Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

Coming into the 2008 season, Curtis Granderson’s Detroit Tigers were the odds-on pick to win the American League Central. With their addition of Miguel Cabrera, Dontrelle Willis, Edgar Renteria and Jacque Jones, the Tigers were expected to pummel opponents into submission with an offense that some commentators predicted would score over 1,000 runs. Granderson was poised to propel that offense from his leadoff spot.

Individuals in positions of authority — especially those positions critical to our survival, such as President of the United States and Illinois Men's Basketball coach — are incessantly pestered with irrelevant questions from idiots. For some reason we, the public, allow these interrogatory distractions. Worse, we expect the dummies to get their answers.

But we can't get those answers. Presidential candidates are silenced de facto from speaking honestly, or at length — knowing they will only be ridiculed in the tabloid press. Basketball coaches are prohibited from speaking de jure — specifically, the jure of the NCAA.

Fun week

This was a really enjoyable week for most baseball fans in C-U. Cardinals held steady despite their closer being put on the DL with a non-pitching “injury.” The Reds won six in a row behind a nasty 7–1 rookie named Volquez, and the White Sox surged back to first with a sweep of the Giants.

Not bad folks.

One thing is for certain about horse racing: there is no such thing as a “sure thing.” Horses are living, breathing creatures with as distinct personalities as pedigrees. A horse is not a car — he gets sick, gets hungry, gets full of himself, gets tired. In short, he is a real athlete in every sense of the word. And just as in the human world, there are those horses who stand out among the rest physically and mentally, being born with a talent that screams to be exercised. There are horses, and then there are horses.

Back in December, I wrote a long-winded eulogy for Jim Edmonds when his ties were cut with the Cardinals upon being shipped to San Diego. I wanted to remember his loping, upper-cut swing, his shoestring or scaling-the-wall catches, his notoriously lackadaisical appearance on the field, his So. Cal. bleached tips, his uncanny ability to clobber the high fastball and that glorious, walk-off home run he hit off Dan Miceli to keep the Cardinals alive in the 2004 NLCS.

I never published that eulogy. And now, I’m glad I didn’t, because Jim Edmonds isn’t going quietly into the night. Instead, he’s playing for the arch-rival Cubs. Whether Edmonds, who once admitted to treading lightly on Wrigley’s warning track thanks to its vine-covered brick walls, has any gas left in the tank or not is beside the point. He’ll be wearing the C on his chest, and that’s uncomfortable for Redbirds fans. The man who said on many occasions that he wanted to end his career in St. Louis will now likely cap his career in Chicago. That’s tough to stomach.

What’s big, yellow, and wants you to share the road? If you’ve seen the C-U Mass Transit District’s new Share the Road bus, it’s no mystery. The bus, which travels on various routes throughout the area depending on the day, made its debut a few weeks ago.

Now that we’re nearly at the quarter pole of the regular season, the flukes of April should be fading away to reveal something more concrete in the American League Central. Instead, it’s a muddled race to the middle, with only 4.5 games separating first place from fifth, and no team with a winning percentage over .530 or under .400. Any analysis based on a given team’s spot in this crapshoot could be completely irrelevant by this time next week. But hey, that’s why I’m here.

Not to seem overly pessimistic, but with high expectations often comes excruciating pain. At the beginning of the year, my hopes for the Cardinals were somewhat optimistic with a certain amount of understandable trepidation. All of a sudden, we start looking pretty good and I assume we should win every damned game we play. It’s easy to complain, much harder to be realistic.

Biatches

Last Thursday morning my son repeated this lovely word back to me after he heard me refer to my shoes as "biatches." I had been explaining to my wife why I needed to replace them, and my son decided he liked the word and happily shouted it back. It’s probably not the first time my son has heard me spout an expletive; in fact, unfortunately, he probably heard me use similar language the day before to describe the Cubs' lackluster 9–0 loss to an unimpressive Cincinnati ballclub. Returning from vacation is never fun. During my time away from home the Cubs lost two of three in four straight series. After starting 15–6, they had fallen to 19–15, going 4–9 in their last 13 games.

Yes, its quite possible my son heard a few negative words during that stretch, but hearing the word ‘biatches’ from your 17-month old kid kind of gives me a little perspective…

All right, Mr. Big, you now have my full and undivided attention. Not only did you prove that you deserved the hype before the Kentucky Derby, you’ve succeeded in building an imposing mystique around your huge physique. You won the Derby coming from post 20, which no horse has done since a starting gate amounted to a piece of string; you won the race after staying on the outside of the herd and blowing away to a four and three-quarter length victory; and you’re the first Derby winner to scare off practically all of the other Derby contenders to enter the Preakness since Citation in 1948. Citation, in case you weren’t aware, was America’s eighth Triple Crown winner. One of eleven.

The Cardinals’ Rick Ankiel has accomplished more in his six-year major league career than most. He’s won 13 games and sports a 3.90 career ERA. He’s averaged better than a strikeout per inning on the mound. At the plate, he owns a .470 slugging percentage and 67 career RBIs.

Ankiel has also earned enough criticism, empathy, praise and “What if … ?”s in six seasons to last him a lifetime. The role of pitching phenom is never an easy part to play. Just ask Kerry Wood or Mark Prior. But neither of their stories mimic the bizarre tale of Ankiel, which any recent baseball fan knows all too well. His progression has been a memorable one: “the next Sandy Koufax,” Game 1 of the 2000 NLDS, wild pitches, mental blocks, media scrutiny, failed comeback, Single-A ball, injuries, more failure, thoughts of quitting, rebirth as a position player, success in the minors, comparisons to The Natural in the majors, scandal, suspense.

Since I completely jinxed last week’s feature subject, Brian Bannister (3 IP, 7 ER, 3 HR allowed in his start last Wednesday, ERA jumped from 2.48 to 4.04), this week we’ll test the extent of my jinxing powers with Cliff Lee, who will be starting tonight for the Cleveland Indians versus the New York Yankees. The game’s on ESPN at 6 p.m., so if you have cable and some free time, check it out.

Hello everyone, 2ON2OUT is back from vacation, and don’t think I was slacking. No, I was busy taking in a game at historic Grayson Stadium. This week to get back in the swing of things and to mirror my feelings about the Cubs current 3–8 stretch, we’ll play Minus/Plus short and quick, straight to the players.

Unlike most prep stars, local three-star guard Verdell Jones III chose to wait until after the smoke had cleared to select a school. And it wasn't the school most people were expecting him to choose.

The Champaign Central product will be suiting up for a seriously depleted but newly helmed Indiana squad under the direction of Tom Crean.

Despite the fact that the team faces sanctions and only returns three scholarship players, Jones said it was "the best situation for me. They expect me to come in and make a big contribution." He also noted that part of his decision was looking at how well Crean developed his guards at Marquette, a school long known for its outside-the-arc performers.

As the Illinois made its run to the Big Ten Tournament Championship this March, the team was focused on British cartoon characters of the early 20th Century.

Before the tournament, coach Bruce Weber sat the team down for a motivational viewing of Randy Pausch's last lecture, which among other things, extolled the virtues of Tigger.

Big Brown, Big Brown, Big Brown: It’s all you hear in the pre-Derby coverage, the barn buzz, the betting windows. Racing fans are so hot with fervor about this colt, they’re injecting his color into their Derby fashions. How many big brown hats will we see come this Saturday in the mass of color?

There’s no surprise he’s going off as the 3–1 favorite in the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby this Saturday. And he is as remarkable-looking as they say, with his towering conformation, his easy-breezy gallops, his commanding presence, and his perfect record of 3-for-3 with Curlin-esque winning margins. But Big Brown isn’t the only horse in the race, and after drawing the absolute worst post position on Wednesday evening, some handicappers are beginning to sway their bets toward the better-placed horses.

Let’s get three things straight about Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. First, a pet peeve: There is a space between “La” and “Russa.” Second, his lifetime Major League batting average as a middle infielder is one point below the Mendoza Line. Third, and most important, his 2,393 career wins as a Major League manager place him among some select, Hall-of-Fame company: Only Connie Mack and John McGraw have more victories.

Mack, who has won — by far — more games than any other manager in MLB history, 3,731, also has 3,948 losses. I bring this up because wins, as a metric for the success of managers and starting pitchers alike, don’t tell the whole story. And in the case of La Russa, the whole story is worth telling.

Forget about finding a quiet room with a comfortable bed.

If you show up at Urbana’s Holiday Inn tonight, chances are good that comfort’s the last thing on your mind.

At 8:30 p.m., Courage Fighting Championships 11 kicks off. There will be fighting in cages, fighting among men, fighting among women and fighting for the CFC national championship.

Courage Fighting Championships, the full-contact brainchild of Decatur’s Jason Reinhardt, is a breeding ground for talented mixed martial arts fighters looking to climb the ladder into the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the major leagues of ultimate fighting. This is an ascent that’s familiar to the 38-year-old Reinhardt, who’s been practicing martial arts since he was nine years old and who held championship belts in numerous mixed martial arts organizations before making his UFC debut in November 2007.

Champaign County Bikes will be hosting their second annual BikeFest this Sunday, May 4, at Hessel Park in Champaign. Whether you’re an avid cyclist or merely curious about what’s going on in the local bike community, there’s something for everyone.

Starting at 9 a.m., you can choose between four different routes from 10 to 51 miles long in the Pedal Power ride, with proceeds benefiting the Center for Women in Transition.

This past Saturday, Smile Politely was well represented at the Country Music Marathon in Nashville. Okay, maybe well represented isn’t exactly fair to say, but at least there were two of us there: your humble author and SP Editor-in-Chief Chris “I run through ridiculous levels of pain” Maier were among the estimated 35,000 participants clogging the streets of Nashville.

While I was running, I started to think about how great it was to see a city I knew almost nothing about — other than glimpses from Robert Altman’s epic film Nashville — by running 13.1 miles through it (we were actually running the half marathon). It’s kind of surreal to see a place’s landmarks for the first time while groaning and gasping and struggling through a race.