We apologize for the lack of any new Chicago Sports' articles for several weeks. The hectic schedule of the first week led into the hectic schedule of Thanksgiving, which finished just in time for both of us to trade colds for two weeks, which of course led into Christmas shopping, etc.

Now that we're feeling a bit more over the weather, there has been plenty of Chicago news for us to discuss.

Chicago Bears

Okay, so we're in the playoffs. The defense is dominating, bringing back memories from the mid-80's, and at the very least, Urlacher and Mike Brown should make the Pro Bowl. Still, we can't help wonder but where the Bears would be if Mike Wells was around to sub for Washington and Traylor in the middle, and Bobby Engram was still the possession receive, allowing Booker to join Terrell and White on deep routes. Sure, we'd have more cap problems next year, but we'd have enough depth to go far into the playoffs this year. The season-ending injury to Marcus Robinson really hurts the offense's upside.

Hearing Madden and Summerall broadcast Bears' games for the first time in years is also a nice treat compared to the 6th string we've tolerated for the last couple years.

One of the best pieces of Bears' news in recent memory just broke when Jim Miller (the capologist, not the QB) announced he was leaving at the end of the year. When the McCaskeys hired Ted Phillips as President, he brought in Miller as the business guy, and Miller and Mark Hatley fought for years for control of personnel decisions. With the hiring of Jerry Angelo, it's nice to know that the Bears are clearing out any competition for him in personnel matters.

Angelo's been criticized for much of the season for not announcing that Jauron would fulfill the last year of his contract this year. Despite the public outcry, this is certainly the right decision. Unless the Bears head to New Orleans, Jauron's made so many questionable decisions (not starting McNown, then starting McNown, playing Urlacher at OLB, etc.) that Angelo is justified in wondering if he can consistently coach a team to victories. After the season, Angelo should announce that Jauron will be back for next season regardless of what the Bears do in the playoffs, and if they struggle next season as he continues remaking the team, Jauron should get thrown off the bandwagon as fast as possible. Only if we win the conference should Jauron receive any extension at all, despite potential clubhouse problems next season.

In terms of the long-term personnel, now that DE Bryan Robinson's been re-signed for four more years, the Bears can concentrate on the players behind him. Both Rosey Colvin and Warrick Holdman need to return as the strength of the LB corps is what makes the defense work. Walt Harris should once more be allowed to leave unless he'll again sign cheaply, but R.W. McQuarters needs to return. We can't afford to lose both our starting CB. Even if Jerry Azumah will be ready to start next season, we need to keep a veteran, and McQuarters has shown much better big play ability than Harris.

C Olin Kreutz is considered one of the best in the league, but he seems to be constantly incurring dumb penalties. I wouldn't break the bank as quality centers always seem available in abundance, especially after the first round of cap cuts.

Regarding QB, there are two routes we can choose next season. First, we can re-sign Miller relatively cheaply and draft another QB-of-the-Future with our first round pick. Illinois Senior and Schaumburg, IL native Kurt Kittner might be around, and if we think he'll go earlier, we should find a way to move up in the draft to get him provided the organization prefers him to someone like Fresno State's David Carr. It doesn't really matter who we choose, as long as we bring in a QB with significant upside.

The alternative is to try to trade for Drew Bledsoe. With Tom Brady's emergence in New England, Bledsoe will likely be dealt. The Bears can offer both talent and picks to secure the only glaring weakness on the entire team. While we personally prefer that they build with a young and somewhat inexpensive guy, Bledsoe gives them instant credibility at QB and should keep us in the playoffs for the next few years.

Right now, we expect the Bears to potentially win one playoff game, although we can't see them getting past a match up against St. Louis or a Green Bay team that's beaten them twice. Home field advantage will be crucial to any success, so our best bet for Bourbon Street is to win the last three games.

Chicago Blackhawks

Even with the return of Coach Brian Sutter's Chicago-style hockey with the departure of European figure skating Coach Alpo "Cat Food" Suhonen, the Blackhawks still lack the talent to make the playoffs. The problem is GM Mike Smith doesn't believe in the little things, for example telling the truth to the public. He guaranteed the playoffs last season, and then denied he ever made that claim after they fell out of contention.

This season, he's lost C Pascual Rheaume to Atlanta in a waiver slip-up, another of several players moved off the roster by Smith that have found immediate success with their new clubs. We've received no one in return in seemingly so many of these moves, but Smith has explained his actions by claiming that he wanted to keep those clubs available as trading partners in the future. If he's going to keep giving away solid hockey players for free, we suspect that these other teams will be happy to keep dealing with him, too.

After kicking Ed Belfour, Jeromy Roenick, and Chris Chelios out of town in recent years over money issues, and not grabbing Gretzky or Brett Hull when available for similar reasons, the current direction of the franchise comes down to the Tony Amonte decision. He's a free agent at the end of the year, and Mike Smith has finally admitted that he's listening to offers because Owner Billfold Wirtz won't pay the going rate for a frontline scorer. Coincidentally, Smith has said that "There were no first-line centers available" in free agency even though most everyone believes that several such players were available.

Since we've assumed for two years that Amonte was headed out of town despite his popularity as the only recognizable player with talent on the Hawks, Smith's return next season should be conditional upon the bounty he collects in exchange for our best player. If the New York offer of G Rick DiPietro and two potential starters is on the table, we probably should jump at it. Without Amonte, we better receive at least two players with similar upside, and if one of those could be a potential All-Star goalie, almost no other deal would be acceptable.

Chicago Bulls

Ugh.

Forget about the dismantling of the championship teams, running Jordan out of town, not trading for Szcerbiak, and dealing Elton Brand for a teenager and Charles Oakley.

All we can do at this point is to look forward to the future, as bleak as it may appear.

The Bulls should wind up with the 2nd overall pick in next year's draft based on their luck over the past few years. That should guarantee us either C Yao Ming or Duke PG Jason Williams. In the mean time, we need to focus on setting up the long-term plan required after drafting Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler.

Curry, Chandler, Marcus Fizer, Ron Mercer, and Eddie Robinson are the only probable future and/or current starters on the Bulls. Brad Miller as an acceptable backup center, Trenton Hassell can play around the court and shoot pretty well, A.J. Guyton can bring the ball upcourt, and Ron Artest is a solid 6th man with starting potential. However, Artest is probably gone in another year as a free agent so we should look to deal him for more picks now and then build around the rest of the existing future starters.

If Tim Floyd isn't giving the rookies 20-30 minutes a game, he needs to be dropped out on his ass as fast as possible. The only way these guys will develop into solid NBA players is with consistent playing time, and as long as Floyd seems insistent on "trying to win now", we'll never even see .500.

For now, the main rotation should involve Curry, Chandler, Fizer, and Miller cycling through the 3-4-5 spots on the court, while forcing Mercer and Robinson to switch off PG duties. The injured Jamal Crawford is the point guard of the future, but since Floyd also didn't give him enough playing time last year, we don't know how he'll develop.

The best hope for a return to NBA glory is to play the kids now and hope we get lucky with Ming in the draft. We can work him at center, Curry as an oversized but still solid PF, Chandler is a Kevin Garnett-type SF, Mercer at SG, and Crawford at PG with Eddie Robinson as the 6th man. Miller, Fizer, Hassell, and Guyton provide solid flexibility throughout the lineup, and we still have room for two more veteran free agents to provide actual leadership instead of the incendiary situation created with the addition of Charles Oakley. If we wind up with Williams instead of Ming, everyone moves up a slot, with Mercer left as trade bait and Robinson starting at SF. We don't have the height-advantages with that lineup, but we should at least have solid ball-handling ability throughout the team.

While this scenario probably appears overly positive considering the repeatedly displayed incompetence of both Floyd and Chicago Pariah GM Jerry Krause, its probably the best we can hope for until Reinsdorf sells the team to focus on the White Sox and the new owner throws this "leadership" out on the street.

Chicago Cubs

Current state of our Cubbies:
Grabbing Moises Alou was great. He's a better player than Rondell White, albeit with less speed, and he's generally been healthier over the course of his career. I doubt he'll have any All-Star seasons in Chicago, but he'll certainly be worth 9 million a year given the current state of the market.

Dumping Michael Tucker off to "make room" for Alou's salary was a great move, and I hope they have enough sense to let Patterson just play in center every day.

The Alex Gonzalez trade was a disappointment, as was not offering arbitration to Gutierrez. I think we gave up on Felix Heredia too soon, although while he has greater potential, Felix has started to pitch according to Baylor's usage pattern and has turned into only a lefty specialist. Giving up Jim Deschaine robs us of a little more depth in the minors, but his upside was probably limited to utility work.

Re-upping DeShields was a great move, especially if Hill is ready to play every day. DeShields covers the Cubs at 2B and as a 5th outfielder, and he'll be an acceptable leadoff hitter until Hill makes the majors.

I don't like dealing Adam Morissey for Mark Bellhorn and then losing Chad Meyers, but we've been told that Bellhorn plays a solid shortstop, and it will be nice to have two backup shortstops since Alex Gonzalez certainly could find himself benched for a pinch-hitter or two every game.

Jesus Sanchez is simply an awful pickup. Pitching Coach Larry Rothschild couldn't do anything with Sanchez when he was with Florida, and Sanchez hasn't appeared to make any progress in the intervening four years. He has little business on a major league roster, and we certainly shouldn't be paying him $2 million a year to lose games for us. Don Baylor should be shown the door if he insists on starting Sanchez over someone like Julian Tavarez. As a lefty specialist, he might not kill us, but I still don't like dealing Nate Teut, a rookie (and therefore inexpensive) lefty swingman for a guy whose best attribute is a World Series ring.

Here's what the Cubs should look like around the All-Star break of the next three seasons (through the end of the current deals of Sosa and Hundley (and Alou and Gonzalez, although they should be reserves by 2004):

2002-2004 Chicago Cubs
Starting Lineup
	2002	Pos	2003	Pos	2004	Pos
1.	Bobby Hill	2B	Bobby Hill	2B	Bobby Hill	2B
2.	Bill Mueller	3B	Corey Patterson	CF	Corey Patterson	CF
3.	Sammy Sosa	RF	Sammy Sosa	RF	Sammy Sosa	RF
4.	Fred McGriff	1B	Moises Alou	LF	Hee Seop Choi	1B
5.	Moises Alou	RF	Hee Seop Choi	1B	Dave Kelton	3B
6.	Corey Patterson	CF	Dave Kelton	3B	Nic Jackson/Alou	LF
7.	Todd Hundley	C	Todd Hundley	C	Todd Hundley	C
8.	Alex Gonzalez	SS	Alex Gonzalez	SS	Luis Montanez	SS
Bench
BC	Joe Girardi	C	Ryan Jorgensen	C	Ryan Jorgensen	C
IF	Augie Ojeda	2B/SS	Augie Ojeda	2B/SS	Alex Gonzalez	SS
IF	Mark Bellhorn	2B/3B	Mark Bellhorn	2B/3B	Tony Schrager	2B/SS
OF	Roosevelt Brown	LF/CF	Roosevelt Brown	LF/CF	Moises Alou	LF/RF
OF	Delino DeShields	2B/LF	Jorge Piedra	LF/RF	Mike Mallory	CF/LF
UT	Kevin Orie	3B/1B	Ryan Gripp	3B/1B	Blair Barbier	3B/1B
Rotation
1.	Jon Lieber	RHP	Kerry Wood	RHP	Kerry Wood	RHP
2.	Kerry Wood	RHP	Jon Lieber	RHP	Mark Prior	RHP
3.	Jason Bere	RHP	Juan Cruz	RHP	Juan Cruz	RHP
4.	Juan Cruz	RHP	Mark Prior	RHP	Steve Smyth	LHP
5.	Jesus Sanchez	LHP	Steve Smyth	LHP	Jose Cueto	RHP
Bullpen
CL	Tom Gordon	RHP	Kyle Farnsworth	RHP	Kyle Farnsworth	RHP
S1	Kyle Farnsworth	RHP	Jeff Fassero	RHP	Scott Chiasson	RHP
S2	Jeff Fassero	LHP	Scott Chiasson	RHP	Carlos Zambrano	RHP
L1	Will Ohman	LHP	Will Ohman	LHP	Will Ohman	LHP
R1	Scott Chiasson	RHP	Carlos Zambrano	RHP	Wilton Chavez	RHP
M1	Julian Tavarez	RHP	Mike Meyers	RHP	Mike Meyers	RHP

Our major hope is that the Cubs find a way to trade Ben Christensen for, well, anything. We can't stand the thought of him on the team and believe he drags down the lovable reputation of the entire franchise. We'll maintain this hope and refuse to include him on future teams until he actually makes the majors.

We're quite optimistic about many of the prospects, but that's only because everyone keeps saying we have the best farm system in the nation, and that's before we draft somewhere in the neighborhood of nine picks in the first three rounds in 2002.

We'll probably need a new manager at the end of this season, as the logical Plexiglass downturn towards about 82 wins this season will be a good excuse to can Baylor in favor of a manager better suited for young players.

We could obviously go on at length, but we'll wait until we hear about Ron Coomer's status before commenting further on the only real questions left for 2002:

1. Will Coomer re-sign? We hope not, as Kevin Orie appears ready for a return to the majors with his first organization.

2. When will Tom Gordon get injured? Currently, Chiasson and Zambrano (and potentially Courtney Duncan) are all competing for one roster spot. Even when Gordon goes down and Farnsworth starts closing, Duncan's probably the odd man out, since he has far less upside than the other two.

3. Is Bobby Hill ready to start? If not, we need another outfielder, probably Kimera Bartee since he's the only real minor league free agent OF signed in the recent moves.

4. Will Baylor be smart enough to switch off Sanchez and Tavarez in the #5 hole until Prior is ready? Neither has the stamina or ability to anchor the end of the rotation for the entire season, but both should be decently effective with about 120-150 IP. We still wouldn't have grabbed Sanchez, but we'll stomach him for a year. Gordon, Tavarez, Bere, and possibly Fassero's deals are all up at the end of the year, and there should be no reason to re-sign any of them barring a White Soxian-like injury epidemic.

Chicago White Sox

Okay, we should probably write just as much about the White Sox as the Cubs, but we're going to hold off until we have more time next week. For now, their lack of moves this off-seasons is certainly better than last year's retreads, although we would have liked to see the Darin Erstad deal consummated. They should seriously consider moving Carlos Lee, Royce Clayton, and maybe even Ray Durham to clear some payroll room for long-term deals for guys like Konerko. A package of Lee, Singleton, and prospects might be enough for Erstad, and Clayton needs to be dealt to open up space for Joe Crede. Very few people seem to realize that Jose Valentin is a better defensive shortstop than Clayton because even though he commits more errors, Valentin gets to many more batted balls.

Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times

Of the two "major" Chicago papers, we currently only subscribe to the Tribune because the Sun-Times is a tabloid. Newspapers should fold in the middle not on the left, and the Sun-Times is simply impossible to read. We review their Sports' columnists on-line but even find most of that analysis considerably lacking compared to the other papers. Much of the time the Sun-Times' guys resemble complete blowhards (especially Jay Mariotti), and they suffer from the dreaded Second Paper Syndrome.

Rick Morissey is the primary Trib columnist, and while he isn't particularly interesting, his stories are usually well-written and occasionally insightful.

With the departures of Jerome Holtzman, now MLB's official historian, Bernie Lincicome for Denver, and Skip Bayless for California, the Trib brought in Michael Holley (see below). We hope they return Steve Rosenbloom to full-time duty rather than just a weekly Sunday commentary.

Chip Caray and Cubs' announcing

Downside: Keeps saying "us" even though he's only been with the Cubs for four seasons. Can't lead a broadcast without a good color commentator, and that's not Dave Otto (and certainly isn't Joe Carter). One of the best trades in Cub history was Carter, et al for Sutcliffe, etc. WGN should at least be willing to cut bait on this one, since the alternating two-man booth simply doesn't work. We usually listen to Pat Hughes and Ron Santo on the radio, even if they do describe plays five seconds before the satellite signal gets here from DirectTV.

Upside: He was really nice when Jess asked him for an autograph.

Daily Herald

The Herald is the primary suburbs-only paper in the Chicagoland area. They have national sections but remain focused on local issues. If we only kept one subscription, we'd stay with the Herald because the area issues are more important to us than Chicago issues over twenty miles away.

Mike Imrem and Barry Rozner are the two primary sports columnists. Imrem is probably the best "daily" (i.e. four columns a week, the slacker) columnist in the city, since he manages to take the correct stand on most issues. He writes his fair share of idiotic statements, but on average, he's your best bet for insight.

Rozner writes blurb articles, and while that makes him probably the most humorous columnist in the city, he spends way too much time sucking up to his favorites like Mark Grace. He never seems to keep his opinions in perspective and can be as incorrectly biased as any of the Sun-Times guys. Our primary beef is that he doesn't seem to realize that the current crop of Cubs' prospects is actually pretty decent, especially compared to past rebuilding and youth movements. If he advocates picking up a veteran reliever one more time, well, we can scream all we want on our own time.

George O'Leary

South Bend, IN, not South Bend, IL. Notre Dame gets way too much coverage in the Chicago papers as is, and we're certainly not going to add to the mess.

Michael Holley: Hit and Run

Hired as the #2 Chicago Tribune columnist about two months ago, he scampered back to Boston because he missed his family. We respect his reasons but really wish he'd just re-signed immediately after September 11th (he attributed much of his decision to reconsideration and soul searching following the attacks). He was here, now he's not here, and the Trib can't keep another columnist for more than a couple years, and not even nearly that long in this case. We invest enough time and energy reading the Chicago sports columnists that frequent turnover really damages our ability to mock them in the privacy of our homes.

Soldier Field: Future Home of the Latrine on the Lake

Anyone who believes the currently approved proposal for the stadium refit is actually a good idea doesn't know the difference between Howard Roark and Howard Hughes. The only things that might stop the taxpayers' toilet are the miscellaneous lawsuits filed by Chicagoans who can't stand seeing either the desecration of the lakefront or recession tax dollars spent to benefit a private business.

A counterproposal that basically revives McDome is probably the best chance to avoid this disaster. Several prominent business leaders are pushing for a dome adjacent to the McCormick Place convention center that would also allow conventions, indoor concerts, and other events that couldn't happen in a rehabbed outdoor Soldier Field. This alternative allows Soldier Field to be converted into a park that would fit right in with the rest of the Museum Campus.

The last time a stadium deal was passed this quickly was over a decade ago when the approval for new Comiskey was attached to an education bill, so that if downstate legislators wanted their education funding passed they had to vote the for taxpayer funding of the stadium. Approving this spaceship-in-a-coliseum design is an even greater travesty since while Comiskey is nestled in a bad neighborhood off the expressway, the "new" Soldier Field would be the most prominent stadium on the lakefront.

A secondary benefit of any plan to build a new and separate stadium would be that the Bears could play next season in Soldier Field instead of downstate at UofI@Chambana. Forcing Chicagoans to travel downstate simply is almost as bad an idea as a third airport in the middle of the cornfields. Illinois politics are as messed up as ever due to statewide pork-barrel procedures, and the most we can reasonably expect is a delay of all these projects long enough for someone to agree to slightly less sophomoric ideas.

We hope you've enjoyed this "brief" review of recent Chicago Sports' events. We're trying to give readers an idea as to our general perspective on most of the teams as well as some of the other sports-related Chicago issues. As soon as we have time to write again after Christmas, we'll run a table of future Sox lineups and catch up on everyone else. We'll probably update each of the five major professional teams whenever we post, with any extra time/space devoted to current events of importance, such as Chicago-area Olympians in a little over a month.

Until Steve Goodman can rest in peace, these are your Good Chicago Sports.