DAN McGRATH
Dan McGrath brings three decades of journalism experience to the Chicago News Cooperative, including more than 12 years as sports editor, associate managing editor and senior writer for the Chicago Tribune.
Before joining the Tribune, Dan worked for newspapers in Freeport, Ill.; Reno, Nev.; Sacramento, Calif.; San Francisco; Philadelphia; and New York. While he has worked most of his career in sports, he also has been a media critic, national correspondent, metro columnist and book reviewer.
Sports sections that he has edited have won more than a dozen top-10 awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors Association. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for spot news coverage in 1992 and for commentary in 1993. A Chicago native, he is the co-author or editor of five books on the city’s sports teams, including the best-selling "Out of the Blue" on the 2003 Chicago Cubs.
Recent Contributions
by DAN McGRATH | Feb 17, 2012
Rick Majerus’s unconventional lifestyle might have been the best thing to happen to Notre Dame basketball since Austin Carr, the All-World shooting star. Or maybe it was the ties that bound Matt Doherty to the University of North Carolina. Irish fans aren’t keeping score. But they remain grateful for the unlikely sequence of events that brought Mike
by DAN McGRATH | Feb 10, 2012
Porter Moser lingered over Ronald Nored’s line as he studied the box score from last month’s Butler-Loyola game. The Ramblers coach sounded as if he wanted to kidnap Butler’s versatile, tough-minded point guard, or maybe adopt him, as he contemplated Nored’s numbers: 16 points, 9 assists, 6 rebounds, 3 steals and 0 turnovers in the
by DAN McGRATH | Feb 5, 2012
Remove the Heisman Trophy from the discussion and I don’t know if Phil Emery knows Robert Griffin III from Robert Goulet. I would assume he does; Emery has spent more than a decade traversing the country in search of N.F.L.-caliber players for three pro teams. But his eye for talent was hardly the focal point
by DAN McGRATH | Jan 27, 2012
Sports talk radio was a phenomenon fairly new to Chicago the first time I heard it here. I was visiting from California, taking my daughter to college on a trip that included a two-hour drive from Chicago. I came upon WSCR — “the Score” — while punching the buttons in a rental car and heard
by DAN McGRATH | Jan 22, 2012
If Andrew Shaw were a baseball player, he would be David Eckstein, the pint-size shortstop who won World Series rings with the Anaheim Angels and the St. Louis Cardinals. If he played basketball, he would probably be the 5-foot-4 former N.B.A. dynamo Muggsy Bogues. Football? The dangerous, diminutive running back Darren Sproles comes to mind.
by DAN McGRATH | Jan 15, 2012
It’s clear the Bulls have re-established themselves as a team worthy of Chicago’s attention, because the city’s ever-twitchy fans are worried about them. Derrick Rose is playing too many minutes and is certain to wear down with so many games compressed into a tight schedule, a consequence of time lost to the N.B.A. lockout. There
by DAN McGRATH | Jan 9, 2012
No conference has experienced more upheaval from the continuing realignment in college sports than the Big East, despite its unquestioned stature as a basketball kingpin. The iconic league that Dave Gavitt invented (and ESPN nurtured) to feed the fervor for college hoops in the populous Northeast Corridor will be unrecognizable in a year or so,
by DAN McGRATH | Jan 3, 2012
On Monday, while offering his post mortem on the Bears’ break-even season, coach Lovie Smith tried to spin a desultory 1-5 finish forward. He claimed the Bears were a solid football team that had been a virtual lock for a playoff berth, only to be undone by injuries to important players, which they’d managed to
by DAN McGRATH | Jan 2, 2012
Happy New Year? For sure. Has to be. And it’s not as if 2012, from a sports perspective, has a tough act to follow. The best thing about 2011 is that it’s over. Mark Buehrle’s departure for Miami is one reason to be grumpy. Buehrle, the cheerful, ultraprofessional left-hander, was one of my favorite Chicago
by DAN McGRATH | Dec 26, 2011
The Bulls rarely beat the Lakers in Los Angeles—they hadn’t, in fact, done so in Derrick Rose’s three years with the team. Forgive Bears fans, then, if they started to believe anything was possible on Christmas after Rose and the Bulls pulled out a last-second victory over Kobe-Bryant and Co. in their lockout-delayed season opener
