The SaniTERRYum X: A Farewell to Chicagoan Arms

The SaniTERRYum X: A Call to Chicagoan Arms

Drinking Bell’s Oberon, munching on El Ranchero chips with salsa, and watching Kyle Korver and my Bulls outhustle and beat up on the annoying New York Knickerbockers, it’s difficult for me to be mad at much. But I’m mad at New York. I always have been. I’m not totally sure why. I have a great time when I’m there. It has a ton to offer. The faithful hatred probably has everything to do with my sense of pride for my hometown of Chicago, and us getting the shaft in comparison to The Big Apple. That being said, nothing is more gratifying, sports wise, than a victory over New York and the Knicks. 

There was something redeeming in not only beating the Knicks last night but the way we beat them in every facet of the game that showed how difficult it will be for whoever we face in the playoffs to beat us in a seven game series. 25-5 advantage on second chance points. 51-33 on the boards. Kyle Korver and Company diving for loose balls. Rip Hamilton is not only playing, but he’s balling and dipping into the fountain of youth a bit. DRose or no DRose, we’ll need sustained efforts similar to last night’s W to advance deeply in this year’s playoffs. The Knicks will barely sneak in and be promptly eliminated. 

Carmelo Anthony does not deserve the calls he gets from the refs. His skill level is high, but since coming into the league, he has done more whining than winning. He doesn’t strike me as someone who respects the game. He’s an individual scorer who ends up being a detriment to team goals. Tyson Chandler is still the same player he was when he wore number 3 for us just with a bigger bank account now. Amar’e Stoudemire is a seven footer who doesn’t play defense or rebound (?), and his health is a big question mark. I really hope we square off at The Garden and the United Center in the first round, so the Bulls can expose them for what they really are: a bunch of overpaid, underachieving assholes. What’s the over/under on time it takes for benches to clear and punches to land in that series? Beyond an impending sweep of the Knicks later this month though, I want to know who the better sports town truly is. 

Excluding the Yankees (who I’ve always actually been a huge fan of) and taking the high road on expletive usage, the time has come to run a full-on analysis of Chicago vs. New York sports successes…and failures. I have always been somewhat of an antagonist when it comes to first and second city relations, but I’m setting my Napoleon Complex aside to determine if we here in Chicago even deserve to be in the discussion, let alone take over all you New Yorkers. 

For me as a fan, championships are all that matter. Playoff appearances are nice, but no one remembers anyone but the ultimate champion. As I said before, we’re going to take the Yanks out of the equation here, because that’s really not fair. They’re the most storied franchise in all of sports. Here we go though, let’s count the championship banners: 

New York Mets: 2

New York Baseball Giants: 5

Brooklyn Dodgers: 1

New York Football Giants: 8

New York Jets: 1

New York Rangers: 4

New York Knicks: 2

New York Islanders: 4

As you can see, New York’s numerical population gives them a slight advantage having 3 (4 counting the Yankees) baseball teams, 2 hockey teams, and 2 football teams. Even though they have had almost double the sports teams as us, New York’s output is a total of 27 championships…exactly as many as the Yankee Empire has accumulated over the years. This isn’t coincidence. There’s no such thing. 

And now, The Chi:

Chicago Bulls: 6

Chicago Blackhawks: 4

Chicago Bears: 8

Chicago Staleys: 1

Chicago Cardinals: 2

Chicago Cubs: 2

Chicago White Sox: 3

26 total championships for us here in Chicago. Always coming up one short to The City That Never Sleeps. So it’s agreed then, we shall stop sleeping, Chicagoans. Take a cue from Kyle Korver’s performance last night, and hustle 24/7. We’ve got some catching up to do, Chicago. 

Ah, fuck it. Nevermind. This is a battle I’ll never win…

Through Both Lenses: A Look at an American Love Story

After all, My erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was no love,
Just because it perished?

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

America had a love affair with baseball. It was a slow burning love that lasted generations, a constant companion during hard times. Baseball was there everyday, during the depression, during WWII, during the communist scare, baseball was always there, giving you living legends. Williams, DiMaggio, The Holy Trinity, Koufax, Gehrig, Ruth, Foxx, Rose, Aaron, the list goes on and on.

Of recent vintage, the love affair has cooled as a sleeker, much faster sport has taking it’s place as sports king of America. Football reigns supreme and that’s fine. It’s the hot one. Football gives you collisions and car crashes, but with human bodies. Football gives you the cheap quick entertainment that the twitter generation enjoys so much. It’s the most popular sport in the US by a mile, nothing else really comes close to it.

We’ve forgotten about baseball, and it’s because it strayed away from the one thing that made it personable. We loved baseball, but we loved its players even more. They weren’t steroid infested freaks in the past. The bodies weren’t cartoonish. Ted Williams looked like a butcher at the corner store.

Yep, greatest hitter of all time.

For years you could imagine yourself playing baseball and it wouldn’t look clownshoes ridiculous. You can still kinda do it now, but this was especially true in an era before off-season training and, well, steroids.

I understand the drive to become the greatest player you can be, the drive to make the most money, I really do. While I don’t despise roided up players, I do not like them for the negative contributions they’ve made to a game I adore. The relationship between baseball and it’s fans is fractured. An entire generation of fans is growing up not knowing if their favorite player is a cheater or not. See, this doesn’t matter in football. Those guys are just things in helmets that run into each other for our personal enjoyment. They’re like NASCAR vehicles to us. Their personal health matters little because if it did, we’d outlaw the sport.

Baseball on the other hand is a game that is married to history and context. It’s the only game where you can compare players now to players of a generation ago. George Mikan would get destroyed in the modern NBA. Red Grange would be knocked out on his first snap in the NFL. Babe Ruth would still mash in the modern MLB.

History and relatable stars are the main draws with baseball. The true legends of today are awe inspiring because of the legends that they walk with. Greg Maddux is a living legend, a giant in the historical baseball world. The man has amassed 355 wins, he can hang his hat with legends like Warren Spahn (363), Steve Carlton (329), Christy Matthewson (373), and Pete Alexander (373). When you think about Maddux, it’ll be in the context of Greatest Players of All Time. His name is intertwined with players from the aughts, the teens, the twenties, the thirties, and the fifties and sixties. What other sport does that?

In a roundabout way, that brings me to Ryan Braun.

He did indeed test positive for performance enhancing drugs. He did indeed get off on a technicality. He did not, however, exonerate himself whatsoever from being a steroid cheat. The thing with urine is that it doesn’t magically grow testosterone when it’s refrigerated.

Crazy, I know.

Ryan Braun had a 20:1 ratio, which means whatever it means to you. It was high, but it wasn’t the highest in history as he’ll have you believe. There have been 70:1 positive results in the past. The sample was not tampered with, the seals were intact, and while they did sit in the collector’s fridge over the weekend, the alternative was to have them sit at Fed-Ex for the same amount of time. Again, I have yet to hear of the case where testosterone grew in urine because it was cold.

The crime Ryan Braun committed doesn’t just taint his legacy. The continued use of performance enhancing drugs has driven away fans. Baseball is slowly recovering from the steroids scandal, and it finds itself in an odd place. It is trying very hard to actively eliminate the use of performance enhancing drugs, but the athletes themselves are finding exotic ways to cover up the use.

Ryan Braun, baseball is partially at fault for the “Guilty until proven innocent,” stance that the general public has taken in past years. More to blame are the players, however, like yourself and Rafael Palmiero, that use and deny so fervently. Baseball has lost a lot of fan credibility, and that’s unfortunate. Living legends are more difficult to identify, I have no idea who’s clean now. I can make my assumptions, but the last round of “damn he’s juicing too?” was too damn painful to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, everyone in baseball is guilty until proven innocent. It’s not really safe to point at anyone and say “He’s completely clean.” It’s not the era we live in.

That still doesn’t give players an excuse to use. You’re hurting my game man, and I’d appreciate it if you cut that shit out.

The SaniTERRYum: Dictum Meum Pactum

Beer and Clothing in America

Welcome to The SaniTERRYum, the new Tuesday sanctuary for all you crazed sports fans and alcohol aficionados seeking refuge from this mixed up world. Think of this as a platform for blending sports talk with real talk, intellect with idiosyncrasies, rough-around-the-edges delicacies for a rough and tumble world.

Alright folks, your Super Bowl party hangovers have subsided, you’ve digested both whatever the hell you ate and the uneventful happenings that took place during the most overhyped game in all of professional sports, and you’re ready for the Bulls and Hawks to take over their respected leagues as well as your TV viewing schedule…not to mention pitchers and catchers reporting in less than two weeks (!) to bring us back to reality from the nightmarish, roller coaster season that was the 2012 NFL campaign. But let us not forget this oh-so-American tradition that has become known as Super Bowl Sunday. They might as well just declare the sumbitch a national holiday.

The Game

For some reason, Tom Brady and his New England Patriots just can not beat the New York football Giants in the Super Bowl. The Pats’ve been there five times in the last ten years, beating St. Louis, Carolina, and Philly but losing to Eli(te) and New York twice. Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw will remain the only quarterbacks with four rings for at least another year, Tommy Boy (yea, he’s cool with me calling him that).

If not for key drops late in the game by usually sure handed Wes Welker and Aaron Hernandez, we’re looking at a different outcome. The injured and uninvolved oaf, Rob Gronkowski also DNP’d a huge part in the loss. The Patriots started XLVI uncharacteristically out of sorts, complete with a game starting, 60-1 odds, opening play, intentional grounding in the end zone safety that started the scoring, simultaneously bringing hope to all the gridiron grid holding, square watching fans in possession of  “5 and 8” or “9 and 2.” We have liftoff, and we have a chance, baby.

The Halftime Show

One word: Madonna. Oh, and Cee-Lo accompanying her on Like a Prayer. And LMFAO doing whatever the hell it is that people find entertaining. And Nicki Minaj saying, like, six words. And MIA spewing the shit word and flicking off the camera. BFD. Anyone with a musical pulse knows how much of an influence Madonna has had on pop music over the years. If Michael Jackson is The King of Pop, Madonna reigns as the genre’s Queen. But, like Brett Favre and MJ in their respected fields, she mastered her craft, aged, then stayed in the game just a bit too long, causing some new brand of embarrassment for hard core fans. There, I said it. It’s out there. Big whoop. Wanna fight about it?

The Commercials

You can’t really talk about the Super Bowl anymore without bringing up the damn commercials at some point or another. The fact that a thirty second spot costs $3.5 million is, quite frankly, beyond me. That Skechers Dog commercial was pretty badass though. Our party determined that they’ve mastered the lost formula for a perfect Super Bowl commercial. Either they don’t make ’em like they used to or our desensitized internet culture has superseded all things attempting to entertain us, because we were not swayed to buy any of the products paraded in front of us like we’re a bunch of material-hungry consumers chomping at the bit to spend our hard earned money on new and useless products. We’re too smart to fall for that one, corporate America. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to put on my H&M underwear, lace up my new Skechers shoes, hop in my brand new Chrysler, eat a bag of Doritos in the car on the way to the liquor store, because I’m all out of Bud Light Platinum.

Drinks of Choice

This being A Drinking Town with a Sports Problem, I feel compelled to share with you the beverages we enjoyed on this the holiest of sports/beer holidays. “Good people drink good beer.” Hunter S. Thompson (a personal hero of this lowly sage) said that at some point during his illustrious life. Our Sunday partners in crime were a couple of good Scottish style brews: Scotty Karate (Shortest beer review ever: strong flavor yet smooth finish) and Brooklyn Winter Ale (great flavor, very drinkable to say the least. Good lookin’ out on the recommendations Scottie Too Hottie!). All this indulgence and partying talk segues me into one of my favorite current Major Leaguers, at a time he’s found himself in the spotlight for controversial reasons:

Josh Hamilton

Addiction is a very serious part of our society today. As our name points out, we’re all about alcohol culture around here. However, for some, there comes a time when the line needs to be drawn. In the case of former MVP Josh Hamilton, he decided when and where that line got drawn by sobering up and turning his life around. Not you, not me, not his family, not Rangers, Reds or Rays fans, not God, not Satan, not anybody. Him. It’s his life. Let him live it the way he wants to, and leave the judging for the birds. If he wants to have a drink every now and then, he’s probably earned that right. Have you?

Think about that. Word is bond…

Defense Wins Championships…Unless Your Name is Tom Brady

College football has never been my sport of choice (I mean, one foot in bounds for a catch? C’mon), but the defensive battles between Alabama and LSU got me excited for the defensive renaissance that took place in their matchups. Shouldn’t they just have played another game, a rubber match, to determine the BCS champ? Yet I digress, and this weekend is all about the NFL, a reward for us diehard fans who want to see the game played the right way, defenses winning games, a return to football in its pure form and superstars being born on both sides of the ball.

As I write this, NFL Championship Sunday is tomorrow. Four teams remain in the quest to be crowned Super Bowl Champion. Beyond the intrigue of a potential Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh showdown in Indianapolis, there lies a possible matchup of one of the NFL’s greatest defenses of the last decade+ vs. the San Francisco 49ers whose defense belongs in its own category.

San Francisco hasn’t allowed a 100-yard rusher in its past 36 games, a streak that dates to Nov. 22, 2009, and eclipses the league’s second-longest streak (Miami, 12). That, along with the feat that the 49ers hadn’t allowed a rushing touchdown in 15 straight games, matching the 1985-86 Bears for the longest streak since 1970. It took until very late this season for that TD streak to end, but it will be vital if the Niners are to move past Eli and the Giants. A dominant performance in the NFC Championship will put them in a class with the ’01 Ravens, a number of the Steel Curtain defenses from the ’70s and yes, our ’85 Bears.

That’s right, Bears fans, the current Niners defense is drawing comparisons to our beloved ’85 Bears. They’re that good. I was two years old in 1985, so all I have to go on is word of mouth and highlights, but hot damn if San Francisco isn’t the best group of run-stoppers I’ve ever seen.

They’ll need every ounce of defense if they are to overcome the suddenly hot New York Giants. That’s the story in professional sports though. Get hot at the right time, and the sky’s the limit.

Over in the AFC, Baltimore has a formidable foe to overcome in the still dominant New England Patriots. Tom Brady continues to tear shit up, shredding so-called top defenses, spreading the ball and cementing his legacy as one of the greatest QBs to ever play the game.

New England’s defense has been their Achilles heel all year, but the offense more than makes up for its deficiencies, something of which few teams have the luxury. Even with Ed Reed (and his motivational tactics to fire up goofball QB Joe Flacco) and Ray Lewis anchoring The D and performing at a high level, The Pats are too good to lose this late in the season.

Any sports fan has heard the phrase, “Defense wins championships” or some variation of the phrase. If that is an absolute truth, then wouldn’t the Bears have won at least a few more in between 1985 and now? Our current, yet aging defensive core has definitely had some championship-caliber seasons, but we’ve only managed to appear in one Super Bowl since our illustrious victory in SBXX. If defense wins championships, wouldn’t the Ravens have been back to at least another Super Bowl since their victory in SBXXXV?

San Francisco was able to match Drew Brees and New Orleans’ high-octane offense, a rare offensive shootout by a team known for its stifling D. I still have yet to hear a fitting name for Vernon Davis’ game-winning TD catch. Anyone?

New England beat the shit out of a very good Denver defense last week, and showed anyone watching that they can and shall impose their championship will on any given opponent on any given Sunday.

That being said, I’m splitting the difference between defense and offense, so to speak: San Francisco will torch New York 30-10, and New England will beat Baltimore 31-17.  The Harbaugh sibling rivalry will have to wait at least one more year. But, hey! At least we can root for a Chicago QB in the Super Bowl, right?