The team’s “performance center” will be discussed during a virtual community meeting Thursday that officials call the start of a lengthy process.

The Chicago Fire soccer club’s plans for a training and practice center at Hanson Park on the Northwest Side include promised improvements for the prep sports stadium on the property and continued public access for some events.

The team’s proposal calls for major improvements to Hanson Stadium, a 2,000-seat facility that would get an inflatable dome for cold-weather events and six other soccer fields for practices and youth sports. The Fire also want to add a three-story building for various club functions.

A team source said the project’s budget is about $90 million and that no public subsidies are being sought. The development would affect a nearly 32-acre site at the southeast corner of Fullerton and Central avenues.

The Fire’s home games would continue at Soldier Field, where the club has a long-term lease.

Details of what the Fire call a “performance center” were posted online by the city’s planning department for review before a virtual town hall meeting Thursday. Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36^th) will host the 6 p.m. meeting.

Hanson Park includes three public schools, and the club has promised not to interfere with their operation. It also promises improved open space for student use. A community garden on the site’s eastern part would be unchanged. Parking for several hundred cars is expected.

“This is just a starting point,” Villegas said of the coming community review. He said he wants ample opportunity for residents to examine the design and public benefits. He said he likes the prospect of new fields, potentially for baseball as well as soccer, that could help Prosser Career Academy High School.

In its materials for the project, the Fire said it chose the Belmont Cragin site because it has a strong base of soccer fans and the club already runs several programs with local schools. The team has been looking for a city-based location to replace operations in Bridgeview. Joe Mansueto, executive chairman at investment advisor Morningstar, owns the Fire.

“The Chicago Fire Football Club is excited about the prospect of investing in Belmont Cragin and building our performance center in the neighborhood. This is the first step in a long process and we look forward to working with the local community, the City of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools to make this dream a reality,” the team said in an emailed statement.

Hanson Stadium has been little used for years. Villegas said it requires significant repairs to its field and bleachers. The Fire would provide a new artificial surface and replace the old field that Villegas said came from the Chicago Bears years ago went they went with grass at Soldier Field. Of the other fields, three would get natural grass for first-team practices.

A club source said it has no timeline for finishing the project but hopes it can start on it early in 2022. CPS owns the property, so Board of Education approval is needed. The project also needs a zoning change from the city.

Villegas and a club source said the Fire wants to lease the property from CPS, a deal that would add its facilities to the property-tax rolls. Those talks, however, are believed to be at an early stage. “We don’t fully know what their ‘asks’ are at CPS,” one insider said. CPS could not be reached Friday.

The Fire said the project will support 200 construction jobs and be the daily base for 220 team employees.

It has hired Crawford Architects as the lead designer. The firm, with offices in Kansas City, Missouri, specializes in athletic-related projects such as a sports medicine center and hall of fame involving the Minnesota Vikings.

Contributing: Brian Sandalow

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file

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Officials are now talking about cracking down on what some experts are calling an epidemic of pitchers doctoring baseballs.

Somebody out there please help a man whose faith in the honor and uprightness of our national pastime is close to gone. If a fuel gauge measured trust in baseball, I’d be walking along the side of the highway, red gas can in hand.

What is there to believe in when it comes to the game, other than 30-plus years of exuberant cheating?

Hitting? Steroids poisoned baseball in the 1990s and 2000s, if not beyond.

Catchers’ signs? Stolen like catalytic converters by the Astros in a scandal that ruined the 2017 World Series.

And now … pitching? I thought there were a few rogue spitballers out there, perhaps a small group of dedicated glue-under-the-cap cheaters. What an innocent I was! Major League Baseball is now talking about cracking down on what some are calling an epidemic of pitchers doctoring baseballs. Not a few people coughing, but a plague. A recently retired pitcher told Sports Illustrated that “80 to 90%’’ of major-league pitchers are using sticky substances today.

They’re using it to increase the spin rate on their pitches. The greater the spin rate, the more movement on breaking balls. The more movement, the more hitters who look hopelessly lost. As of Friday, the big-league batting average was .236, which, if the season had ended that day, would be the lowest in history.

Baseball is the dirtiest major American sport. That’s not to say the others are the picture of virtue. Some NFL linemen did not get to be 330 pounds of muscle solely on hard work. The “lesser’’ sports are pure, you say? I’m sorry to interrupt your fantasy of golf being a gentleman’s game, but there are some gentlemen on the PGA Tour who are hitting the ball ridiculously far. Too far. I smell a polo-shirted rat.

But major-league baseball is the dirtiest sport, and that’s not even the main story here. It’s that baseball is bad at cheating. So let’s call it the dirtiest, dumbest sport. The Astros’ system for stealing signs from opposing catchers involved video cameras and someone in the dugout banging on a garbage can if an off-speed pitch was coming. Why not use smoke signals? Or two empty soup cans attached to a string? That’s how dumb the Astros were.

The reason pitchers believe they can get away with doctoring the ball is because they almost always have. Think about it. They are throwing incriminating evidence in the direction of law-enforcement officials (the home-plate umpire) every time they throw a sticky ball to the plate. It would be like a home invader leaving his driver’s license on a table at the house he burgled 10 days in a row.

The difference is that MLB officials have looked the other way for years, thinking … thinking what? What could they have been thinking? They were not thinking, which brings us back to dumb. If that many pitchers are cheating, it’s because officials didn’t want to do anything about it. And that’s the essence of stupidity.

MLB ignored a burgeoning steroid scandal because it liked the idea of lots of home runs. What they received instead was the cartoonishly muscular Barry Bonds, he of the incredibly expanding noggin. They got Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire and a big, fat stain on the game.

You think officials would have learned, but, no, not even close. When the Astros’ cheating scandal happened, it was an opportunity for MLB to send a message to the world that cheating in any form would not be tolerated. It was a chance to exhibit some backbone. The way to do that was to relieve Houston of its World Series title. Instead, MLB fined the Astros $5 million, took away some future draft picks and suspended the team’s manager and general manager for a season.

The moral? Crime pays, dummy.

(I’m still enjoying the White Sox’ excellence and the Cubs’ surprising success. But do I trust that either team is as clean as folded laundry? Not on your life. Definitely not on mine.)

At this point, I’m guessing that many baseball fans don’t care about any of this, including the latest scandal. Did you see how much break there was on that pitch! Crazy! It’s like watching movie stars who have had tons of work done on their bodies. You like gazing upon them. Your gaze doesn’t care how they arrived at their looks.

But at what point does the concept of fairness kick in? We can spend hours debating whether steroids are a worse sin than doctored baseballs, or whether stealing signs is worse than using performance-enhancing drugs. Some of you will chalk all of it up to “gamesmanship,’’ which is a euphemism for “cheating one’s ass off.’’ None of the scandals that have hit baseball are the equivalent of stealing a pack of chewing gum from the convenience store. They all can affect the outcome of games. So let’s call it what it is: fraud.

The stupidity of the whole thing is what’s so stunning. You don’t think you’re eventually going to get caught using PEDs when you look like a circus strongman? You don’t think you’re going to get caught after the curveball you just threw Super Glues itself to the catcher’s mitt?

And MLB doesn’t think it’s going to come off as dumb for looking away for so long on so many things?

You want really, really dumb? A work stoppage could hit baseball for the 2022 season. Owners will cry poor from the effects of the pandemic, and players will remember how past agreements have favored owners and teams. Go ahead and roll your eyes.

Welcome to our national pastime, where dumb meets dirty. And nobody wins.

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Dino Gaudio agreed to a plea deal that will include probation and a fine. 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A former University of Louisville basketball assistant has pleaded guilty to a federal charge of attempted extortion and will avoid prison time.

Dino Gaudio was dismissed from the team along with another assistant in March after the Cardinals missed the NCAA tournament. During a meeting with coaches, Gaudio threatened to go to the media with alleged NCAA violations by the team, according federal prosecutors.

He pleaded guilty on Friday to a charge of interstate communication with intent to extort, which carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Louisville. Gaudio agreed to a plea deal that will include probation and a fine.

Gaudio, 64, threatened to expose alleged violations by the team “in its production of recruiting videos for prospective student-athletes and in the use of its graduate assistants in practices,” according to a charging document filed in May. He asked for 17 months of salary or a $425,000 lump sum payment, according to the U.S. Attorney.

Gaudio will be sentenced on Aug. 27.

He had been the head coach at Wake Forest University from 2007-10. He then spent eight years as an ESPN analyst before joining Louisville in 2018. Gaudio also previously led Army and Loyola-Maryland and worked with Louisville coach Chris Mack at Wake Forest.

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Chicago health officials say the removal of contamination at Hegewisch Babe Ruth field on the Southeast Side could last up to three weeks.

The city says it will begin cleanup of soil at a Southeast Side youth baseball field next week after Chicago officials discovered high levels of brain-damaging manganese there in 2019.

The remediation at Babe Ruth field at East 126th Place and South Carondolet Avenue in Hegewisch will begin Tuesday and is expected to be completed within three weeks. The area to be cleaned up is about 70 feet by 80 feet, according to the city.

The city knew about the contamination a year before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publicly disclosed in July of 2020 that concentrations of manganese exceeded federal limits set to protect residents’ health. That same month, a state health official told league officials that adults and teens could continue playing on the field as long as grass covered the contaminated area.

However, young children should not play there, the official warned. Babe Ruth is a longtime league for players 13 to 18. Last year, EPA remediated the soil of nearby Hegewisch Little League field after the discovery of lead and arsenic in the dirt.

The Southeast Side is home to a number of polluting industries and has been at center of a public fight over a proposed car-shredding operation, which has drawn the attention of the top administrator of the EPA.

Oscar Sanchez, a community organizer and Hegewisch resident whose brothers played at Babe Ruth field, said he wishes the cleanup was done in a more timely manner.

“When it comes to these things, we’re glad this is happening but there needs to be more urgency on these issues,” Sanchez said.

Bernard Ralich, whose now-adult son Daniel played at Babe Ruth, echoed the sentiment.

“In the meantime, we’re breathing all this stuff,” Ralich said. “Hegewisch don’t get nothing. All we get is the pollution.”

The city has said it referred the matter to EPA in early 2020 “to ensure the field was appropriately characterized before notifying the public and the league.”

EPA has grouped the Babe Ruth contamination with environmental testing around the nearby Watco Terminal site on East 126th Street. That facility handles bulk solid materials, including manganese-bearing alloys.

Residents with questions about the planned cleanup can call 312 747-9884 to get more information, city health officials said.

Brett Chase’s reporting on the environment and public health is made possible by a grant from The Chicago Community Trust.

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As the Chicago Bulls plot their offseason, it has become clear that the team will target the point guard position this summer as the front office believes that a veteran point guard is the final piece to plug into a starting lineup that already includes Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic. At the trade deadline this […]

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The Chicago White Sox have released their new City Connect jerseys as part of Nike’s new collection.

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