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Midweek musings: If it’s any consolation to Chicago White Sox fans (and the guess here is that it is not), the Sox are in a first-place tie with the Detroit Tigers after losing at home to the Cleveland Indians Tuesday (Sept. 25) while Detroit was beating the visiting Kansas City Royals. Before the season started, wouldn’t Sox fans be happy to be in such standing? Most likely, yes. Before Tuesday’s games began? Most likely, no.
This is what you can find if you spend sufficient time wandering around Facebook. It's what some of like to think of as research.
* Speaking of standings, web site coolstandings.com has Detroit with a 51.8 percent likelihood of winning the American League Central and the White Sox 48.3. Finally, the Sox are just where they want to be: underdog and still in first place. Does it get any better than that? Well, yes.
* The Sox hit three home runs in their 4-3 loss to Cleveland. Which means homers accounted for all the Sox runs. Which means if that’s the way the rest of the season plays out, the Sox won’t be playing on after the regular season.
* Speaking of homers (albeit of a different variety), Sox broadcaster Ken “Hawk” Harrelson was ranked the worst broadcaster in an unscientific poll. The ranking was based of Harrelson’s being a homer (someone who roots for the team). As if this is news or embarrassing to Harrelson?
* Adam Dunn’s Monday night home runs that kept the Sox in first place — for one more day — do they merely become footnotes if Detroit wins the division title? Well, they were big at the time, weren’t they?
* The Sox’ magic number for clinching the division is nine. Then again, so is the Tigers’. The Chicago Cubs’ is four — to avoid losing 100 games. The Colorado Rockies defeated the Cubs 10-5 in a rain-shorted game in Denver. With eight games left, the statistical analysis department at elliottharris.com is fairly confident that means the Cubs would have to go 4-4 to close out the season. Which doesn’t sound like much — except for 154 games, the Cubs (59-95) have played .383 ball and are 2-8 in their last 10.
* The NFL remained steadfast — not to mention stupid — in upholding Seattle’s victory against Green Bay on Monday night with the game ending on a terrible call by the replacement officials. The call was upheld first by non-replacement officials on site. The difference amounted only to about $100 million or $200 million or so to bettors.
* Replacement officials are ruining the integrity of fantasy football. OK, that line is supposed to be a joke but maybe not.
If nothing else, the outcry from Monday night’s Green Bay-Seattle game and the horrible call that gave the Seahawks a 14-12 victory did inspire some creativity — if you consider another parody version of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” creative. Which the video-replay crew at elliottharris.com does. So here we go with the video:
The latest video in the adidas ad campaign featuring Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose will being airing next week. The company’s D Rose 3 basketball shoe comes out Oct. 4.
The commercial “Wake-Up” was shot in Chicago and among those seen in it are members of the Luvabulls (in case you need further incentive for — although to be perfectly honest, your humble correspondent would have preferred to see more of them, but no one asked for my creative input).
Former Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon is scheduled to appear on “Fox Chicago News at Nine” (WFLD, Ch. 32) on Wednesday in an interview with sportscaster Lou Canellis. McMahon recently was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated for a story about brain damage. He is among the former players suing the NFL about dealing with concussions.
Asked what steps team doctors took after McMahon took a hard hit to the head, McMahon said: “Basically it’s how you feel. … Can you see? Can you follow my finger? … You know back then, my contract was mostly incentives, so, if you don’t play, you don’t get paid. If I was able to walk out on that field, I was gonna play. Had I known about this stuff early on in my career, I probably would have chosen a different career. I always wanted to be a baseball player anyway. That would have been a lot easier on the body for sure.”
If McMahon had it all to do over again and knowing what he does today, would he do it again?
“No,” McMahon said. “I’d go try to play baseball. I went to college I played both sports. I would have stuck to that. That was my first love was baseball and had I had a scholarship to play baseball, I probably would have played just baseball. But football paid for everything; it still does. That Super Bowl XX team is still as popular as it ever was. Until they win again, we’re gonna still make money.”
There’s always room around here for video of April Rose. Here she is with some of the talent from the television series “Sons of Anarchy”:
OK, some random (well, maybe not totally random) video from Playboy.com featuring Shera Bechard, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s former girlfriend:
And one of PLayboy.com amateur Ana Cheri:
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