by DAN McGRATH | Sep 23, 2011
There is at least one positive to be gleaned from the Bears’ 30-13 dismantling at the hands of the New Orleans Saints last week: a good number of trees were spared. Had the Bears won, their 2-0 record would match...
by DAN McGRATH | Sep 23, 2011
The celebration that followed Notre Dame’s 18-point victory over Michigan State last week seemed disproportionately joyful, as if it assured the Irish of something significant just three games into their season. Then again, buzz-killing losses the previous two weeks hardly...
by DAN McGRATH | Sep 18, 2011
A September collapse featuring two straight series sweeps by Detroit has the enigmatic White Sox sinking toward the Cubs’ homely perch in the baseball standings, with less than two weeks remaining in an unsightly season. Ouch. A Sox fan would...
by DAN McGRATH | Sep 15, 2011
Mike Lee hopes to restore some of the fight to the Fighting Irish Friday night when he enters the ring for the main event on the first professional boxing card ever staged on the Notre Dame campus. Lee, 24, is...
by DAN McGRATH | Sep 12, 2011
A lost summer of baseball in Chicago has raised the stakes on the Bears’ season, although it’s not like our sports-minded citizenry needed another Carlos Zambrano meltdown or the disaster that is Adam Dunn to get all tingly over Jay...
by DAN McGRATH | Sep 11, 2011
The weather was Indian-summer delightful on Chicago’s lakefront. The sun-splashed, jersey-clad Soldier Field crowd was in a typical state of high anxiety, palpably eager for a first for-real look at their 2011 Bears. The pre-game 9/11 remembrance was subdued and...
by DAN McGRATH | Sep 6, 2011
The crisp hint of fall that is often in the air for September baseball adds an urgency to the games that is missing from the more languid pace of spring and summer. Contending teams know they have to get busy—they’re...
by DAN McGRATH | Sep 2, 2011
Jim Delany has an ego befitting his stature as a former North Carolina basketball player, a lawyer, and a high-profile, highly paid sports executive. He has a well-earned reputation as Mr. Big in college athletics, a characterization he neither flaunts...
by DAN McGRATH | Aug 29, 2011
Jim Hendry is a hard guy to dislike, which is why the people who worked with him and the reporters who covered him took a somber view of his recent dismissal as Cubs general manager. Not so Cub fans. In...
by DAN McGRATH | Aug 19, 2011
A late August Cubs-Cardinals series has been an annual high point to dozens of baseball seasons on the North Side, but the Cubs’ two-year slide into National League irrelevance drained much of the juice from this weekend’s three-game set at...
