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Midweek musings: The Chicago Cubs and shortstop Starlin Castro have a deal that could run through 2020. Well, that makes perfect sense. After all, Castro is a 20-20 player this season: 21 stolen bases, 21 errors. Not quite the 20-20 vision that fans and/or management might have been envisioning for the youngster.
It's unclear whether April Rose, a favorite of ours, will wear this outfit for her appearance on "Sports & Torts" on Aug. 30.
* Speaking of Cubs youngsters, Brett Jackson went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts and a walk in a 4-1 loss to the visiting Milwaukee Brewers on Tuesday (Aug. 28). Jackson has struck out 34 times in 68 at-bats this season. Even without the elliottharris.com statistical department’s abacus, it’s not too tough to calculate that Jackson is striking out 50 percent of the time. And that’s not the worst part. He may be rubbing off on first baseman Anthony Rizzo, who fanned three times in fourt at-bats.
* On the bright side for the Cubs, there’s 2017? Maybe?
* The White Sox put Gavin Floyd on the 15-day disabled list. Right elbow flexor strain. Not to mention a strain of the Sox’ pitching staff.
* Chris Sales, who started for the Sox in their 6-0 loss at Baltimore, exited after four innings and 75 pitches. If fragility on a pitching staff were currency, the Sox would have enough wealth to go out and buy a healthy pitcher.
* The Cubs obtained catcher Anthony Recker from the Oakland Athletics for catcher Blake Lalli. Recker is a .146 big-league hitter to Lalli’s .133. It’s incremental improvements such as this that will lead the Cubs to their first World Series championship since 1908. Sometime shortly before the bicentennial celebration of that 1908 crown.
The highlight of the Chicago Sky’s 83-72 loss Tuesday to the Connecticut Sun may have been multi-media star and former Chicago Bears receiver Tom Waddle’s partcipation in a halftime contest.
“Eighty-three points is too much for any team,” Sky coach Pokey Chatman said after the team fell to 9-15 (a tie for the fourth and final playoff spot). Obviously they’re a good team. They’re the best in the East.”
Courtney Vandersloot came off the bench to lead the Sky with 17 points, Tina Charles had 24 for the Sun (18-6).
“I like coming off the bench, it’s comfortable for me and I like to be a little bit of a spark for us,” Vandersloot said.
“Our energy level was a little better [than an 82-70 home loss to the Sky on Sunday],” Sun coach Mike Thibault said. For whatever reason, and I can’t tell you why the other day felt like one of those middle of the season NBA games in January where there just didn’t seem to be a lot of emotion.”
As promised, more videos for the Chicago Luvabulls auditions for the 2012-13 dance team on Saturday (Aug. 25) at the United Center. Final cutdown for the 25-woman squad is to be Wednesday (as in tonight — provided that you’re reading this today, meaning Aug. 29, and not some other day). If things go as planned (which they seem more inclined to be whenever the Luvabulls are concerned), there will be video from the final audition session, For now, some of the preliminary footage:
OK. if it’s Wednesday, as we were led to believe it is in the previous paragraph preceding the videos, then chances are excellent that tomorrow will be Thursday. Which means it will be time for another installment of “Sports & Torts” with co-hosts David Spada and Elliott Harris. The highly acclaimed program (certainly in the Spada and Harris households and possibly elsewhere) is live at noon Chicago time on Thursdays at talkzone.com.
The scheduled guests for the Aug. 30 show are April Rose and newly inducted pro football hall of famer Jack Butler, who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1950s. April has been a favorite since her days as the Loop Rock Girl in 2007 before becoming winner of Maxim’s Hometown Hottie contest in 2008 and many other roles since.
Here is some of April’s recent video:
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