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For some reason, some people take offense when the media make predictions on sporting events. More specifically, fans of a particular team take offense when media from that team’s city do not pick the team to prevail. Contrary to popular opinion (occasionally based on media behavior), the Chicago media — for example — did not have some civic duty to pick the Blackhawks to win their Western Conference finals series against the Los ANgeles Kings. Some media did pick the Hawks; some did not. With the Hawks winning 4-3 in double overtime Saturday (June 8) to win the series 4-1, selections such as the Kings winning in seven games proved wrong. Big deal. Anyone who bases anything on media predictions of sporting events — or takes such predictions personally — needs to re-evaluate his/her life. Odds are such folks won’t. At least that’s my prediction.
From the look of things, the Blackhawks Ice Crew may be outnumbered in the Stanley Cup finals.
* Stanley Cup finals forecast for the Blackhawks vs. Boston Bruins: At least one media outlet from television, radio, newspapers and the Internet will provide a story of how a Bruins Cup crown will help Boston heal from the tragedy of the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath. And each and every story will be so contrived that regardless of how well-done those stories might be, they will be wrong.
* Speaking of predictions, one that was not heard on Saturday’s Belmont Stakes telecast was Palace Malice to win. And with good reason. Palace Malice finished 12th in the Kentucky Derby, did not race in the Preakness and had one victory in seven races. Well, before winning the Belmont Stakes at 13-1 odds. Palace Malice paid $29.60, $11.20 and $6.70. Preakness winner Oxbow was second, paying $9.90 and $6.10. Kntucky Derby winner Orb finished third and paid $3.30. In case anyone was wondering how racetracks and/or bookies stay in business.
* As long as we’re predicting, try this one and check back in a few weeks: White Sox infielder Jeff Keppinger will draw his third walk of the season before July 4. He has two in 201 at-bats. Yeah, I’m not overly certain I’d bet on that either.
* Speaking of walks and predictions, here’s some more to clip and save (or however they do that in cyberspace): The Cubs will have the fewest walks in the National League and the Sox the fewest in the American League. At the moment, the Sox and Kansas City have an AL low of 144, while the Cubs are last in the NL with 138.
* Still predicting: By the All-Star break, Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez still will have more stolen bases than walks. As of this typing, he has 13 stolen bases and 10 walks.
* A fair number of the folks who tossed caps onto the ice to celebrate Patrick Kane’s hat trick/game-winning goal in Game 5 will sober up SUnday and wonder why they cannot find their favorite Hawks caps.
Because the Hawks eliminated the Kings, that means we will be hard-pressed around here to justify running video of the Kings Ice Crew members (not that justification necessarily is needed). So here are a few videos to serve as a consolation prize to Kings fans — or at least to Ice Crew fans (let the record show that the Blackhawks have not been as imaginative in promoting their Ice Crew):
And here we go with the daily dose of non-gratuitous video (thanks to the efforts of the editorial and video staffs at elliottharris.com and their definition of “gratuitous”):
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