Browsing: Sports

“We were able to take some more risks, and at this point, I’m not so sure about whether we’re going to sign everybody that we selected (Tuesday),” Kantrovitz said. “But just based on how the draft rules work, there’s probably some players that we were able to take a risk on and kind of shoot for the stars and hope, and then some others where we have a little bit more cost certainty that they’re going to sign.”

Hynes’ teammates refer to him as “Skip,” as in “Skipper,” a joking reference to the colloquial name for the captain of a baseball team. During his first at-bat in a recent league game, which ended in a base hit, a friend cheered him on and called him “Big Cat,” a nickname from high school. He hadn’t been called that in years, he said, and his high school coach at St. Ignatius in University Village gave the nickname to him. He was a catcher in high school, and catchers are supposed to have quick, catlike reflexes. But Hynes didn’t, he said, so it was another lighthearted quip.

A reunion for Hall of Fame inductees will be held at the Hall of Fame site in Forest Park on July 18, according to the Hall of Fame website. There are over 300 living Hall of Famers, according to Maag, and he hopes between 150 and 200 will come to the reunion. Chicago singer John Vincent will be there to sing “the national anthem and a couple of other Chicago songs to entertain that day,” Maag said. The reunion is for both inductees and fans, according to a flyer for the event.

No classic birds-on-a-bat design for the St. Louis Cardinals at Coors Field, no sweet script for the Los Angeles Dodgers. No brown pinstripes on the shirts for the San Diego Padres, no recognizable “NY” logo prominently on the hat for the New York Yankees.

“When you make statements about, in the past, just blowing out these other teams — number one, you give no respect to the other teams,” Popovich added. “I talked to you the last time about the same thing, we’ve had very close games against four of five countries in all these tournaments. So, the good teams do not get blown out. There are certain games that might happen in one of these tournaments like the World Championships or the Olympics where somebody gets blown out but in general, nobody is blowing anybody out for the good teams. So when you make a statement like that, you assume that’s what’s going on. And that’s incorrect.”

“We have a very professional working relationship with the MLBPA,” he said. “More generally, this whole ‘relationship’ thing gets overplayed and misinterpreted. You’re in a collective bargaining relationship, you’re going to have points in time where you have disagreements and sometimes they get public. I don’t think that’s a good thing, but it happens. It’s the way of the world.

Mustard and hot dogs just seem to go together — but which mustard? There are so many. The National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wis., has 5,975 mustards in its collection — and sells more than 450 of them. But then there are a lot of dogs out there waiting to be slathered with mustard. Americans will eat 150 million hot dots on July Fourth alone, according to an estimate by the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, a Washington, D.C.-based industry group. Twelve mustards were put to a blind comparison, starting with yellow mustard, the traditional go-to for hot dogs. Then we added brown, Dijon and deli mustards because they represent popular varieties. This was a blind tasting, meaning those who took part didn’t know which mustard was which. Each taster was asked to sample and rate each mustard on its own, assessing appearance, aroma, texture and flavor. They were then asked to rate the mustards with a hot dog. We used a top-selling national brand, Oscar Mayer Classic Wieners, made with chicken, turkey and pork.