” he said. “It’s something I don’t know how to describe. If you are winning, it doesn’t matter. There’s no age that can stop it, there’s no pain. It’s nothing. You’re winning.”

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PHOENIX — Chris Paul waited 16 years to get to the NBA Finals, bringing with him a team starving for its first championship.

The setting was entirely new.

The performance was same ‘ol Chris Paul.

“Just knew he’s ready,” Phoenix forward Mikal Bridges said. “He’s prepared his whole life for this moment and it shows out there on the court.”

Paul had 32 points and nine assists in an NBA Finals debut that was well worth the wait, Devin Booker scored 27 points and the Suns beat the returning Giannis Antetokounmpo and his Milwaukee Bucks 118-105 on Tuesday night in Game 1.

Paul scored 16 points during a sensational third quarter that had Phoenix fans who waited 28 years to see the NBA Finals again screaming in delight.

“Every time he shoots it we think it’s going in,” Booker said.

It almost did in the third quarter, when Paul was 6 for 7 and made all three 3-pointers.

Finally playing for the title in his 16th season, the star point guard has the Suns in the NBA Finals for only the third time, and it sure looked as if they could make this ending different than the other two.

“We’ve been building all season long for these moments,” Paul said. “We’re going to keep playing. This is just one game. We’ve got to stay locked in.”

Deandre Ayton added 22 points and 19 rebounds to continue his breakout stretch of play in his first postseason.

Antetokounmpo had 20 points and 17 rebounds after missing two games with a hyperextended left knee. Khris Middleton scored 29 points, but the Bucks will have to play from behind again after dropping Game 1 for the third straight series.

“We know it’s not going to be easy. We know it’s going to be tough,” Middleton said. “There’s times where we’re going to be down in this series. But this series isn’t over. We’re down. We’ve still got to keep competing and just playing.”

The series opener was the first NBA Finals game in Phoenix since Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls won their third straight championship here in Game 6 in 1993. The Suns, who came into the NBA with the Bucks in 1968, made their only other finals appearance in 1976.

They hadn’t even made the playoffs since 2010 and just two years ago were last in the Western Conference with a 19-63 record.

But Booker was already headed for stardom by then, and 2018 No. 1 pick Ayton has played at that level in the postseason. Paul has been steady as always since his arrival in an offseason trade.

Now 36 and a 10-time All-NBA selection, he is on the list of best players to never win a championship. It appeared he might never even get to play for one until Oklahoma City dealt him to a team of Suns on the rise, and he might be the final piece that takes them all the way to the top.

Despite so many debuts on the finals stage — the Suns’ Jae Crowder was the only player who had appeared in them, and that was for Miami at a neutral site last year — there didn’t appear to be many first-time jitters.

But Paul shifted the Suns into another gear in the third. His opening jumper provided the first double-digit lead of the game, and he followed with a four-point play for the Suns’ next basket.

He scored eight straight Phoenix points later in the period, hitting a 3-pointer, dancing around Bobby Portis for a layup and then hitting another 3. He then fired a pass to Ayton, who was fouled and made both free throws to make it 88-68 with 2:20 left.

“Their pick-and-roll game is tough to guard,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said. “I think we’ve just got to keep getting better. We’ll look at the film. We’ll see how we can maybe take away some of the rhythm.”

The Bucks cut it down to seven near the midpoint of the fourth before Paul helped the Suns restore a safe margin. He found Booker for a 3-pointer, stole the ball from Middleton and then hit a jumper to make it 106-94.

Milwaukee also is making its third finals appearance, having won the title in 1971 but not getting another chance since losing in 1974. The Bucks got a boost for this appearance when Antetokounmpo worked his way back quickly from an injury that looked serious when it happened.

The two-time MVP missed the final two games of the Eastern Conference finals. He was listed as doubtful for the opener, but he was upgraded to questionable Tuesday and then inserted into the starting lineup after he worked out on the court before the game.

“I’m just happy that I’m out there and I’m able to help my team in any way possible and participate in my first NBA Finals,” Antetokounmpo said.

The Bucks threw a lob to Antetokounmpo on their first possession — a play similar to the one he was defending when he was injured in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals against Atlanta — and he seemed to attack the basket just as forcefully as always.

But Jrue Holiday, who played so well while Antetokounmpo was out, shot just 4 for 14 and scored 10 points.

TIP-INS

Bucks: The Bucks said they had 9,000 fans watching the game inside Fiserv Forum and 20,000 outside in the Deer District. … Brook Lopez scored 17 points.

Suns: Ayton, who came in shooting 70.6% in the postseason, was 8 for 10. … Bridges scored 14 points. … The Suns are 4-0 in Game 1s in this postseason. … Reserve forward Dario Saric missed the second half with a right knee injury.

HAPPY TO BE HOME

The Bucks coach used to be a Suns fan.

Budenholzer is from Holbrook, Arizona, about three hours from Phoenix. He said his parents and other family members would be at the game.

POSTSEASON PAST

This isn’t the first postseason matchup between the Bucks and Suns. Milwaukee was formerly in the Western Conference and beat Phoenix in the first round of the 1978 playoffs.

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PHOENIX — ESPN replaced Rachel Nichols as its sideline reporter for the NBA Finals following a report detailing critical comments she made about Black colleague Maria Taylor.

The network announced Tuesday that Malika Andrews would handle that role for the series between the Phoenix Suns and Milwaukee Bucks.

Nichols, who is white, has been the sideline reporter for its top national games this season and for last year’s NBA Finals. But the switch was made after The New York Times reported Sunday on her comments last year, when she learned Taylor would lead the network’s studio show instead of her during the league’s restart at Walt Disney World.

In a phone conversation that was accidentally recorded and the Times obtained, Nichols said: “I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball. If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”

The Times’ report said the show’s crew was angry with Nichols, who apologized Monday while hosting “The Jump.”

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the situation was disheartening, particularly because it pitted two women in the industry against each other.

“I think part of the problem is that, as I said earlier, when people can’t get in a room and talk through these issues, this seemingly has fostered now for a full year,” Silver said.

“I mean, this is an incident that happened I guess when Rachel was in the bubble a year ago, and I would have thought that in the past year, maybe through some incredibly difficult conversations, that ESPN would have found a way to be able to work through it. Obviously not.”

Nichols will continue to host that daily weekday basketball show onsite during the finals.

Taylor will again host the NBA Finals pregame and halftime shows, though the New York Post reported that her contract ends later this month and she had rejected an extension.

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Watching Jake Arrieta pitch seems akin to what watching Elvis Presley in concert in the late 1970s must have felt like.

Another short, disastrous outing put the Cubs behind early Tuesday against the Phillies at Wrigley Field, and they went on to lose 15-10, extending their losing streak to 11.

Arrieta put the Cubs in a hole after only four batters. Within his first 10 pitches, he gave up four runs. Jean Segura roped a ground-rule double on the first pitch, Arrieta plunked J.T. Realmuto, Bryce Harper singled and Andrew McCutchen cleared the bases with a grand slam to center. It marked the first time this season a team had its first four batters of a game score on a grand slam.

“I know he wants to be better,” manager David Ross said before the game. “He wants to be the guy that goes six, seven, eight innings and be a reliable starter that can give us real length. I know that’s what he’s trying to do every time he steps foot on that mound.”

Instead, in back-to-back starts, Arrieta has not been able to get past the second inning. He left Tuesday’s game after recording just five outs. Arrieta was lifted with two runners in scoring position after surrendering seven runs.

Arrieta’s struggles are a piece of what’s gone wrong as the Cubs’ slide stretches into July. Three more losses and they will tie the record set in the first 14 games of the 1997 season, and the other parts of the team aren’t looking apt to stop the current cold spell. Joc Pederson’s error in left in the second inning set up three more of the Phillies runs when center fielder Ian Happ took a bad read and couldn’t make the catch on Rhys Hoskins’ fly ball.

“When you’re competing at the level we compete at, nobody likes to lose,” Ross said. “It’s not fun to lose.”

Cubs starters had collectively pitched 419 innings before Arrieta’s start Tuesday, putting them in the bottom third of baseball. Not having the rotation able to go deep into games has pushed the once-vaunted bullpen into rough territory. Through June 20, Cubs relievers had a league-best 2.63 ERA, but in the weeks since then, they’ve posted a league-worst 7.05.

The Cubs bats were alive Tuesday — they scored at least nine runs for the first time since May 29 against the Reds, including Javy Baez’s tenth career multi-homer game. Take away the seven runs Arrieta allowed, and that’s enough to win.

During this losing streak, Ross said he has resisted the temptation to stray from his routine, and he said his players are doing the same. A Joe Maddon-inspired costume road trip to lighten the mood and loosen Ross’s guys up is not on the way.

“You don’t want to get gimmicky and start to be fake and try to create a false fun atmosphere,” Ross said. “These guys are here to work. Here to win baseball games. That’s when the fun happens — the fun happens when they get a packed house here and we get to hear ‘Go, Cubs, Go’ at the end of a game.”

While the losses are piling up and the course of the second half of the season likely moving in a different direction from how things looked a couple of weeks ago, Ross insists that the mood in his clubhouse isn’t shifting with it.

“When you come out and you give your best on a daily basis, that’s really all you have control over,” Ross said. “It’s not gonna make anything any better by having a bad attitude or moping around. You’ve got to put your big boy pants on and be professionals.

“They’ve been around winning for a long time and I think they understand that it’s a really long season and it’s a tough stretch and nobody likes to go through it. But you’re not going to get out of it hanging your head.”

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Brewers and Their Beers: Skeleton Key

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By Mark McDermott,
today at 11:30 pm

One of a series of summaries about Chicago area brewers that I rarely get to add to. But the situation demands it this time.

As we’ve covered earlier, Skeleton Key Brewery in Woodridge suffered extensive damage in the June 19 tornado that ripped through the southwestern suburbs. As of this writing, there are are fundraisers going on to help them recover and keep staff on payroll, with a maze of insurance issues to go through, both as a business and with the owners of the small industrial/office park where they were located.

On July 6, the SKB crew did their first post-tornado brew at Buckledown Brewing in Lyons. Their Facebook post noted that they had five beers scheduled for release around Father’s Day. Whether they meant before or since the tornado is uncertain, but the chance is good that more Skeleton Key beers will turn up soon.

Skeleton Key opened in 2016 as a taproom only brewer. Their plans involved an incubator program, to help new brewers gain knowledge and skills to strike out on their own. SKB had just begun to move into packaging its own beer to make up for business lost during the pandemic. The day after the tornado, the brewery’s employees, management and several volunteers helped shift their surviving kegs and cans to Miskatonic Brewing in Darien, from which many retailers were able to pick up beer to help raise funds.

While I’ve been to Skeleton Key a couple of times, it was usually to try some of their specialty tappings, including the Black is Beautiful collaboration or the Box of Chocolates Imperial stouts. But the beers now pouring or selling at other places would have represented their “flagship” brews, at least had they not been knocked out. So I’m summarizing the beers I’ve been able to pick up in the past few weeks.

7th Evil Ex Schwarzbier

[embedded content]

7th Evil Ex was on tap at nearby Goldfinger Brewing, just listed as “Schwarzbier.” I did a One Take Beer Review at that location. Had to sit outside, away from other patrons so they wouldn’t be bothered. And if their background music was audible, I could have gotten a copyright strike on the YouTube. But that also meant picking up wind and traffic noises. Still, this turned out all right for a cell phone video.

Some American brewers tend to think of a Schwarzbier and just a stout with lager yeast. But SKB managed to retrive the German style here. No overly roasty malts. Just a mild malt aroma with a touch of graininess. The color is a deep brown-to-black, with a lot of lace as the head in the .5l glass settles.

The taste is pretty light considering the color. Yes, some there are some dark stout-like malts on the palate, but it’s not very acidic. Hop profile is not too strong, but it does keep this malty boy from coming on too sweet. Kind of the lawnmower version of a schwarzbier, easy drinking with just a note of roastiness, and not likely to show me down even with a mug this size.

Lost in the Ivy Red IPA

A Red Ale, maybe a Red IPA, with “Michigan-grown Strata & Citra hops,” though with a medium 30 IBU.

I had this ale on draft at Orange & Brew. A little mild in the malt department but with a hoppy base. Red-amber color in glass, with a brown eggshell head. Equal notes of toasty malts and good old bitter hops. Taste keeps up the balance. If the alcohol is slightly high octane, it plays no part in the taster glass I had.

Paintball Fight Kettle Sour

The Lost in the Ivy I had at Orange & Brew was enjoyed as I bought the two canned beers the store had. This is a straight kettle-soured ale, no fruit or other additions.

It pours a big head, which proved ultimately frothy and short-lived, over a slightly hazy yellow beer body, with lots of bubbles on the sides. The kind of fizziness that invited Napoleon to compare Berliner Weiss beer to Champagne, allegedly. There’s merely a light tartness in the nose. Not too much else to go by with the aroma for now.

A rather zesty tart taste, perfect for people new to the style. No fruit, and surely not enough hops to make much of a difference against this sour drink. A solid example of a kettle-sour, where lactobacillus is added to the wort in the kettle, after cooling. It’s allowed to sour for a few days, then re-boiled and fermented as normally.

I’ll add more Skeleton Key beers here as I get to them. Stay tuned!

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MINNEAPOLIS — Jose Abreu, who plays through everything, thought he might not be able to play through this one.

“I thought it was fractured,” Abreu said of a pitch that hit him on the side of his left knee in a game against the Mariners June 27.

Abreu hit the ground, pounding the grass in pain.

“My leg went numb.”

Fans expected the worst — it’s been that kind of year for injuries — but Abreu was in the lineup two days later. It’s the Abreu way.

Play through everything.

“My family,” he said through translator Billy Russo, explaining what motivates him to play hurt. “They are my strength. I come here every day here to do my best and to honor them and I know they have my back, they support me. It doesn’t matter if I’m in pain or not, soreness or not, I have to be there for them. My mom, my wife, my sons, they are my everything.”

The reigning MVP did miss the Sox’ last series in Minnesota after a violent collision with the Royals’ Hunter Dozier near the first base line. He has missed six games after playing all 60 last season and 159 in 2019.

After batting .182/.265/.307 with two homers in June, Abreu is 9-for-26 with two homers and nine RBI in the first six games of July. He collected his 63rd RBI, which ranks fourth in the AL, nine behind RBI Rafael Devers, with an eighth-inning sacrifice fly in the Sox’ 4-1 win over the Twins Tuesday and is aiming to be the first player since Cecil Fielder (1990-92) to lead the AL in RBI three consecutive years.

Having had his first taste of a winning season and the postseason in 2020, Abreu is soaking in first place.

“Winning is one of the sweetest things that you can have as an athlete,” Abreu said.

This was one of the sweetest wins of the season for the Sox, who learned before the game that catcher Yasmani Grandal would be lost to injury for at least a month. Zack Collins, the new starter, drove in the first two runs with a single, the only hit against Jose Berrios, and later doubled and scored on Adam Eaton’s single.

“I’ve been ready for it,” Collins said of elevated role.

Michael Kopech pitched a scoreless seventh and a well-rested Liam Hendriks struck out four in two perfect innings of relief for his 22nd save.

Hendriks raised his arms after defensive replacement Billy Hamilton made a running catch near the wall with with a head first slide into a rained-soaked warning track.

“That might be the top one, to be honest with you,” Hamilton said when asked where the catch ranked among plays he’s made in his career.

In large part because of starting pitching — Carlos Rodon gave them another strong start in his last one before the All-Star Game next Tuesday with six innings of one-run ball, finishing with a flurry of 99- and 100-mph pitches — the Sox have held their spot atop the AL Central despite an onslaught of injuries.

“You have to just keep moving forward,” Abreu said.

Rodon (2.31 ERA) struck out eight and didn’t allow walk, the only run against him coming on Alex Kirilloff’s RBI single in the sixth. That followed a single by Luis Arraez that glanced off Rodon’s glove and a ball that center fielder Brian Goodwin lost in a misty sky, falling for a single.

Rodon struck out Ryan Jeffers and Max Kepler to end his outing, limiting Twins damage to one run.

“He can rise to the occasion and make clutch pitches,” manager Tony La Russa said.

The Sox snapped a three-game losing streak. As the 34-year-old Abreu says, winning trumps everything.

“That’s what you work for,” he said. “It’s something I don’t know how to describe. If you are winning, it doesn’t matter. There’s no age that can stop it, there’s no pain. It’s nothing. You’re winning.”

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Three children and three adults were hospitalized following a traffic crash Tuesday night in the Loop.

The crash happened near the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard, according to Chicago fire officials.

Two adults were taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in serious to critical condition, fire officials said.

The other adult was taken to the same hospital in fair to serious condition, fire officials said.

All three children were transported to Rush University Medical Center in good to fair condition, fire officials said.

This is a developing story. Check back for details.

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Chicago’s top cop found himself under fire from the chief judge and prosecutor of Cook County Tuesday after he once again blamed them for the city’s rising gun violence, including a holiday weekend that saw over 100 people shot.

Police Supt. David Brown complained at a news conference that Cook County courts release too many violent criminals, with judges setting low bonds and relying too much on electronic monitoring.

“Chicago police officers are doing their job by arresting people and charging them with murder,” Brown insisted. “That’s doing our part. And what’s happening in the courts, it’s creating this unsafe environment for all of us.”

But Timothy Evans, chief judge of Cook County Circuit Court, dismissed Brown’s criticism as simplistic. “Speculation based on isolated cases is not the same as reality based on a complete picture,” he said in a statement.

State’s Attorney Kim Foxx turned Brown’s criticism against him, saying police need to make more arrests for violent crimes.

“It starts with apprehending those who pull the trigger,” she said in a statement. “Police must make an arrest before a case reaches the courthouse door.”

Amid the heated exchange of words, an alderman once again proposed sending in the National Guard, an idea Mayor Lori Lightfoot described as grandstanding. “I don’t think I need to say anything more about that,” she said.

The police department said it would have no other comment about the weekend violence beyond what the superintendent said at the news conference.

Both Brown and Lightfoot have repeatedly questioned the decisions of prosecutors and judges as this year’s violence continues to outpace 2020, the most violent year in the city since the mid-1990s.

In making his case yet again, Brown pointed to more than 90 people charged with murder who were later released back into their communities on electronic monitoring.

“If the cops’ productivity was down and not unprecedentedly high, I would be arguing we need to do more as police officers. That’s not the case here,” Brown said, noting officers recovered 244 illegal guns over the holiday weekend, resulting in 86 arrests.

Brown did not say if police had made any arrests in any of the weekend shootings, including attacks that wounded at least 13 children 15 years of age and younger.

This holiday was the most violent Fourth of July weekend since 2017, when at least 101 people were shot, 14 fatally. However, the holiday was on a Tuesday that year, so the tally covered four full days; this year’s tally covered three days.

Many of the shootings were in the Calumet and South Chicago police districts on the South Side, in neighborhoods that have seen more violence this year than last, according to Sun-Times data.

Brown was quick to point out violent crime in other major cities has increased dramatically more than Chicago, both last year and this year. “It’s a violent crime wave that’s happening in this country,” he said.

So far in 2021, murders are up nearly 18% nationally, according to statistics compiled by crime analyst Jeff Asher, while Chicago has seen an increase of nearly 4% from the same period last year.

However, murders last year in Chicago jumped by more than 50%, much higher than the national increase of 30%.

The nearly 800 killings in Chicago in 2020 still fell short of the city’s annual tolls during much of the 1980s and 1990s, though it was the highest number of slayings in 20 years.

“No one would do the job that Chicago police officers do right now. No one would wade into large crowds and risk being shot,” Brown said. “No one would go down these dark alleys that officers go down.”

Two officers — a commander and a sergeant — were wounded on the West Side early Sunday while dispersing a crowd. One was hit in the foot, the other grazed in the thigh.

Brown said blaming the courts wasn’t “finger pointing,” but an attempt to spur further debate. “I think people should hear this,” he said. “This is a worthwhile debate here and in all places around the country.”

But Evans insisted “bail reform has not led to an increase in crime. Looking at individual tragic cases in isolation may contribute to the speculation that releasing individuals before trial rather than incarcerating them — whether by placing them on electronic monitoring or other forms of supervision — means an increase in crime.”

There were 100 murder defendants on electronic monitoring as of Tuesday, out of 3,500 on such restraints, according to the sheriff’s office. Of the entire group, 72% were facing charges for violent crimes.

In July 2017, before new policies limiting limit pre-trial jail time for all but the most dangerous defendants, there were 2,200 on electronic monitoring, and 32% faced charges related to violent crime, the office said.

Foxx, after taking a swipe at the low number of arrests by Brown’s department, argued “finger-pointing instead of talking honestly about the violence plaguing our city doesn’t help bring solutions that make our communities safer.

“The violence we are experiencing is not the result of a slowed down court system; it is a larger and more complex issue (both locally and nationally), that requires all of the criminal justice stakeholders to work together rather than engaging in deflection and blame-shifting,” she said.

Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell said Brown’s and Lightfoot’s message might be politically expedient, but it detracts from efforts to suppress crime through community outreach.

Mitchell watched Brown’s press conference online, and disagreed with the superintendent’s assessment that the large number of people charged with murder on electronic monitoring devices are “driving the violence.”

“If you are charged with something as serious as murder, you probably have posted a very high cash bond and are still subject to all sorts of restrictions. You’re being monitored on GPS, so we know exactly where you are. You have curfews. You have to check in with the court,” said Mitchell, whose office represents roughly 90% of all criminal defendants in Cook County.

“This idea that if the courts would just ‘do their job’ and we would all be safer flies in the face of numerous studies,” Mitchell said. “Crime is up in cities all over the U.S. right now, and that covers cities with conservative bond policies and bond reform.

“I feel for the superintendent. He has a very difficult job,” he added. “But we have to get away from asking what the superintendent is going to do on a Thursday to stop violence over the weekend.”

Meanwhile, Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) called for the deployment of the Illinois National Guard “immediately to get a handle on this city.”

He said the Guard wouldn’t patrol neighborhoods and streets, but instead would “secure the perimeter” around downtown, freeing more police officers to be sent to communities.

Asked about critics who say they don’t want their neighborhoods turned into armed camps, Beale responded: “I get that, but my question to them is, what’s your plan? I’ll be more than willing to listen to anybody who has a plan going forward. But just complaining and not having a plan doesn’t resonate with me.”

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South Side student athletes now have a new sports facility where they can practice.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot cut the ribbon Tuesday for a new indoor track in Gately Park in Pullman.

The 139,000-square foot facility at 10201 S. Cottage Grove Ave. also will serve as the new flagship site for After School Matters, the non-profit group that hosts programs for students in the 8th through 12th grades at at the Gately Park site and two other locations.

Joyce Chapman, president of the Gately Park Advisory Council, said the facility is “a long time coming for the Far South Side.”

After School Matters and the Chicago Park District announced the project in 2018, according to CEO Mary Ellen Caron. It was to open last year but was delayed by the pandemic.

Tuesday was the first day of programs at the new facility, which has seats for 3,500 spectators and, LIghtfoot said, will “put Chicago on par with New York City and Boston” when it comes to track and field championships.

“I don’t ever want to hear again that nobody comes to Chicago to look for track talent because we have it in abundance,” said Lightfoot.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

The building is named for Conrad Worrill, a longtime Northeastern Illinois University professor who died last year. Worrill, a runner in high school, had long pushed for an indoor track, so today’s student-athletes could practice year-round despite Chicago’s unforgiving winters.

“He was a runner at Hyde Park High School 50 years ago, and he had to run through the school halls” because there was no indoor track, Caron said.

With the new track, Chapman said Chicago could “build our new Olympian.”

But there is more than the track. The building’s After School Matters wing has art and dance studios, music rooms, culinary spaces, tech labs and a rooftop garden spread over two floors.

Although the program has served over 350,000 participants in its 30-year history, Caron said this summer is the largest class yet, with 14,000 students.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

One is Danny Barksdale, 16, in the Les Enfants dance program. He can see the building from his school across the street, though even as watched during three yeas of construction, he hadn’t known what it was going to be.

“When I heard it was for After School Matters, it made me smile,” Danny said. “We finally have an opportunity where we don’t have to travel far away just to do what we like. We can be safe and enjoy other activities.”

Destynee Smith, 16, has been in another After School Matters’ dance program, Forward Momentum Chicago, for five years. She hopes to see the facility used by other youth teams around the city.

“After School Matters (helps) lower violence and get a lot of kids off the street and have something to do with their days and just brighten up everyday life,” she said.

Cheyanne M. Daniels is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.

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A person was listed in critical to grave condition after they were pulled from the water of the North Shore Channel Tuesday evening.

The person was found by divers near Bryn Mawr and Jersey Avenue in the North Park area, according to Chicago fire officials.

Emergency crews attempted resuscitation and the person was transported to a local hospital in critical to grave condition, fire officials said.

Authorities have not yet released the person’s age or gender.

This is a developing story. Check back for details.

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