An officer fired shots while responding to a SWAT incident April 26, 2021, in Gresham. | Getty Images
An officer fired his weapon while responding to an incident in the 7800 block of South Loomis Boulevard but did not strike the person, according to police.
Chicago’s police oversight agency is investigating a SWAT incident in which an officer fired shots Monday evening, though no one was injured.
Officers responded to a “domestic call” involving a person with a gun about 8 p.m. in the 7800 block of South Loomis Boulevard, Chicago police said.
An officer fired his weapon but did not strike the person, according to police.
The person was taken into custody and a weapon was recovered, police said.
Police did not provide any additional details.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability is investigating the incident, including the officer’s use of force.
The officer will be placed on desk duty for 30 days.
Dozens of family members and supporters of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams gather for a vigil outside the girl’s grandmother’s West Side home, Wednesday evening, April 21, 2021. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
The suspect was taken into custody about 6:50 p.m. after he left a home in the 1500 block of South Springfield Avenue, Chicago police said.
A person was arrested Monday in Lawndale in connection with the investigation of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams’ fatal shooting earlier this month at a McDonald’s drive-thru in Homan Square.
The suspect was taken into custody about 6:50 p.m. after he left a home alone in the 1500 block of South Springfield Avenue, Chicago police said.
A SWAT team was called to the scene to “assist” in the arrest, police said. The suspect was taken to Area Four headquarters for questioning, and formal charges are pending.
Last week, a man who was shot by police while allegedly trying to carjack a family on the Eisenhower Expressway was charged in connection with Adams’ killing. Prosecutors said that Marion Lewis, 18, was the getaway driver but did not fire any of the shots that killed Jaslyn or wounded her father, 28-year-old Jontae Adams.
Police would not say whether the suspect arrested Monday was believed to be one of the shooters.
Jaslyn, who was nicknamed “Pinky,” was fatally shot April 18 after two gunmen fired at least 45 shots at her father’s car in the drive-thru of a McDonald’s at Kedzie Avenue and Roosevelt Road. One shooter was seen on surveillance cameras holding an AK-47-style assault rifle with a “banana clip,” prosecutors said.
6 p.m. Walk-ins now welcome at all six COVID-19 mass vaccination sites in suburban Cook County
Members of the Illinois National Guard and workers help set up the county’s sixth large-scale community vaccination site in Matteson, Tuesday afternoon, April 13, 2021. Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
Starting Monday, all six COVID-19 mass vaccination sites in suburban Cook County will start accepting walk-in appointments.
While scheduling appointments in advance are still encouraged, walk-ins will be welcomed at the county’s mass vaccination sites Monday through Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For help finding an appointment in Chicago, visit zocdoc.com or call (312) 746-4835.
3:37 p.m. Pritzker announces $60 million state program to help combat vaccine hesitancy
Gov. J.B. Pritzker and health care leaders announced a new program Monday aimed at dispelling myths surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine in vulnerable communities and get resources into the hands of people who are still being infected by the virus.
“This program is about one-on-one connections involving established, trusted members of the community,” Pritzker said at the news conference. “Whether that is a federally qualified health center or a church, an LGBTQ+ center, a senior center or a local branch of the NAACP.”
The Pandemic Health Navigator program will help residents in over 100 counties statewide get vaccinated or answer any concerns have about the vaccine. It will also help those who have contracted the coronavirus by getting resources directly to them. Those resources include connecting families to food, educational resources, rental assistance and utility assistance.
Pritzker said his administration has worked hard to make the vaccine easily accessible with about 9 million people already receiving doses of COVID-19 vaccine, but the state needs to do more than make shots available to people.
1:43 p.m. 2021 Chosen Few picnic postponed; online event scheduled for July 4 weekend
Chicagoans craving a semblance of live summer musicin the city are taking yet another hit to their plans as a popular local event rebrands as a virtual festival due to COVID-19 concerns.
The Chosen Few Picnic & House Music Festival, which takes place annually in Jackson Park, has postponed their usual slate of in-person activities in favor of a July 3, online event according to an official announcement Monday.
Last spring, the group consisting of DJs Wayne Williams, Jesse Saunders, Alan King, Andre Hatchett, Mike Dunn and Terry Hatcher, made a similar announcement, and despite ideas to hold an in-person socially-distanced show, the group wants to wait for an actual picnic and festival — a popular event on the social calendar of many Black Chicagoans — local house heads know and love.
12:32 p.m. With graduations virtual, Chicago college students dream of in-person, multi-school ceremony at Soldier Field
With only weeks before Chicago colleges face yet another graduation period during the pandemic, many schools have again made plans for virtual ceremonies this spring.
That’s led some students to take matters into their own hands.
Three Columbia College Chicago students have launched a campaign called #CommenceAnyways to hold an in-person ceremony at Soldier Field — which would not involve campus administration in any way.
“I’ve learned and grown so much during my time being a college student, and it’s really this moment to be celebrated,” said organizer Nathan Branch.
Branch, along with classmates Jahmelah Miller and Alice Scharf, started the initiative as an event for CCC students, but have since opened up their Eventbrite ticket page for all Chicago-area graduating students.
According to the organizers, this would be the first in-person citywide graduation event in Chicago for college students, although last year, the city hosted a citywide virtual graduation for high school seniors.
“We set out to be the change we wanted to see,” Miller said. “After a few weeks of getting feedback we decided not only Columbia students deserved this effort but all college students. We have all worked so hard and deserve this moment.”
The campaign involves a social media push for donations on their gofundme page. In a video, several Chicago students expressed why they find the campaign important.
“As a first generation immigrant, graduation means a lot to me and my family,” said Bichoy Boutros, fashion design major at CCC,. “So thank you to #commenceanyways for making that happen.”
11:23 a.m. EU launches legal action against vaccine-maker AstraZeneca
BRUSSELS — The European Union’s executive branch said Monday that it has launched legal action against coronavirus vaccine-maker AstraZeneca for failing to respect the terms of its contract with the 27-nation bloc.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has been central to Europe’s immunization campaign, and a linchpin in the global strategy to get vaccines to poorer countries. But the slow pace of deliveries has frustrated the Europeans and they have held the company responsible for partly delaying their vaccine rollout.
European Commission spokesman Stefan De Keersmaecker said that Brussels launched the legal action against AstraZeneca last Friday “on the basis of breaches of the advance purchase agreement.”
He said the reason for the legal action was that “some terms of the contract have not been respected” and that “the company has not been in a position to come up with a reliable strategy to ensure a timely delivery of doses.”
AstraZeneca’s contract with the EU, which was signed by the Commission on behalf of the member countries last August, foresaw an initial 300 million doses for distribution among member countries, with an option for a further 100 million.
The British-Swedish drugmaker had hoped to deliver 80 million doses of that in the first quarter of 2021, but only 30 million were sent. According to the Commission, the company is now set to provide 70 million doses in the second quarter, rather than the 180 million it had promised.
AstraZeneca said in a statement that it “regrets” the Commission’s decision to take legal action and that it will “strongly defend” itself in court.
“We believe any litigation is without merit and we welcome this opportunity to resolve this dispute as soon as possible,” AstraZeneca said. It said deliveries are improving “following an unprecedented year of scientific discovery, very complex negotiations, and manufacturing challenges.”
“We are making progress addressing the technical challenges and our output is improving, but the production cycle of a vaccine is very long which means these improvements take time to result in increased finished vaccine doses,” it said.
10:09 a.m. From rotten teeth to advanced cancer, patients feeling effects of pandemic-era treatment delays
With medical visits picking up again among patients vaccinated against covid-19, health providers are starting to see the consequences of a year of pandemic-delayed preventive and emergency care as they find more advanced cancer and rotting and damaged teeth, among other ailments.
Dr. Brian Rah, chair of the cardiology department at Montana’s Billings Clinic, was confused in the early days of the covid pandemic. Why the sudden drop in heart attack patients at the Billings Clinic? And why did some who did come arrive hours after first feeling chest pains?
Two patients, both of whom suffered greater heart damage by delaying care, provided what came to be typical answers. One said he was afraid of contracting covid by going to the hospital. The other patient went to the emergency room in the morning, left after finding it too crowded, and then returned that night when he figured there would be fewer patients — and a lower risk of catching covid.
“For a heart attack patient, the first hour is known as the golden hour,” Rah said. After that, the likelihood of death or a lifelong reduction in activities and health increases, he said.
8:52 a.m. Community colleges hope to bring students back to campus this fall
Community colleges across Illinois are cautiously optimistic they will be able to bring back students for in-person classes this fall.
And while a few four-year schools in the Chicago area — including Loyola University Chicago, Columbia College and DePaul University — have announced that students will be required to be vaccinated before returning to campus, most community colleges do not plan to make vaccines mandatory.
After more than a year of nearly all remote coursework, most community colleges said they plan to offer classes four different ways this fall: fully in-person; a hybrid format involving a combination of both in-person and online instruction; virtual classes that involve online synchronous meetings; and fully asynchronous, online classes.
City Colleges of Chicago will offer a range of in-person and remote options for students to take classes this summer and fall, officials said.
“While we strongly encourage all Chicagoans who are eligible to get vaccinated, students will not be required to be vaccinated. We are currently running a COVID-19 testing pilot at three City Colleges of Chicago locations,” said a City Colleges spokeswoman.
The new cases were diagnosed among the 61,299 tests processed by the Illinois Department of Public Health in the last day. That kept the statewide seven-day positivity rate at 3.5%, the lowest its been since the beginning of this month.
As of Saturday night, 3,769,787 people in Illinois were fully vaccinated, meaning two weeks removed from their final dose, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health’s website. That’s about 29.6% of the state’s populations — still well under 80% needed for herd immunity.
Rose and Monty, Chicago’s much loved piping plover pair whose presence on one of the city’s busy beaches made headlines, may have reunited once again on Montrose Beach Dunes.
Rose, who made an 1,100-mile journey to Montrose Beach from Key Preserve State Park in Florida where she spent winter, was spotted back on the lakefront Sunday morning.
Monty may have been spotted back in Montrose on Monday.
Though the number coordinates on the piping plovers could not yet be confirmed, the plover that was sighted wore a green band, as Monty does, explained Louise Clemency, field supervisor for the Chicago office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Monty was last sighted on Galveston Island’s East Beach in Texas last Thursday.
Last May, Monty and Rose were spotted as having returned on the same day, said Clemency.
“But still, one day after the other is still amazingly close when you consider that Rose winters in Florida and Monty winters in Texas,” she added.
The endangered pair have mated on Montrose Beach Dunes for the past two years, a strong indication that Rose could nest there again this year. If Monty really is back, this would mark the pair’s third year returning to Chicago.
Piping plovers who have nesting success at one site tend to come back to the same place to nest again, explained Tamima Itani, vice president and treasurer of the Illinois Ornithological Society.
Because the plovers don’t have tracking devices, wildlife conservation groups rely on other bird watching communities across the country to report band color and number combinations that are wrapped around birds’ legs to identify them.
“We get these reports in the wintering grounds from citizens, scientists, or people who are really passionate about birds in general,” said Jillian Farkas, the Great Lakes piping plover coordinator with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“It’s really crucial that people are sending their observations… to any place that can help protect the birds, because there’s still a lot that is a mystery about their migration patterns,” she said.
Two out of Rose and Monty’s three chicks that hatched in Chicago last June were also recently seen.
“Esperanza was sighted in Georgia on Friday and Nish was sighted in Florida last Wednesday,” said Clemency.
Though dogs are not allowed on the public beach or the protected area, the Illinois Ornithological Society requests that pedestrians obey the signs and keep their dogs off the beach, because of growing concerns about the safety of the plovers and other shore birds.
“People love these piping plovers. Frankly, we get very attached to them,” said Itani.
A year and a half after a Des Plaines police officer accidentally shot a promising young guitarist at a Northwest Side music school, the department’s chief is finally speaking publicly — and raising questions about how the teenager’s devastating injuries occurred.
“We just didn’t feel that the full picture and the totality of the events that occurred that evening were made clear to the community,” Des Plaines Police Chief David Anderson told the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday.
Anderson, who has been chief for about four months, said that after repeatedly reviewing security video from UpBeat Music & Arts, he is uncertain whether Des Plaines Police Officer James Armstrong actually struck Rylan Wilder, a budding musician working as an intern at the store on the evening of Nov. 19, 2019, when he was shot.
“If you listen to the video, what I hear is the potential of a shot being fired just prior to Officer Armstrong firing his weapon,” Anderson said.
Rylan’s shooting stemmed from a bank robbery in Des Plaines that led to a police chase into the city. One of the alleged bank robbers, Maurice Murphy, was arrested not far from the bank. The other man, Christopher Willis, carjacked a Buick and made it to the Northwest Side, where he opened fire, injuring a veteran police officer.
Willis then ran into the music store, and Armstrong chased after him. When Willis raised his gun, Armstrong shot and killed him, Chicago police said at the time. The officer also accidentally shot a fleeing Rylan during the incident, CPD has said.
“That person [Willis] was armed and there’s, in my opinion, a possibility that he could have fired a round in that store also. I just can’t prove that. I can’t confirm that right now,” Anderson said.
The Wilder family attorney, Tim Cavanagh, said it’s clear who shot Rylan.
“The suggestion that anyone other than a Des Plaines police officer shot Rylan Wilder is nonsense,” Cavanagh said. “The video makes very clear that the bullet that struck Rylan’s arm came from a military weapon held by Officer Armstrong.”
In a lawsuit filed in Cook County, the Wilders claim that Armstrong’s use of force was “excessive” and that it constituted “reckless, willful and wanton conduct.”
Before the shooting, Rylan’s band, Monarchy Over Monday, had played at Riot Fest and the House of Blues. Since that November 2019 day, Rylan has required multiple surgeries to repair the extensive damage done to his left arm, and doctors aren’t certain whether he’ll ever regain full use of the limb.
Armstrong could not be reached for comment Monday. In a sworn statement he gave to an outside company the City of Des Plaines brought in to investigate the incident, Armstrong said Willis at one point “with the firearm in hand, started pointing it in my direction.” Armstrong said he’d previously ordered Willis to drop his weapon. He also said he didn’t see Rylan run into his line of fire.
Chief Anderson said Armstrong, who remains with the department, did “the absolute best he could under a very difficult situation.”
But why, given the potential to injure innocent bystanders, did Armstrong open fire in the music store?
“We train our officers, especially with an active shooter, to go in and deal with the threat as quickly as possible because that eliminates hostage situations. It eliminates the potential for other bad outcomes,” Anderson said.
He pointed out that prior to rushing into the music store, Willis had already fired at and struck a police officer.
“Officer Armstrong was trying to stop a very violent, active shooter,” he said. “These are very dynamic, difficult events.”
And asked why the pursuit wasn’t handed over to Chicago police when Willis entered the city, Anderson said: “Jim was obviously one of the closest vehicles because he ended up hitting [Willis’] car. So I don’t know that that would have been a realistic option for him to turn that over without potentially losing contact with the suspect.”
Anderson said there is police bodycam video of the incident inside the store but that there is “a lot of camera movement,” making it of little use.
Of what happened to Rylan, Anderson said: “I feel such sympathy for that young man. It had to be a terrifying event for him, just like all the other students in the store at the same time, and the teachers.”
WASHINGTON — U.S. population growth has slowed to the lowest rate since the Great Depression, the Census Bureau said Monday, as Americans continued their march to the South and West and one-time engines of growth, New York and California, lost political influence.
Texas and Florida, two Republican Sunbelt giants, will gain congressional seats from the 2020 census as chillier climes like New York and Ohio lose them.
Altogether, the U.S. population rose to 331,449,281 last year, the Census Bureau said, a 7.4% increase that was the second-slowest ever. Experts say that paltry pace reflects the combination of an aging population, slowing immigration and the scars of the Great Recession, which led many young adults to delay marriage and families.
The new allocation of congressional seats comes in the first release of data from last year’s headcount. The numbers generally chart familiar American migration patterns but also confirm one historic marker: For the first time in 170 years of statehood, California is losing a congressional seat, a result of slowed migration to the nation’s most populous state, which was once a symbol of the country’s expansive frontier.
It all marks the official beginning of once-a-decade redistricting battles. The numbers released Monday, along with more detailed data expected later this year, will be used by state legislatures or independent commissions to redraw political maps to account for shifts in population.
Those shifts have largely been westward. Colorado, Montana and Oregon all added residents and gained seat a seat each. Texas was the biggest winner — the second-most populous state added two congressional seats, while Florida and North Carolina gained one. States losing seats included Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Neighborhood counts mattered. Census said if New York had counted 89 more residents, the state would have kept its seat and Minnesota would have lost one.
The reshuffling of the congressional map moved seats from blue states to red ones, giving Republicans a clear, immediate advantage. The party will have complete control of drawing the congressional maps in Texas, Florida and North Carolina — states that are adding four seats.
In contrast, though Democrats control the process in Oregon, Democratic lawmakers there have agreed to give Republicans an equal say in redistricting in exchange for a commitment to stop blocking bills. In Democratic Colorado, a nonpartisan commission will draw the lines, meaning the party won’t have total control in a single expanding state’s redistricting.
It’s been a bumpy road getting this far. The 2020 census faced a once-in-a-century coronavirus pandemic, wildfires, hurricanes, allegations of political interference with the Trump administration’s failed effort to add a citizenship question, fluctuating deadlines and lawsuits.
The new congressional numbers contain some surprises. Though Texas and Florida grew, the final census count had them each gaining one fewer seat than expected. Arizona, another fast-growing state that demographers considered a sure bet to pick up a new seat, failed to get one. All three states have large Latino populations that represent about half their growth, and this could be an early sign that Hispanics shied away from the Trump administration’s count.
Still, Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said he wasn’t ready to “sound the alarm” over the underperformance of states with large Hispanic populations. On the contrary, he believes Hispanic growth helped states like Colorado and Oregon gain seats and prevented states like New York and Illinois from losing more.
The overall numbers confirm what demographers have long warned — that the country’s growth is stalling. Many had expected growth to come in even below the 1930s levels given the long hangover of the Great Recession and the drying up of immigration, which came to a virtual halt during last year’s pandemic.
William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., warned that even a recovering economy may not change the trend with the population aging rapidly and immigration contentious. “Unlike the Great Depression, it’s part of a process where we’re likely to keep having slow growth,” Frey said.
Meanwhile, Americans continue to move to GOP-run states. For now, that shift provides the Republicans with the opportunity to shape new congressional districts to maximize the influence of their voters and have a major advantage in upcoming elections — possibly enough to win back control of the U.S. House.
But in the long term, it’s not clear the migration is good news for Republicans. Many of the fastest growing states are increasingly competitive political battlegrounds where the new arrivals — including many young people and people of color — could at some point give Democrats an edge.
“What’s happening is growth in Sunbelt states that are trending Democratic or will soon trend Democratic,” Frey said.
That means Republicans may be limited in how many favorable seats they can draw as Democrats move to their territory.
“It’s going to be harder and harder for the Texas Legislature to gerrymander advantageous congressional districts” for Republicans, said William Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston. “Texas hasn’t flipped blue yet as a state, but the blue population centers are growing really fast.”
Fulton, who moved to Texas from California, said his new home has become “the new California — the big state that’s adding a lot of population.” He believes California risks becoming the new Northeast — which he characterized as a stagnant, crowded area that retains wealth and intellectual clout but loses innovators to more promising places.
Despite California’s slow growth, the state still has 10 million more residents than Texas.
North Carolina and Texas, Fulton said, are positioned to become the intellectual powerhouses of the new economy, as the South has snatched away major manufacturing industries like automobiles from the Rust Belt. “We are 10-20 years away from the South and the West being truly dominant in American culture and American society,” Fulton said.
But population booms also bring new burdens, like increased traffic, rising home prices and strains on an infrastructure already grappling with climate change — vividly illustrated when the Texas power grid failed in the winter storms of February.
The pattern outlined in the the Census data was one started in the 1930s with the invention of modern air-conditioning and has been steady since then, according to experts. The only change in the pattern was the halt in California’s growth.
That has happened as home prices have soared in California, contributing to a steady stream of residents leaving for other Western states. Those relocations helped turn Colorado and Nevada into Democratic states and made Arizona competitive.
“That’s the California exodus, blue state immigrants,” Frey said. “Californians are taking their votes and moving to other places.”
The power shift is also being driven by Hispanics. Over the decade, Hispanics accounted for around half of the growth in Arizona, Florida and Texas, according to figures from the American Community Survey, a Census Bureau program separate from the decennial census.
The state population figures known as the apportionment count determine not only political power but the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year.
The legal deadline for turning in the apportionment numbers was Dec. 31, but the Census Bureau pushed back that date to April because of challenges caused by the pandemic and the need for more time to correct not-unexpected irregularities.
More detailed figures will be released later this year showing populations by race, Hispanic origin, gender and housing at geographic levels as small as neighborhoods. This redistricting data will be used for redrawing precise congressional and legislative districts.
The city of Chicago is suing an Indiana gun store, accusing it of putting “hundreds, if not thousands, of illegal firearms” on city streets.
Westforth Sports in Gary is “knowingly selling its products to an ever-changing roster of gun traffickers and straw (sham) purchasers,” according to the lawsuit, filed Monday in Cook County.
Those buyers then take the weapons to Chicago, “where they are resold to individuals who cannot legally possess firearms, including convicted felons and drug traffickers.”
In the lawsuit, city attorneys list several examples, including one man who bought 19 guns at Westforth over seven months, and another who bought five guns at once.
Studies cited in the suit allege Westforth Sports is directly linked to more than 850 guns recovered from crime scenes between 2009 and 2016.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has cited the store for, among other things, transferring firearms to straw purchasers after a failed background check, and failing to conduct a background check in the first place.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who normally won’t comment on pending litigation, made an exception this time in part because “the data is fairly compelling against that particular store,” she said Monday. “They are selling thousands of crime guns every year.”
CPD takes “more crime guns off the street every year than New York and L.A. combined,” the mayor added.
“It’s not because we have a better strategy or more focus. We’re surrounded by states and other cities that have much a more lax gun control environment,” she said. “You can literally go over the border to Indiana and get military-grade weapons in any quantity you want if you have the amount of money to spend.
Besides seeking unspecified monetary damages, the city, among other demands, also wants Westforth’s gun sales to be supervised for five years by a court-appointed monitor.
This is not the first time the City of Chicago has sued an independent gun shop. In 1998, the city sued a group of suburban drug dealers after 10 undercover CPD officers bought 171 guns in 62 days, using only three FOID cards between them.
DePaul basketball player — excuse me, former DePaul basketball player — Charlie Moore is transferring from the Blue Demons to Miami for the 2021-22 season.
This will be Moore’s fourth Division I team in five years. He started at Cal, then moved to Kansas, then to DePaul and now down to Miami.
Actually, it will be his fifth Division I school if you count the fact that in November 2015, at the start of his senior year at Morgan Park High School, he signed a letter-of-intent to play at Memphis.
In the spring of 2016, the 5-11 point guard was named Mr. Illinois Basketball. Shortly after that, Moore dumped Memphis for Cal.
The way I look at it Moore is on a dribbling road trip to see the entire United States. From Chicago to Berkeley, California, to Lawrence, Kansas, to Chicago to Miami, then back home to Chicago (someday) is, according to my Trippy.com research, 7,225 miles.
May we call him ”Suitcase Charlie”?
The reason Moore transferred at the start was because of coaching changes. He averaged 12.2 points and 3.5 assists for Cal before coach Cuonzo Martin abruptly left for Missouri. So Moore split for Kansas, sat out a year to fulfill NCAA transfer rules, then didn’t play much the next season, averaging only 13 minutes and 2.9 points.
His father, Curtis, had suffered a stroke, and Moore at least was closer to home at Kansas for visits to see his dad — 548 miles compared with 2,117 miles at Cal.
Then he came back to Chicago to be near his wheelchair-bound dad, signing with DePaul and playing well for coach Dave Leitao for two seasons, even being named to the 2020 preseason All-Big East team.
But Leitao was fired last month, and off ”Suitcase Charlie” went again. The guy is 23 (even if he looks 15), and if there were no NCAA rules, it seems he might play college ball until he’s gray and lame. Remember, there’s New England, Alaska and — Aloha! — Hawaii yet to explore.
Critics say Moore’s unanchored movement is the stuff that creates the destabilizing of high-level college sports and ruins the beauty and moral certitude of time-honored amateur student-athlete competition.
To which I say, after sustained belly laughter, moral certitude? Student-athletes? Amateur?
Oh, you like your rosters firmly set well before the ”Big Dance,” so you can get proper bets down with DraftKings and FanDuel?
And you like that college players are beholden to teams, while their coaches come and go (and get fired and hired) like seeds on a dandelion?
And that amateurism works well, as long as it’s only coaches, athletic directors, sponsors, TV networks, betting parlors and hangers-on who are pros and can make millions?
Got it.
Miami, where Moore soon will be, lost four of its own players to transfer because the NCAA recently dropped its sit-out-a-season requirement and players are on the move everywhere. Reports say 1,280 college basketball players entered the transfer portal this spring.
Why did the NCAA drop the sit-out-a-year rule? Likely because it’s about 100% illegal.
Will this create mild chaos in college hoops? Yes, of course.
Did players start this? Hell, no.
Who professionalized and sold every aspect of big-time college sports? Stand up and bow, university presidents, chancellors, board trustees, athletic directors, coaches, marketers, boosters, fans and ankle-tapers.
Funny how we make determinations about who should get what in this world. Boeing, the airplane company, laid off thousands of workers last year and reported a $12 billion loss, yet CEO David Calhoun was rewarded with $21.1 million. According to the New York Times, Hilton Hotels lost $720 million in 2020, but chief executive Chris Nassetta raked in $55.9 million. Freedom!
Many NCAA rules are restrictive, and they must go. The rulebook is a big, bloated joke. Somehow, it will be done someday.
In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing opening arguments Wednesday in NCAA v. Alston, with amateurism, compensation for players and possible restraint of free trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act being at the core of the suit. Former college football and basketball players, led by former West Virginia running back Shawne Alston, are the plaintiffs.
We’ll see what happens. You never can trust judges to be unbiased. Remember, they all went to college and are all fans.
Until then, you go, ”Suitcase Charlie”! Safe travels.
Liam Hendriks is as straightforward when discussing his job as he is while performing it.
The new White Sox closer comes right at hitters with a high-90s fastball, daring the game’s best to prove him wrong. When hiccups happen, as they have twice already through his first nine appearances, it sticks with the candid Australian.
“The one pitch that got away from me (that) didn’t come back — that’s the one that keeps me up at night,” Hendriks said. “It’s just that little one where you’re cruising along and all of a sudden you lose focus for that split second and it comes back to bite you.”
Signed this offseason to a three-year, $54 million contract, Hendriks has blown two of his first six save chances since joining his fifth big-league club. Both came at Guaranteed Rate Field on game-tying solo homers: April 11 to the Royals’ Carlos Santana and April 24 to the Rangers’ Willie Calhoun.
With four homers allowed through just 9 1/3 innings, Hendriks is nearly halfway to his combined total of nine from the previous three seasons. Those came across 134 1/3 innings while Hendriks, 32, was reinventing himself after a journeyman period that included a 3-15 record as a failed starter from 2011-14.
In fairness, Hendriks was making his first back-to-back outings for manager Tony La Russa over the weekend. That included a 32-pitch, five-strikeout save on Friday night in the series opener against the Rangers.
He wasn’t about to beg off duty in a chilly rain the following night, when Calhoun tomahawked a 97.5-mph heater at eye level. Nor is Hendriks the type to make excuses.
“At the end of the day I get (ticked) off when I give up a run,” Hendriks said. “That’s what I need to be. On the mound you need to be that little bit selfish. You need to make sure that you pitch every single pitch like it’s a two-strike pitch and you go out there and execute that pitch.”
La Russa has quickly grown fond of a throwback closer who wants the ball, no matter what. On April 18 in Boston, when the White Sox swept a doubleheader, Hendriks finished both games.
He earned the save in the opener, then came back with another clean inning in the nightcap. The 24 total pitches he threw that day didn’t begin to describe the impact of that statement.
“His heart and his guts (are) as big as his talent,” La Russa said. “Most closers, they have trouble if it’s a multirun lead. He just loves to compete. Comes in there: ‘Boom, boom, boom.’
That’s a really good combination — for us and him.”
Hendriks, who had 39 saves with a 1.79 ERA over his final two seasons in Oakland, is a cerebral sort who will drop words like “plethora” into casual conversation. He’s also willing to embrace the leadership role that goes with the ups and downs he’s experienced in his career.
That includes being ready to pitch every single day, mentally and physically.
“I came in with this crew and told them, ‘If I’m down, you need to tell me. I’m not going to make that decision myself,’ ” Hendriks said. “As soon as I start thinking I’m down, I get into a bad place mentally. So I come to the field every day ready to pitch. I just sit out there and wait for the phone to ring.”
And once he does reach the mound, Hendriks expects to finish the job.
“I just want the ball and I’m going to take the ball until you tell me to give the ball back to you,” he said. “And even then I’m going to be mad.”
Early-season stats can be a bit wonky, thanks to extremes born of small sample sizes.
The White Sox’ Yermin Mercedes has been amazing, leading the majors with a .414 batting average and ranking fourth with a .477 weighted on-base average (through Sunday). The Cubs’ Ian Happ has been slow out of the gate with a .154 batting average and a .261 wOBA. The major-league averages are .232 and .308.
We can expect time and hundreds of plate appearances to lead to slopes down for Mercedes and up for Happ. For the time being, we can look a little deeper with expected stats.
Expected stats change the question from ”What results has a player achieved?” to ”What results would we normally expect from a player’s quality of contact?”
Fangraphs.com player pages and expected stats leaderboards at baseballsavant.mlb.com list xBA, xSLG and xwOBA, with the ”x” standing for ”expected.”
If a batter bloops a ball that would be a base hit only 12% of the time, that’s 12% of an expected hit. If he’s robbed by a diving catch on a ball that would drop safely 92% of the time, he has an expected 92% of a hit.
The ”x” stats weigh exit velocity and launch angle. On some balls in play, sprint speed is taken into account. The Sox’ Luis Robert, with a sprint speed of 28.5 feet per second, has a much better chance of turning an infield nubber into a hit than Yasmani Grandal at 22.7 feet per second.
With all that factored in, along with strikeouts for xBA and xSLG and strikeouts and walks for xwOBA, Mercedes still comes across near the top of the class.
Mercedes’ .328 xBA is 86 points lower than his batting average, but it ranks 22nd in the majors. His .657 slugging percentage ranks 12th and .632 xSLG 27th, and his .477 wOBA ranks sixth and .417 xwOBA 25th.
There’s a gap between Mercedes’ results and the results his quality of contact normally would generate, but maintaining his expected numbers would be reason to celebrate.
As for Happ, his .154 batting average ranks 269th among major-league qualifiers, his .200 slugging percentage 284th and his .261 wOBA 226th.
But Happ’s average exit velocity is 90.6 mph, 43rd in the majors. Expected stats suggest he has hit the ball better than his results show. Happ’s xBA is .210, his xSLG .384 and his xwOBA .334. That above-average xwOBA is fueled largely by his 15 walks, tied for eighth in the majors.
Among other Chicago players, the Cubs’ Kris Bryant has better results but still strong expected results, with a .292 batting average, .597 slugging percentage and .411 wOBA vs. a .261 xBA, .504 xSLG and .357 xwOBA.
The Sox’ Jose Abreu’s early results are a near-match for his ”x” stats, with a .225 batting average, .438 slugging percentage and .325 wOBA vs. a .235 xBA, .478 xSLG and .332 xwOBA.
Samples will get larger. Hot and cold streaks will smooth out the averages. In the meantime, stats based on quality of contact give us extra information about player performance.
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