Tag / Scottie Pippen

by admin

200 Things To Do In Illinois – Chicago Sports Museum

Illinois celebrated its bicentennial as a state in December of 2018.  To celebrate, the Chicago Tribune published the Bicentennial Bucket List: 200 Things To Do In Illinois, celebrating the best the state has to offer in history, food, architecture, culture, sports, nature, drink, and oddities.  With the state still shut down due to the corona virus outbreak, I figured this was the second-best time to look through this collection and cover the ones I’ve done/eaten/seen.

We continue things this week with one of the entries from the Sports category: Chicago Sports Museum, from Chicago, IL.

Take a break from the sport of shopping to check out this museum on the seventh floor of Water Tower Place.  Peruse an impressive collection of Cubs 2016 World Series memorabilia, including Grandpa Rossy’s Game 7 catcher’s gear.

All of the city’s major sports teams are represented in interactive exhibits and virtual reality games, where you can shoot hoops with Scottie Pippen and do a quarterback challenge with Richard Dent.

On July 5, 2018, the family headed down to the city to see Heartbreak Hotel at the Broadway Playhouse.  Before the show, we ate dinner at Harry Caray’s 7th Inning Stretch, which is connected to the Chicago Sports Museum on the 7th level of Water Tower Place.  While there were some interesting pieces in the museum, including Steve Stone’s Cy Young Award and Sammy Sosa’s corked bat, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a must-do attraction.  If you’re looking to kill time while in the mall, sure, but it isn’t somewhere I feel the need to visit again.

by admin

Book 17 (of 52) – From Black Sox To Threepeats

From Black Sox to Threepeats - Ron Rapoport

From Black Sox to Threepeats – Ron Rapoport

Former Sun-Times columnist Ron Rapoport put together this collection of the best writing in the Chicago sports pages over the last century and more.  From the sole crosstown World Series between the White Sox and Cubs in 1906 through the White Sox World Series championship of 2005, this collection covers all of the highs and lows in Chicago sports from all of the local newspapers.  There were the over the top champions of the 1985 Bears, the thrills of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen bringing home 6 titles in the 90s, and the (mostly) heartbreak of the local baseball teams who usually come up just a little (or a whole heck of a lot) short.

Alongside the traditional stories detailing the local teams, there are also those columns fighting against the segregation that followed black players to spring training, the bombings of both Oklahoma City and the Twin Towers, the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and many other stories of local, national, and international scope.

Fans of the local sports teams will likely enjoy this book, and may have even read some of the stories when they originally appeared in the newspaper.  It gives a nice historical look at the best writing the papers had to offer, as well as the historical highs and lows of our favorite teams.

by jim

Book 4 (of 52) – Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons Of A Hardwood Warrior

Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons Of A Hardwood Warrior - Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty

Following the disappointing end to the 1995 playoffs, Phil Jackson, with an assist from Hugh Delehanty, put pen to paper to chronicle his journey from a devout Christian child in Montana to a practicing Zen-Buddhist coaching the most successful team in the NBA, with a few stops and pratfalls along the way.

Jackson chronicles the lessons he has learned over the years, and how he had applied them in leading the Bulls to 3 straight championships.  Those lessons extend beyond basketball, and Jackson shows how applying them to his life has led him to both professional and personal highs.

The best part of reading this book now, some 17 years after its initial publication, is revisiting a prolific time in Chicago sports.  Hearing new tales about the heroes of my youth: how Michael Jordan decided to put team success ahead of his personal agenda, how Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant grew up together to finally become champions, how Bill Cartwright’s locker room leadership helped steady what could have been a sinking ship, and more.