Nobody Wins
But once a century it actually is. And that’s why it was finally my chance to confer immortality. I would award the BAT to any sportswriter farsighted enough a year ago to pick the Sox to run the table. I’d extol this scrivener in language befitting gods on earth. I’d hand him or her a free pass to Valhalla.
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No particular perspicacity was required to pick the Yankees for the 2005 playoffs–or the Cardinals, Angels, or Braves. Just about everybody did. But a White Sox pick demanded dazzling acuity. Let me give you an idea. A reader forwarded to Hot Type the 2005 predictions made by 19 experts who posted their choices on the ESPN Web site. Only one picked the White Sox to reach the playoffs (though not to accomplish anything once they got there). And absolutely nobody put the Astros in the playoffs. So none of these veteran sports obser-vers correctly guessed either team in the World Series. Let’s face it: Neil Tesser’s theory about baseball forecasting was one of the fundamental insights of the last century.
Like Ginnetti, Chris De Luca of the Sun-Times and Phil Rogers of the Tribune each nailed six of the eight playoff races. But they didn’t think the White Sox would reach the playoffs–though to their credit, they didn’t think the Cubs would either. Van Dyck, who called five races exactly right, and Kiley, who named six teams in the playoffs but wasn’t always accurate about how they got there, did better by the White Sox. But like Ginnetti, they put the Cubs in the playoffs too.
The U.S. Supreme Court said in 1988 that high school administrators can shut down a school paper if they don’t like what it’s printing so long as they dress up the suppression in pedagogic language. The other day the court refused to hear an appeal in a case involving the student paper at Governors State University, thereby ceding college administrators a lot of the same power.
“We at the Voice believe that Snow . . . should keep in mind those who will be affected by the possible failure of this referendum and concern himself more with the business of his own district and community,” said the editorial. “We acknowledge that Snow had been correct in his investigations with the District 158 finances in the previous referendums, even when the board would not listen to him. Yet today he is a member of our board of education and as such needs to present a better image for this community. . . . It is irresponsible that he did not think more carefully before entering a situation such as this. . . . We need your focus, Mr. Snow, to be on District 158 in putting programs back together and solving problems here.”
In the end the board voted unanimously to distribute the Voice and apologize to its staff for the delay. Snow says he voted aye because his simple request had been so badly handled the students had an apology coming.
