The ChicagoBulls are on a five-game losing streak over the last five games. They have not yet won a game since acquiring Nikola Vucevic and four players before the trade deadline. “In their now five-game losing streak, Bulls opponents are averaging 116.2 points per game and shooting 52.4 percent,” according to NBC Sports Chicago writer Rob […]
If ChicagoBears general manager Ryan Pace could operate in hindsight, the team likely wouldn’t be in the position they currently find themselves in. The Bears have a quarterback problem, just as they have had many times in their illustrious history. They not only have a quarterback problem, but a few holes in their current […]
I encountered only one group on the Chicago lakefront set up for netting smelt on opening night Thursday.
The lack of smelt netters on the lakefront made the limited crowd at the Cubs opener looked huge by comparison.
“I only put one net in,” said Pete Kopf, who had his usual crew of family and friends on the east side of the mouth of Montrose Harbor.
His crew is the only one I saw out in the first hour and a half (nets may go in at 7 p.m.) of opening night, as I also checked the Shedd Aquarium and Belmont Harbor. Conditions (north winds and waves) and street parking restrictions may have contributed to nobody being between Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium; high cost of parking may have contributed to the lack of groups at Belmont.
Of course, a winter-like night may have contributed, too. It will be interesting to see what the coming week of beautiful weather does to bring out smelt netters.
For Kopf, the night held hope and history, “First of our opening day of the smelt season. Being it was all shutdown last year, this year it might be a little better.”
That is probably wishful thinking, as the preview visit with USGS guys suggested. Click here for the smelt preview of prospects.
Asked the last good smelting he remembered, Kopf said, “Almost 18 years ago, maybe 15 years ago. It was fun. Every 10 minutes, you were pulling up nets with smelt. The next morning you had smelt and eggs.”
The memories kept coming.
“I remember 25 years ago at North Avenue, they were using throw nets,” he said.
Kopf gave his lone net the first check: Completely empty.
“I want to get three at least and bite the head off one,” he said.
Biting the head off the first smelt is a Chicago tradition and rite of passage.
As always, food and drink set the ambiance for the night.
“We got the hot dogs and hamburgers,” Kopf said.
When I checked their table, my scavenger skills coming through, they also had brats, chips, cheese and crackers, and beverages.
The season runs through April 30.
Chicago Park District regulations remain the same–nets may go in at 7 p.m., must be out of the parks by 1 a.m., no open fires, no closed tents, no parking on grass or sidewalks, dispose of coals in appropriate trash receptacles–with added COVID precautions such as social distancing this year. The park district’s informational card is available from Henry’s Sports and Bait, Park Bait and park district security.
One tradition of smelt netting remains strong: The festive gathering of food, drink, family and friends on the Chicago lakefront.Dale Bowman
As the 2021 NFL Draft gets closer, the Chicago Bears still don’t have a long-term solution at the quarterback position. The franchise did invest in veteran Andy Dalton this offseason but Dalton isn’t a long-term option. Rather, the 33-year-old quarterback is nothing more than a bridge option who’s going to buy the Bears time to figure out QB.
One name that’s been floated around recently is Texas A&M’s Kellen Mond. Not considered to be one of the top prospects in the 2021 NFL Draft, Mond’s film has many wondering: Should the Bears buy into the Mond hype and take him on day two or three of the 2021 NFL Draft as a developmental player?
Over the last few years, the NFL has seen guys like Dak Prescott and Gardner Minshew burst onto the scene after having been late-round draft picks. Many wonder if Mond could see a similar rise, as long as he ends up in the right situation.
Should the Chicago Bears buy into the Kellen Mond hype going into the draft?
The Bears front office knows their seat is hot heading into 2021. General manager Ryan Pace and head coach Matt Nagy need to figure out QB and the NFL Draft clearly provides both with an opportunity one last time.
Mond is an intriguing prospect. For many, he’s considered to be a day two or three pick. However, had he been more consistent throughout his college career his stock would have risen significantly.
When watching Mond on film, one trait sticks out almost immediately and that is Poise. Regardless of the situation that is around him, he’s incredibly poised. This same trait should translate to the next level where he’ll be tasked with facing more complicated defenses.
Perhaps the biggest area where Mond needs to improve is his decision-making. The Bears are too familiar with how erratic decision-making by the quarterback can hold back an offense. Oftentimes, Mond is seen forcing balls into tight windows which is something that will hurt him in the NFL, especially since windows are significantly smaller compared to college.
In terms of production, Mond was pretty solid over a four-year period. He started 46 games, threw for 9661 yards, 71 touchdowns, and just 27 interceptions. He also completed 59 percent of his passes and averaged 7.1 yards per pass.
Overall, Mond is a prospect who is an average athlete and while his skillset allows him to be effective in the short and intermediate areas of the field as a thrower, his decision-making is what is truly holding him back.
It all comes down to whether or not Chicago believes they can fix Mond and his decision-making. Can he play faster? Those are two questions that will need to be answered. Right now, however, it’s hard to fully buy into him as a prospect.
It was in late 2019 when a retired Chicago police detective got an email about a murder case he’d investigated three decades earlier.
The ex-cop, Michael Fleming, had always suspected that Jan Krol strangled his ex-wife Jadwiga Krol, then burned her body in the trunk of her car. But he never was able to persuade prosecutors there was enough of a case to charge him.
Now Krol, his only suspect, was dead. Krol’s daughter notified Fleming that her father had killed himself in Poland.
Based on that news, the Chicago Police Department closed the case last summer.
The murder was cleared “exceptionally” — a classification the department uses when a suspect dies or the police decide there are too many barriers to prosecute a case that they can’t overcome, such as uncooperative witnesses.
Last year, more than 130 murder cases in Chicago were cleared exceptionally. The Krol case was among the oldest.
Fleming won’t talk about the case.
Not long after the killing, he was quoted in a 1990 Chicago Tribune story with the headline, “Murder probe turns into a game of cat and mouse.” In it, he defended his aggressive pursuit of Krol, confirming he was a suspect and saying, “I like to work mysteries. And I hate to see anyone get away with anything.”
But former police Supt. Richard Brzeczek, who, as an attorney, represented Krol, says Fleming went too far.
Former police Supt. Richard Brzeczek, who, as an attorney, represented Jan Krol: “No evidence whatsoever” that he killed ex-wife.LinkedIn
He says the detective unsuccessfully tried to get Krol to take a lie-detector test even though he knew he was represented by a lawyer and that the police harassed his former client by pulling him over for traffic stops.
“He had no evidence whatsoever,” Brzeczek says of Fleming.
And he says he doesn’t think the case should have been closed.
Hundreds of pages of newly obtained records from the investigation into the killing document the police department’s reasoning that Krol was the killer. According to those police reports, Krol:
Beat his ex-wife for eight years, shot at her during an argument and threatened to kill her in front of cops responding to a domestic violence call.
Told an acquaintance he took her Chevrolet Cavalier days before the killing.
Was holding a slip-knotted clothesline when detectives came to his home. Jadwiga Krol was strangled, her autopsy found.
Had once worked as a janitor at a building in the quiet part of the city where his ex-wife’s gasoline-soaked body was found ablaze in the trunk of her Chevy.
Was driving a van that reeked of gasoline, according to an acquaintance.
Had scratches on his neck and chest that he said were from running into a door — though the police said witnesses told them he didn’t have those marks before his ex-wife’s killing.
Jadwiga and Jan Krol had a complicated relationship. They got married in 1974 in Poland and divorced in 1978. He moved to Chicago in 1980. She followed in 1985. The next year, their children Jusef and Kinga joined them.
Though they no longer were married, they lived in the same home in the 5500 block of North Central Avenue in Jefferson Park.
Jadwiga Krol operated a nail salon out of their house, often working 12 hours a day. A customer said she was “one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”
According to the police, Krol was an angry drunk who’d lost his janitorial job at Superior Coffee in Bucktown — near the place where the burning Chevy was found — because he slept on the job.
He was jealous of Jadwiga Krol’s relationship with a musician and furious about a trip they took to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, earlier in 1989. Krol said he thought she stole cash from him to pay for it.
On April 6, 1989, Jadwiga Krol told the police her car was stolen while she was in a bar. Krol confided to a friend he was the one who took the car, according to a police report.
Krol told the police the last time he’d seen his ex-wife was before he dropped his kids at church on the morning of April 9. He said he took some packages to a storage facility while the children were in church for more than an hour. The police said they couldn’t confirm his trip to the storage facility.
At 5:50 a.m. on April 10, firefighters answered a call about a car on fire in the 2300 block of North Lister Avenue and found Jadwiga Krol’s burning body inside the unlocked trunk. She was 35.
Detectives arrested the 49-year-old Krol late that day, writing in a report that they expected charges within 24 hours. But he was freed when prosecutors said they needed more evidence.
On April 13, 1989, Krol met detectives at a restaurant. They said he told them he didn’t kill his ex-wife and threw suspicion on her boyfriend. Then, he clammed up, saying his lawyer told him not to say anything.
The boyfriend took a lie-detector test and was deemed to have told the truth when he said he didn’t know about the killing.
The police learned that Jadwiga Krol had taken out a $150,000 life insurance policy on herself, with her children as the beneficiaries, because, she told her insurance agent, “I have a very bad feeling something bad will happen to me.”
The insurance policy was paid out.
In May 1989, Krol’s 14-year-old daughter was hospitalized with severe burns she said she suffered in a cooking accident. She said she didn’t want to go back home, though, because she was afraid of her father, according to a police report.
On July 18, 1989, detectives again asked prosecutors to charge Krol with murder and again were told no.
On April 20, 1991, Krol, who was a licensed pilot, was flying passengers in a single-engine airplane on a sightseeing tour when the plane had engine problems and crashed near Gurnee. Everyone survived.
The wreckage of the single-engine Piper Comanche that Jan Krol crashed in a farm field near Gurnee in 1991 after experiencing engine problems.Chicago Police Department
Fleming visited the injured Krol in the hospital. According to a police report, “Krol stated that after the plane crash he only talked to God about the murder of his wife. Krol was then asked if God told him to talk to [detectives] about the murder of his wife and he responded ‘no.’ “
Later that year, Krol was convicted in federal court in Chicago of making and selling fake immigration documents.
Krol and his children were going to be deported.
So Fleming tried a final time to get the kids to talk about their father’s possible involvement in their mother’s killing, but they refused, according to a police report.
They were deported in 1992.
According to police reports, Krol’s daughter now lives in Great Britain. She told the police she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder over her mother’s death and that her brother has spent most of his life in prison in Poland.
An FBI agent assigned to Warsaw helped confirm that Krol had killed himself in 2013 in the mountain town of Zakopane in southern Poland — closing the police department’s book on the family’s sad saga.
Zakopane, high in the Carpathian mountains in southern Poland, is a popular resort town.Sun-Times file
Eastern Illinois freshman Jordan Smith (35) rushed for a career-high 142 yards last weekend against conference leader Murray State. (photo courtesy Dave Winder, Murray State)
Eastern Illinois head coach Adam Cushing has liked what he’s seen the last few weeks from his run game. If that trend is to continue, the Panthers will have to overcome the top rushing defense in the Ohio Valley Conference.
“They’re stopping the run,” Cushing said of Saturday’s opponent, Jacksonville State.
Indeed the Gamecocks are. JSU, ranked 12th in this week’s Stats Perform national poll, allows opponents just 87.4 yards per game. The Gamecocks also atop the OVC in scoring defense, yielding just 13 points a game.
“They’re really good on third down, getting off the field because they’re stopping the run,” Cushing said. “When you look at the (video) cut-ups of the third-and-eight-plus (yard situations), it’s something like 28 plays long. They’re putting people behind the chains.
“They’re doing it with a really strong front seven. Those guys are winning a lot of their one-on-one matchups . . . They don’t give you a lot, but we’ve got to find the places where they are giving it and be willing to take it and not try to do anything superhuman.”
On the road against OVC-leading Murray State last weekend, EIU found success running the ball with freshman Jordan Smith. The 5-foot-10, 180-pound rookie stepped in for sidelined starter Jaelin Benefield and responded with a 142-yard performance. Moreover, Smith broke away for an 80-yard touchdown run on the Panthers’ first offensive play of the second half.
The effort earned Smith OVC Co-Newcomer of the Week honors and the admiration of his head coach.
“What I just talked about with our football team is kind of what Jordan has represented. Steady improvement from the minute he stepped on campus until now,” Cushing said.
“Our running back room is deep,” EIU super back Jay Vallie said. “We can throw any one of those guys in and be confident that they’re going to get the job done. Most of the time, I don’t even know who’s in the game. I trust that they’re all going to work. I don’t know when they sub in. I just know that they all work together very well and complement each other. They’re very hard runners. They make great cuts and they get it done.”
Final visit
Saturday’s game marks the final OVC visit from Jacksonville State. Earlier this year, JSU and Eastern Kentucky announced they were leaving the league to join the Atlantic Sun.
JSU alum John Grass has been his alma mater’s head coach since 2014. He was also the team’s offensive coordinator under Bill Clark in 2013.
“When I first got here they (EIU Panthers) were in the Dino Babers-Jimmy Garoppolo era,” Grass recalled earlier this week. “It wasn’t a pleasant trip for the Gamecocks. The first time we were up there it was about a 35-mile-an-hour wind. As a coach I’d never experienced playing in that much wind before, and boy, they knew how to play in it.
“I still say that (2013 EIU) team could have won a national championship. They had to play in a snow game (in the FCS quarterfinals) and had to play a Towson team that I think they could have beaten if the weather conditions would have been better. That was a really, really good football team. We had three out of our conference make the playoffs that year.”
The next step
Last Sunday, Eastern took a two-touchdown, second-half lead on Murray State only to see it evaporate in just over five minutes.
“That’s the next step of the evolution growing up with this young football team, learning how to play with those leads,” Cushing said. “We’ve really come a long, long way offensively throughout this year and made big plays, and yet we didn’t make big plays when it mattered.”
Murray State, the nation’s No. 14 team, pulled away for a 41-27 victory.
“What I said to the guys after the game was as much as this one hurts the great thing that we have going for us is the game we have on Saturday,” Cushing said. “We normally have 24 hours to go from whatever we are back to 0-0, we didn’t even have that amount of time (this week). We ended up flushing a little bit sooner to get it out of our heads yesterday (Monday) morning.”
Meanwhile, Jacksonville State lost its first game of the spring to Austin Peay 13-10.
“I’m sure they’re going to be really, really hungry coming in this week,” Cushing said.
Kicked by the long game
Over the course of the last three weeks, EIU has seen opposing kickers bomb field goals beyond 50 yards each game.
“If you asked me, these are the best kickers in America and I’m not just talking at the FCS level either. These guys are incredible. Those are the longest field goals I’ve seen week-to-week-to-week in my entire football career,” Cushing said. “It’s an enormous part of the game. That is an advantage.”
Where to find the game
EIU (1-4 overall, 1-4 OVC) hosts Jacksonville State (7-2, 4-1) at 1 p.m. Saturday on ESPN+ online. The radio broadcast is available at WEIU.net.
Blog co-authors Barry Bottino and Dan Verdun bring years of experience covering collegiate athletics. Barry has covered college athletes for more than two decades in his “On Campus” column, which is published weekly by Shaw Media. Dan has written four books about the state’s football programs–“NIU Huskies Football” (released in 2013), “EIU Panthers Football (2014), “ISU Redbirds” (2016) and “SIU Salukis Football” (2017).
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Manager Tony La Russa probably liked his chances of winning his first game in his second go-around with the White Sox when he pulled ace right-hander Lucas Giolito with one out and nobody on base in the sixth inning on Opening Night.
After all, the Sox bullpen has been touted as one of baseball’s best all spring long, and in came Codi Heuer and his 99-100 mph heat to get the pen rolling in 2021.
Heuer navigated through some trouble and five outs, but La Russa and the Sox find themselves at 0-1 after a 4-3 loss in which left-hander Aaron Bummer served up the tying and go-ahead runs in the eighth inning. Both runs were unearned because of a throw by second baseman Nick Madrigal that pulled shortstop Tim Anderson off second base, so it’s not time to write off the Sox pen just yet. Especially after one game.
“He deserved better,” La Russa said of Bummer.
Mike Trout roped a tying single and Shohei Ohtani scored the go-ahead run on Albert Pujols’ groundout to Yoan Moncada in the eighth inning. That followed an 11-pitch walk against Bummer in the eighth.
“We talk about it daily, winning each day,” Bummer said. “We lost today, that’s on me in my opinion. Got to be better next time. We did a lot of things right but the bullpen didn’t finish it off. Tough one to swallow.”
Giolito struck out six of the first nine batters he faced and exited with two runs allowed on two hits and two walks, threw 87 pitches.
“Early in the season, I threw a lot of pitches through five innings,” Giolito said. “Bullpen can take it from there, it’s all good.”
The move almost backfired as Heuer issued a four-pitch walk to Trout and a single to Anthony Rendon before Upton hit into a double play — on a 107 mph one-hopper gloved by Moncada.
Madrigal was caught stealing on a close play in the seventh but La Russa did not challenge, although he wanted to. A new rule gives teams 20 seconds to make that decision, down from 30 last year, and the Sox were late asking for a challenge.
I remember that when I was a little kid, days like today — Maundy Thursday — were confusing. There must have been more than one year when I heard it pronounced with worse-than-usual mushy Midwestern vowels and asked, “Why would we call it Monday Thursday? It’s Thursday!”
That’s when my dad would remind me that it’s the day we believe that Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment — a mandate. Dad said he didn’t have any trouble with the word “maundy” because it was so close to two Scottish words he heard a lot as he grew up: maun, used like “must,” and dae, the Scots pronunciation of “do.”
The events of that last Thursday, the day before Jesus’ crucifixion, are powerful ones for me every year. At my home church tonight, during a service I once attended but tonight just watched, pastors told the Biblical story stage by stage — and after each reading, sometimes with a hymn, another bank of lights went out in the sanctuary. Even at home on the computer, I was soon in tears — as usual.
The effect is like a scary radio play going on with less and less to distract your eyes. That makes my mind and heart get wrapped up in the story of the events — and the readings went just beyond the crucifixion. It’s scary stuff for me, since I’ve been scared by “to be continued” all my life. (One year, a pastor saw me crying outside the church on Maundy Thursday and reminded me, “It’s not the end of the story.”)
But that means that sometimes, I can lose track of the mandate. So I decided what I maun dae yet tonight is to write about the word — and the Bible verses that describe it.
At the Last Supper — the Passover meal that was Jesus’ last with His disciples — John 13:33 tells that He said to the disciples: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
In one of the rarer books I inherited two years ago from my father, “The Four Gospels in Braid Scots,” the same verse is “I gie ye a new commaun, ‘Ye sal lo’e ane-anither, e’en as I hae lo’ed you, that ye soud lo’e ane-anither.”
(I often think that various languages, dialects and accents differ in their words by changing vowel sounds, but here in the broad Scots dialect, it does look like consonants can change as well.)
The Scots gospels can bring me some word-loving joy in the midst of the tense stories of Holy Week, such as the crowd “yammering” for Jesus to be crucified. What a wild word for that horrible time.
But in this time that’s quite strange itself, it’s enough for me tonight to remember that “Love one another” is a commandment — something I maun do.
I moved to Chicago from the south suburbs in 1986. I have diverse interests, but I love writing about what I’m interested in. Whether it’s a personal interest or part of my career, the correct words to get the idea across are important to me. I love words and languages — French and Scottish words enrich my American English. My career has included years as a journalist and years working in museums, and the two phases were united by telling stories. I’m serious about words and stories. So here I am, ready to tell stories about words and their languages.
The Blackhawks spent the two days leading up to Thursday’s rematch against the Hurricanes focusing on having a better start.
“For the most part, it’s mental,” coach Jeremy Colliton said Thursday morning. “We do absolutely talk a lot about preparation and getting yourself ready, getting your teammates ready.”
“[We need to] hang on to the puck a little bit more, and keep it away from them, and just be ready to have a better start,” Patrick Kane added. “Our last three starts haven’t been that great.”
But after all that, the Hawks’ first period Thursday was more of the same, putting them behind the eight-ball for good in an eventual 4-3 loss.
The Hurricanes entered the first intermission leading 1-0 and holding a 12-2 scoring-chance advantage. The Hawks have now conceded 47 scoring chances while producing just 16 in their last four first periods combined (per Natural Stat Trick).
The Hawks played some of their best hockey in weeks the rest of the game, however. Scoring chances were 17-13 in their favor during the second and third periods.
Brandon Hagel tied the game 2-2 early in the third period, then Dylan Strome tipped in a Connor Murphy shot to re-tie the game 3-3 later.
But they were never able to grab the lead, never able convert a hefty dose of momentum into a winning goal, before Jesper Fast gave the Canes a winner of their own with 29 seconds left.
Olympic talk for Kane, too
In addition to the Hart Trophy race, Kane also discussed the possibility of playing on the U.S. men’s hockey team in the 2022 Winter Olympics on Thursday — one day after Hawks general manager Stan Bowman was named GM of the Olympic team.
It would be a great honor and a great opportunity to play for your country,” Kane said. “We could put a pretty good team together to compete with some of the ‘better’ countries.”
A member of both the 2010 and 2014 teams that fell short, Kane seems to be an extremely likely candidate for selection again this time.
Although he hasn’t talked about it with Bowman yet, he sounded motivated to participate and try to end the U.S.’s lengthy men’s hockey gold medal drought.
“There’s a lot of talk about the 1960 and 1980 teams, and here we are 40-plus years later and we’re still talking about those teams,” Kane said. “The legend lives on if you win. So it would be nice to be able to do that for the country and USA Hockey.”
Kalynuk seeking stability
Defenseman Wyatt Kalynuk played both games against the Hurricanes this week.
The 23-year-old rookie out of Wisconsin has bounced on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis between the Hawks’ active roster, taxi squad and AHL affiliate in Rockford this season. He’d previously made only one NHL appearance: March 7 vs. the Lightning.
“Every day, you might not know where you’re going to be,” Kalynuk said Wednesday. “As the season goes on, there might be a little more stability here. But it’s been a wild, crazy year.”
On the other hand, Ian Mitchell has now been out of the lineup for four consecutive games. Colliton said he wants Mitchell to “keep doing what he’s doing” and he’ll get another chance eventually.
“The guys who aren’t in, they have to have an urgency to keep improving and do everything they can to prepare for the next opportunity,” Colliton said. “That’s what’s going to get them ready to succeed.”
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