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

Bad Week. No problem(s).

As the season has now reached its halfway point, at 1–5, this was the Northsiders most trying week to date. I did appreciate, however, that the one victory was the one I attended. It was nice to finally get to sing “Go Cubs Go” and watch the white flags go up from within Wrigley. Tip your cap to the palehose, they were able to return the sweep and are primed to win the AL Central behind high-powered bats and good pitching. Only a lack of offensive balance (not enough small ball) can stop the Sox from taking it into October. Back to the Northside, problems are starting to accumulate, but I don’t foresee any of them as insurmountable. Let’s get ‘em right out there…and then discuss…

In celebration of the 2008 NBA Draft and the Chicago Bulls top overall selection of Derrick Rose, who will no doubt transform the team’s lackluster offense into a stealth scoring machine under the master guidance of first-year coach (of any kind) Vinny Del Negro, I give you my own hardly expert draft analysis. Not of this year’s draft, and not of No. 1 picks, but of the best sleeper picks from every draft since the 1976 NBA-ABA merger. Why? Because I enjoy such silly exercises, and also because I am too lazy to execute my original plan — to rank the best and worst first-round draft picks by selection number (first through last) over the same time period. Ready or not, here we go!

Winner of the Breeder’s Cup Classic, the Preakness Stakes, the Dubai World Cup and named the 2007 Horse of the Year, Curlin was a horse I had followed since before the 2007 Kentucky Derby. He dazzled in his first three races of his career, winning by a combined margin of 27.5 lengths. I never root against a Kentucky Derby winner as a rule, but after Curlin didn’t win the Derby, I couldn’t stand to see him beaten again, and he got his revenge from Street Sense by a nose in the Preakness. And even in the Belmont, with the most talented filly I may ever see, a little part of me still edged in Curlin’s favor, where he was out-nosed by Rags to Riches to the wire.

Churchill Downs — May 3, 2008 — Kentucky Derby: I was standing level with the track, leaning my arms against a fence inches from the rail. The sun was baking my shoulders, giving me a sunburn to remember far after my fancy dress would be peeled from my sweat-lathered body. We were still several races away from the main event, and I had already become tired. Enduring the Kentucky Derby is a badge of honor. I was wearing high-heels, something completely foreign to my bony feet, and I had earned a slight hitch in my gait from the demands of the long day. I was at the point where I decided I would become a lazy photographer and stay in one place for a while, in my cozy front-row seat.

Alex Voitik worked for Jimmy John's last winter, and he was kind enough to answer some questions about the life of a delivery rider.

It's still hard for people to believe it, but the Chicago Cubs are currently the favorite to win the World Series this year. They are currently leading their division by 4.5 games and lead the Los Angeles Angels by 1.5 games overall.

So. What's your dream?

Rays? Rays.

The Cubs were swept this week for the first time all season. It was also their first 3 game losing streak. They were the last team in baseball to who hadn’t lost more than 2 games in a row. Now, the Cubs did some things poorly in the Rays series. Clutch hitting vanished and defense was not as sharp as Cubs players seemingly couldn’t adjust to six days in a row on turf.

After a rough 2007–2008 season that saw the Illini finish under .500 for the first time since 1999, it may appear to some disgruntled fans that coach Weber, only three years removed from the national championship runner-up, is taking the program down the wrong road. Some have argued that he is not up to the job of maintaining a Top 25 program and/or that he can't bring in the talent.

In the midst of the past season, while the losses mounted and hope for any post-season play dwindled, something significant happened off the court that points to a much better future for Illini basketball. Recruits started verbally committing en masse. Within a matter of just days, Weber got commitments from three of the top junior guards in the state, Joe Bertrand from Sterling, DJ Richardson from Peoria and Brandon Paul of Warren.

Say what you will about Comcast and their policies, Illini and Big Ten sports fans can expect to get a whole lot more this fall when the Big Ten Network becomes part of the cable-provider's extended basic service.

Service begins on August 15. Until that date, the Big Ten Network is only accessible in the area via satellite television providers such as DirecTV.

The Detroit Tigers finally are showing signs in the past week of emerging from their first-half malaise, and outfielder/DH Marcus Thames has been a big part of their resurgence. Thames has eight hits in the Tigers' last seven games, which wouldn't normally be that unusual, except for the fact that all of those hits have been home runs.

(Ed. Note: Marcus Thames actually hit his eighth home run in this streak as this article was being posted.)

John Calipari sits on a beach somewhere, frenetically thumbing a Blackberry; oblivious to the crashing waves, the gulls, the delightful salty breeze. The summer recruiting season opened this weekend. Family, friends and ice cold bottles of Corona don't stand a chance of getting Cal's attention.

Last week, he was forbidden from calling recruits, because the first half of June is a period when the NCAA wants kids to do other things besides talking to coaches — final exams, perhaps.

Another fantastic week for those Cubbies. Now twenty games over .500 on June 16 for the first time since 1906. Records falling by the wayside weekly, so let’s hope that continues.

Significant injuries for both the Cubs and Cards this week. Cubs lose Soriano and the Birds lose Wainwright and Pujols, yet both teams continue to win. If the Cubs are putting themselves in good position to win the division than St. Louis is putting themselves in good position to practically walk away with the NL wildcard.

Millions of TV viewers and a live crowd of 94,476 people turned their eyes to the Belmont Stakes to witness history on June 7, 2008. What they got was certainly history, though not in the form anyone expected; for what occurred in Elmont, New York on that day was one of the biggest upsets in American horse racing.

Well, so much for Doug Collins. On Wednesday, the Bulls announced the hiring of their new head coach, a head coach with no head coaching experience, no assistant coaching experience, really, zero coaching experience of any kind: Vinny Del Negro. After peaking fans’ interest by capturing the No. 1 pick in the upcoming draft, the Bulls trampled any momentum the franchise had going for it with the filling of this vacancy.

For the second summer, a group of (mostly) University of Illinois students are bicycling across the United States to raise money for cancer research, as well as other causes. The Illini 4000 is making its way from New York City to Seattle, and they took time out in Urbana on Tuesday night for a reception at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center. They began their trek on May 23 in New York City, and had just passed the 1,000-mile mark on Monday, according to Matt Cillick, who will be a sophomore in Aerospace Engineering at U of I.

At the beginning of this season, the Chicago White Sox thought they knew what to expect from the heart of their order. Jim Thome, Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye have powered the lineup since Thome arrived in 2006. Joe Crede was expected to return from a back injury, which ruined his 2007 campaign. Two high-profile trades brought in center fielder Nick Swisher and shortstop Orlando Cabrera, who had built successful careers on the West Coast. But the player who has had the biggest impact on Chicago's offense — and cemented himself in the third spot in the batting order — in the first third of the season, was an afterthought as spring training began: left fielder Carlos Quentin.

There was a moment late in Sunday’s game against the Astros that I felt may be indicative of the Cardinals this year. The birds had just scored five runs on two hits, a couple of errors, and a passed ball to take a 5–4 lead. When Houston came up to bat in the eighth, it was pretty apparent the game was on the line with Tejeda and Berkman coming up. It struck me as an important moment not only in the game, but maybe the season.

I hope everyone has had a chance to read Doug’s fantastic response to my column last week. It served as a brief history lesson on the Cubs’ long standing inability to close the deal and a reminder to Cub fans how jealous Cardinal nation will be when we’re running through the streets of Wrigleyville celebrating this Fall.

And so, in honor of a record six comments to the 2ON2OUT column last week, I will take a moment to respond to my loyal readers.

And so here we are on Belmont Eve.

Nerves can get to you come Belmont. For me, the race is the poised hatchet ready to fall over my Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner. At a mile and a half, it’s the longest race in the Triple Crown, and may be the longest race any of these horses will ever run again. By the time the first Saturday in June rolls around, we must measure up what our hopeful has accomplished and weigh his probable pitfalls. For Big Brown, it looks as if the only thing that could foul him up would be bad luck in the race, a misjudgment by his jockey, or, God forbid, an injury. Even facing refreshed competitors and an up-and-coming foe, failure doesn’t seem to be in Mr. Big’s immediate future. But if horse racing has taught me one thing, it’s that anything can and will happen on the precipice of history.

Gather round friends and Cubs fans. Northsider groupies, including Smile Politely scribe Adam Fein, are getting their hopes up thanks to an MLB-best start. So now is as good a time as any to remind them that the Cardinals are just two games back in the win column, and the Cubs, as their faithful surely know, have this little thing called history working against them. Speaking of history, shall we take a quick walk down memory lane and recall some of the Cubs more memorable regular-season collapses?

During this past off-season, AL Central teams were involved in as many significant trades as any division in baseball. There are many new faces in the division, some of whom have performed better than those they replaced, and some who haven't. In honor of the one-third mark of the season, we're going to make the newcomers to the neighborhood welcome by providing them with between one and five tasty, home-baked casseroles, depending on their impact and performance thus far.

(Ed. Note: These casseroles are meant to be for your imagination. Author Joel Gillespie wanted to put clipart photos of digital casseroles into the post. No, he is not on drugs.)

In our culture, there's enormous pressure to buy new things.

Q: Where does that pressure come from?
A: People who sell new things.

Keeping up with the latest trends, keeping up with the Joneses, keeping current. What's in style this season? No one wants to look like a square. Out with the old and in with the new.

It doesn't matter that you already have everything you need. We all know someone who routinely throws out an entire houseful of furniture, or suffers Chronic Urgent Remodeling Syndrome Epidemic (CURSE). Car salesmen effectively embarrass nervous, materialistic social climbers every year.

Well, unless you’re under a proverbial rock by now you know that the Cubs carried into June the best record in baseball. You know that this is the first time they’ve done this since…yep, 1908. You know that this is the hundred year anniversary of that accomplishment, as well as a second one: World Series Champion. In order for the Cubs to repeat the more important accomplishment of 1908, here is a first draft of things that need to happen:

List after the jump...