Thursday, February 25, 2010

Talking Trash Part 2 - Chicago Style


Last summer, one of the big Chicago papers ran this on their front page previous to the ill-fated Olympic bid:

“Only 47% of Chicagoans Back Olympic Bid”

Like many people here in the city, I was supportive of the Olympics getting here in 2016. As a Chicago Cubs fan, I thought about an alternate headline, and decided it might be better put this way:

“Only 47% of Chicagoans Back Olympic Bid”
“Four times more than back White Sox”


I must have been reading The Sun-Times that day, because The Chicago Tribune, whose parent company owns the Cubs, could have and might have run it that way. And if you were a northsider the second version would be your take on the matter. Because the only baseball that matters to you, in this town, is the baseball on your side of town.

This feature of Chicago culture is unique in the United States. In comparison, there are Yankees fans all over New York City, with plenty in Queens and Brooklyn which are both on the side of town of where the Mets play. Just the same, you don’t need to be from Manhattan to be a NY Rangers fan, but if you are die hard Islanders fan, you must have grown up when the Islanders were actually good (Note: see 1982). That said, I’ve never met an Islanders fan who admits to spending nights tossing and turning with hatred of the Rangers, even when they had Wayne Gretzky.

Then again, Chicago has its own take on a lot of things.

Food is a big one. For one, hot dogs are usually a variant of the kosher variety -which is the best in the world-- but come standard with everything except ketchup. Everything meaning: green dyed relish, mustard, fresh chopped onions, tomatoes, a jalapeño pepper, and a flimsy pickle slice. But if you want ketchup, well, you’ve gotta put that on yourself.

Likewise, thin crust pizza pies are circular but come cut, not in the shape of slices of pizza, but criss-crossed like a plate of brownies. As such, all pieces are cut in a square shape. Some call this “bar style” whether or not you’re in a bar.

“Chicago Style” pizza is deep-dished, decadent, and excellent really, but you’ll need a knife and fork if you don’t want to look like a total slob after consumption. The best Chicago Style in town (on the North Side, at least) is had at Chicago’s, which is owned and operated not by Italians but by a Mexican family.

I never said I was a huge fan on the fast food here, and lucky for me there is a guy from Philly who set up an authentic cheese steak chain called Philly’s Best. Like home, the place comes complete with every thing from Tastykakes to take-your-ass-outta-here attitude. Yet, I still get flack from my Philly pals, not only for the Cubs but believe it or not for the pizza too.

Beyond that, it’s not hard for someone like me to assimilate in Chicago, where you always feel welcome. And the sports culture helps suck you in if you let it.

It took me a couple of years of living only six blocks from Wrigley to get myself to a game. I used to moan about how awful the parking was during Cubs season, which seemed a waste since fans weren’t even seeing them win. But then I got to a game and I stopped wasting my energy moaning.

I now use terms that all northsiders know, but that when used around non-Chicagoans I find I need to explain myself. Sure, anyone who knows anything about the Cubs knows about the Curse of the Billygoat. As the legend goes, local restaurant owner couldn’t bring his smelly goat into the game and when turned away said, “Them Cubs, they aren't gonna win no more”. That was 1945, the shortly after last time the Cubs were in the World Series.

But others outside Chicago might not know the June Swoon or that “Cubs”, to some, really stands for “Completely Useless By September”.

I figured this out during a conversation with a friend back home around Thanksgiving. We were talking baseball, and I mentioned that the last time I owned a full season-ticket package was when “we were 5 outs from the World Series”. His response was something like “What? When was that?”

When? It was October 14, 2003, the same night as the The Steve Bartman Incedent. The Cubs were up 3-0 in the top of the 8th, with one out in Game 6 of the NLCS. That’s when. But who really wants to rehash this old stuff?

So it’s fair to say I’m totally immersed. Sure, you can beat me up about the Cubs. You can tell me how awful they are, that they stink, how they will never ever win the World Series. But until you’ve been to a day game at Wrigley, you have no idea what you’re missing.



Sox fans, by contrast, can point to a recent World Series Championship, back in 2005, when they swept the Houston Astros. But Sox fans still do complain about the Cubs.

One strange thing is that you never hear Sox fans complain about is media bias. And they could, given that two major media outlets, the Tribune and WGN Radio/TV are, through their corporation, aligned with the Cubs. Sox fans tend to take a more mocking tone, and like to tell you that they take delight at the opportunity to watch “minor league baseball” here in Chicago.

Most of the complaints about each other are topical though. Some Sox fans often say they like the Wrigley atmosphere and are “Wrigley fans” but not “Cub fans”. Others acknowledge the fun atmosphere but complain that Cubs fans are there only to get drunk or eat brie and not watch baseball. Note: brie is not served at Wrigley.

Likewise, Cubs fans complain that in Bridgeport there is the stadium and that’s it. There’s no fun to be had outside The Cell unless you consider it fun to wait for the Red Line train going north. Beyond that, I’ll say that the beer selection is good, the food selection is excellent for a ball park (you can get funnel cake!) yet the seats are uncomfortable and the heavy metal music that blares between batters is pretty damn annoying.

Usually the Cubs and Sox are never good at the same time. They don’t compete for anything other than temporary bragging rights, so there’s no punching and fighting, no hooliganism between fans after games. Besides, everyone knows that if you want to fist fight, that’s what the South Side Irish Parade is for.

So maybe it’s all academic. But whether it is Jay Leno ripping the Cubs, or Sox fans, or fans of other teams altogether, what you hear most of all is the sentiment “Give it up, the Cubs will never be good.” Plus there’s that superstition thing that sports fans have.



However, some think that curses have permanent effect. Goats? Curses and superstitions? Is that all you trash talkers got?

It wasn’t too long ago that The Curse of the Bambino was shattered in 2004 by the Boston Red Sox, who came back from a three game deficit to beat the Yankees and sweep the Cardinals to take the first of two World Series in three years.

This all happened not long after the laughing stock of pro football, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, won the Super Bowl. They did so in style, by stomping all over the Raiders, a bellwether NFL club who had been to their share of Super Bowls. And if you forgot about that one, just remember that another laughing stock, the Saints, formerly “The Ain’ts”, won it this year.

So keep up the trash talk about the Cubs. And don’t forget to remind me how fruitless my passion for supporting them is. Tides are turning. You just wait.

Andy Frye eats, breathes, and writes about sports and life in Chicago, and at MySportsComplex.blogspot.com. Past results do not indicate future performance…Read your prospectus.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The 10 Best Sports Films of the Last 20 Years

As a sports enthusiast and writer I have taken it upon myself to hammer out the ten best films about sports from the last two decades. Feel free to chime in, agree, disagree, or note the films I have forgotten about. But I think I got it mostly right…So enjoy.



10. Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)
A dozen bored surfers, mostly kids in Venice, California, not only reinvent the skateboard but remake a once-forgotten-about suburban fad from the 1950s into an action sports revolution.

Narrarated by Sean Penn, Dogtown depicts life in the more rundown “Locals Only” beach communities circa 1974, which consisted of mostly of surfing in the early morning tides and loitering. The Zephyr Team (or Z-boys as they are called) spend one summer combating the boredom by building their own boards with the help of a local who owns a surf shop. After they enter re-emerging skateboarding competitions in SoCal, they transfigure it all into their own scene; one that rouses a generation of skateboarders consisting of greats like Tony Hawk, Shaun White and the creators of the of X-Games.

Dogtown puts chronological perspective into skateboarding, and the up-from-the-bootstraps history you never knew it had.

9. Fever Pitch (The 1997 BBC version)
A London football-obsessed school teacher has spent the last 20-some years, and every day going forward, viewing life through the one lens: his favorite team, The Arsenal Football Club. Having sublimated the grief of his parents’ divorce through English Football, he views every week of his life as another football match in pursuit of fortunes always hiding.

Colin Firth, who usually plays the archetypical sullen Brit, is resounding as author Nick Hornby’s autobiographical noncommittal single man who’s really just a lad grown up. Hornby’s character then grows smitten a prim and proper English teacher who dislikes him at first but warms up to him and his enthusiasm for sport and life in general.

Fever Pitch is a nice portrayal of the struggles of an irrational sports lover reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that, to the rest of the world, there are more important things than Saturday’s game.

8. Jerry Maguire (1996)
Jerry Maguire, played by Tom Cruise, is a hot shot sports agent who gets fired from his job and questions everything he lives, says and believes.

While the film peers into exciting world of sports celebrity and the high life, it delves more into Maguire’s own superficiality and vanity unraveling in the wake of his own personal choices.

This Cameron Crowe film not only was Oscar nominated, but also springboarded the careers of Renee Zellweger, Bonnie Hunt, and Cuba Gooding, Jr., who himself won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Moreover, this film familiarized us for the first time with terms like “Qwon”, “Show Me the Money”, and with precocious toddlers in glasses. Jerry Maguire is curriculum 101 and a must-see film for any sports enthusiast.

7. Invincible (2006)
I’ll have to admit bias on this one. Not so much because I grew up a Philadelphia Eagles fan, but because even more than that I am a huge fan or the underdog and outsider. Even better, Invincible is based on a true story of a man walking on to his hometown NFL team.

In the drab and recession-laden mid-1970s, the lowly Philadelphia Eagles are so bad that their new head coach, Dick Vermeil, announces team tryouts open to the public on live TV. While every Eagles fan and football-obsessed yahoo in town lines up, one standout athlete, a 30 year old bartender named Vince Papale is good enough to make the team and go pro.

In a style reminiscent of Rocky, the film’s character struggles not only with his past failures amidst a new challenge of making the cut day-by-day, but he also grapples with his new role as a star and outcast in his own microcosm of working class Philadelphia life.

Greg Kinnear and Mark Wahlberg are both convincing in their roles, and even if you’re a Giants or Cowboys fan, you will be inspired to root for Papale as the underdog that delivers on game day.

6. When We Were Kings (1996)
The “True Story of the Rumble in the Jungle” is another documentary which profiles Muhammad Ali’s ascent and domination of the world as sports hero and international icon.

Amidst the slow rise in the 1970s of African-American culture as mainstream, and African-Americans as welcome participants in a racially uncertain middle-America, Kings recounts Ali’s unconquerable spirit and beaming optimism for his craft and love for the people who cheer him as well as those who don’t.

Meanwhile, the new and presumably undefeatable George Foreman makes a play for Ali’s crown. It culminates with Don King’s Rumble in the Jungle, billed as the penultimate international heavyweight championship bout in the heart of Africa.

Overall, Ali’s rise as a heavyweight champion and sports personality has had a cultural impact on our country more than we realize. This film, more than any other, details the fascinating story from the beginning.

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Above, Lance Armstong gives Peter LeFleur flack for not seeing "Cinderella Man" (or should have) and busts his nut for being a quitter in Dodgeball.
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5. Hoop Dreams (1994)
Hoop Dreams starts off in the late 1980s when two local Chicago boys are scouted for their basketball talents. One gets a scholarship to a prestigious private high school in the suburbs while the other roughs it through the public school system and an unstable home life. William and Arthur, both inner-city kids, dream of becoming NBA superstars like their idol, Chicago’s own Isaiah Thomas.

Following the kids over four years of life in high school and pursuit of college, the makers of Hoop Dreams weave together an eye-opening story about inspiration and triumph amidst the difficulties of city life and scant opportunity.

The film, which Roger Ebert regards as one of the best films he ever saw, is a refreshing look at sport on the street, removed from the glitz, glamour and marketing mash up of the professional big leagues.

4. Don King: Only in America (1997)
The great Ving Rhames plays a local Cleveland bookie and some time ex-con maneuvering his way to the top of the nascent and dynamic world of pro boxing.

Rhames, best known for his role as Pulp Fiction’s gang thug Marcellus Wallace, plays a different type of tough guy and hustler in the form of an animated and verbally combative Don King; a persona he nails. Only in America also cameos Bernie Mac, Jeremy Piven and the late soul singer Lou Rawls.

For as much as other films like Any Given Sunday and Jerry Maguire have endeavored to depict the perceived evil, cutthroat and slimy nature of sports promoters, Only in America does so not by belaboring its players as bad people. Rather Don King’s character is flamboyant, very human, and so exciting that, as he puts it “If you didn't have Don King, you'd have to invent him.”

3. Cinderella Man (2005)
In the last few decades there has been a drought of good films about the Great Depression, or at least ones that weren’t about bootleggers and Italian mobsters. Cinderella Man recounts the true story of an on-his-way-out boxer and longshoreman whose family is down to their last penny.

James Braddock’s unlikely last hope is his boxing career. While slumming it to the dock every single day to find scarce work, he hides his injuries to take a crack at the younger up-and-coming professional fighters at first just for the pay. But his stamina and heart, and ability to withstand a beating (both in life and boxing) gifts him with a few knockouts and an underdog’s chance to challenge the great killer champion Max Baer for the title.

If you ever have spent a day of your life feeling useless or defeated, watch this film and it will put your attitude and your head straight.




2. Seabiscuit (2003)
In another riches to rags 1930s-era film, a half-blind jockey too tall and a horse too small, wild, and lazy team up to recreate themselves as the new juggernaut in horse racing.

Based on another true story, the film starts with a narrative by the documentary voice of great historian David McCullough. In the way that Sputnik caused Americans to fear communism and the rise of the Soviet Union in the 1950s, Seabiscuit, a mere race horse, inspired an America sorely beaten down by The Great Depression. No one exactly knows how this horse achieved what it did, but the story is all about heart.

Tobey Maguire does well as an unsure and improbable jockey while Jeff Bridges plays the race team’s promoter and personal coach in an enthusiastic style reminiscent of champion football man Vince Lombardi. Likewise, another must-see, whether or not you care about sports or horse racing at all.




1. Invictus (2009)
Whether or not wins an Oscar or any other accolade, the film is, in my view, the best sports film since Rocky, which I believe was the greatest sports film ever made. Invictus is as good as Chariots of Fire, better than Raging Bull, and blows Hoosiers out of the water.

You need know nothing about rugby, and you need know nothing about South Africa. Clint Eastwood directs, as Matt Damon, perhaps for the first time in career, acts so well that you forget you’re watching Matt Damon.

Damon portraits François Pienaar, the captain of the South African Rugby team; a team that is talented but in a wholesale state of disarray. The team’s players are listless and unmotivated, while their level of play is evocative of the Bad News Bears. Meanwhile, the nation’s black rugby fans cheer not for South Africa but for England.

At the same time, newly elected Nelson Mandela wrestles with the task of running the government and uniting the country while reconciling black aspirations with white fears.

With South Africa hosting the soon-approaching World Cup, the rugby team’s management is fired while the new black government coalition tries to change the team’s mascot and team name, The Springboks, in attempt to erase all memory of Apartheid.

Mandela quietly calls on captain Pienaar to reset the tone of the team and prepare the Springboks for the unlikely feat of winning the World Cup at home and uniting the nation.

Invictus gets its name from a poem by William Ernest Henley that Mandela holds dear as something that made him stand up when, imprisoned for 26 years, “all he wanted to do was lie down”. Like the poem, which speaks of the ability to take responsibility for one’s destiny, the film tells the story of South Africa’s steps forward in the work-in-progress of setting free the nation, both psychologically and socio-politically from its checkered past.

Invictus has so many important facets at work in a brilliant, exciting, but well-tailored storyline, that you’ll digest it for days. Do yourself a favor, and go see it.

Honorable mentions:
Big Fan, Green Street Hooligans, Rudy, Rocky Balboa, Bend It Like Beckham, Mean Machine, Field Of Dreams, A League Of Their Own, Murderball, Searching For Bobby Fischer, Radio, Remember The Titans, The Fifa World Cup Movie, Goal: The Dream Begins, The Rookie, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise And Fall Of Jack Johnson, Million Dollar Baby, and (of course) Dodgeball.

Andy Frye lives, breathes and writes about sports and life on MySportsComplex.blogspot.com and on the Facebook page of the same name.

Pictures borrowed from imdb.com

Sunday, February 14, 2010

No pain, no game


When you play sports or games of any kind, acquiring aches and pains--if not outright injuries-- is part of the deal. Your turn comes eventually.

I used to work with a jolly old 71 year old life insurance salesman. He was the stereotypical life insurance salesman—the friendly, mildly hilarious, super-persistent, slightly maddening kind.

He was probably well suited for his work, not only because he’d been doing it for 40 years, but that persistence seemed to be a genetic trait for this guy. “The Dartman”, as he called himself, had had his second hip replaced right when I met him, and still spent every weekend playing tennis.

Dart is in mid-70s now, and as far as I know he still plays. The last time I saw him, on the train about a year ago, he was on his way to his basketball league game on a Thursday night. My guess is that he must be a point guard. Where else would your coach put a 5 foot 5, 70-something with the energy of a 17 year old?

I had met my friend Dart back in 2003. He was pretty open about the pending hip trip to the hospital, even though I barely knew him. Among other things, he joked that he might come of out it a few inches taller. Being the nosey person I am, I asked if he had heard about what had happened to Dick Schaap and what he thought.

Dick Schaap was my all-time favorite sportscaster, and I know a lot of sports fans who thought he was the Ace of Spades among top quality sports journalists. A year and a half earlier, Schaap had gone in for a hip replacement and didn’t make it out, having passed away due to complications that arose in surgery, a couple days before Christmas.

Schaap had spent a couple of decades in sports television journalism after his days at Cornell’s powerhouse Lacrosse program; an experience that seemed to shape his perspective on life and love for sports. He not only knew what he was talking about, but also had a down-to-earth demeanor in the days long before sportscasting was made up of bantering big guys in big suits with big rings, and Stuart Scott boo-yahs. His gentle candor was one that was more common in the 1970s and 1980s, but a rarity now.

The type of class Schaap demonstrated and lived out has somehow gotten lost among today’s aggressive tactics. Nowadays, the Jay Mariottis see their craft as a little more than a means to openly bad mouth what and who they don’t like about everything. Other knobs, like Bob Costas and Jim Gray, tend to psychoanalyze, badger, and denigrate athletes the way that Maury Povich does of his own nutty guests.

Like this old life insurance salesman, Schaap had a great talent for disarming people, and I remember Schaap asking quirky questions that would often bring big time sports stars back down to earth, almost forcing them to talk about their love of the game.

My friend Dart, had no fear heading into hip surgery and seemed to take it like a champ. Much to my liking he remarked about Schaap’s great work and how he seemed like a great guy to have a beer with.

Once you get past 30 you naturally begin to fall apart, and that’s no way to conduct a past-prime sports career.


In the give and take of that conversation I also muttered that I spent the summer with my leg in a cast because of a sports injury. Without hesitation, Dart took with me the same liberty he probably has taken with his own doctors, and against their orders. He dictated to me, “Don’t ever quit. Don’t ever let them tell you that you can’t go on playing.”

Without even knowing me that well, he read into my own irrational sports passions. Like many of us, I always had the urgency to keep playing the game even when good sense and prudent practice of sports medicine might tell me to stop.

Plus, once you get past 30 you naturally begin to fall apart, and that’s no way to conduct a past-prime sports career.

Racking up the numbers, I have two bad knees, and had a blown out patellar tendon on the left side. I’ve had the same shoulder dislocated three times, twice in open play. I’ve had sprained wrists, sprained fingers, and have taken a ball of every kind in the face at least once including a baseball in the chin and a racquet ball square in my eye. Don’t even get me started about my wrestling days.

Like most men, I have taken hits in the groin too, and I have fallen on my head a few times. The last part might explain my own gripping compulsion toward this whole sports racket.

But it wasn’t soccer or baseball, or even my stint as a defensive end on the pee wee football team that handed me my first injury. The insanity goes back way further than that. My first sports injury and only time I ever broke a bone in my whole life was playing a game of a different nature. It was Duck-Duck-Goose.

At age 5, I had spent one day nagging my mother to take me to preschool, at The Hobby Horse even though it wasn’t my day to go. It was all because I had a crush on this other five year old named Laura, who attended the school every day, and I had to see her.

Mom eventually buckled, but to my chagrin Laura left just as I was arriving. Bad Karma, now what? Nothing much else to do saw my way into this kiddy game I had played a couple times before.

The Duck-Duck-Goose basics were simple even for a 5 year old. A bunch of kids sit around in a circle, while a designated lead-off kid taps every kid on the head one-by-one, and says “duck”. Then he picks out a “goose”. Goose has to chase the lead-off guy before he makes it around the circle to then sit in Goose’s space. This whole game, when you think about it, runs counter to the “no running” rule that children are forced to observe in every other facet of life.

Anyhow, on this day, the problem was that the lead-off batter was the biggest kid in the class, the token fat kid. He hit “goose” on the kid to my left, forcing normal play to send the kids running around the circle. Unfortunately for me, this all concluded with the big fat kid crashing down on my hand, breaking my pinky finger to bits.

It was an interesting way to call a rain delay, since, screaming my head off, I abruptly put an end to this game. I never would have thought back then or now of Duck-Duck-Goose as a contact sport.

A long time ago I once heard someone joke that if synchronized swimming could be an Olympic sport, then both food fights and pie throwing should be too. After all, who’s ever been injured during synchronized swimming?

Then there’s that streamer-on-a-stick gymnastic activity and a lot of other hokey activities that make up Olympic competitions. Just the same, Duck-Duck-Goose could fit right in there too.

Sure, it’s not like injuries make up what constitutes the difference between a true sport or a bogus one. Or that one sport trumps any other in terms of importance. I’m sure there is someone out there who gets as pumped up about synchronized swimming (or pie throwing) as I do about my favorite sports.

I can’t put words in the mouth of the late Dick Schaap, but I think he’d chime in on one thing that dwells in my mind. That is that sports or any recreational competition --whether it involves throwing a ball, shooting an arrow, or even if it is a Tex-Mex chili cook-off—is worth your effort and every minute of your time if it stirs your soul.

Often enough, the best part is not winning the game or the victory lap afterward, but perspective we gain by our persistence in playing the game. Moreover, we get to enjoy major dividends doing something because we love it, and for no other reason.

The games we play, whatever your flavor, are always well worth life’s aches and pains. But then again, you knew that.