Author Archives: Alan Boomer

The last four weeks of the Bears’ season have been like the four stages following a death. There was denial that the crushing Monday-night loss to the Minnesota Vikings meant anything drastic, anger over the loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in overtime, resignation with the loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and finally, last Sunday, […]

The Bulls’ championship ring presentation ceremony, which took place before last Saturday’s home opener, seemed slightly more self-satisfied this year than last. It had a pace of its own, more of a saunter than a swagger. The public address announcement was muffed at first, catching the Bulls still downstairs in the locker room. When they […]

Almost halfway through the National Football League season, it’s safe to say the Bears aren’t very good but they aren’t very bad, either. They’re a little more mediocre than they have been over the last couple of seasons but at least they’re respectable. Their players are, anyway; their coach leaves something to be desired in […]

The Chicago baseball season didn’t deserve to the way it did. By that I’m not referring to the third-place finish of the White Sox or the Cubs’ fourth-place finish–no, those were both fully deserved–but to the last Chicago game of the year. Andre Dawson homered to give the Cubs a 3-2 victory over the Montreal […]

The Bears are a quarter of the way through their season, and one ought to be able to come to some conclusions about them by this time. Yet the only thing that can be said is that love ’em or leave ’em–and to tell the truth, I’m not sure yet which side I come down […]

The season of the Chicago White Sox, which began with such promise after the acquisition of George Bell from the Cubs, came grinding to a halt last week. It was almost as if they’d proved to themselves after the All-Star break that they were a good team, but then reality set in; they admitted they […]

There was no real reason for any of us to be at Wrigley Field last Sunday. Sure, the Cubs had won two in a row, seven out of the last ten, and ten of the previous fourteen games, and were going for their second straight sweep of a three-game weekend series, and it’s true they […]

Last Sunday’s old-timers’ game at Wrigley Field took place under a freshly scrubbed bright blue sky. The old pros cavorted in the sunlight with the carefree attitude of puppies at play, so that the inevitable questions–Is that Walt “No-Neck” Williams or Carlos May in right field? What’s Bob Gibson doing at third base? Did Don […]

How does one react to an Olympic athlete who objects to the pressure? It’s sort of like a presidential candidate saying he doesn’t like all the attention he’s getting. The Olympic/election year 1992 is notable as the time when both these phenomena occurred. Thank the gods that our athletes proved themselves more courageous than our […]

The day dawned with a blue and unsullied sky, but by game time early last Sunday afternoon, clouds extended from horizon to horizon. They were big, puffy white clouds that gave the field at Bill Veeck Stadium a dappled, shady appearance; they were bottom-heavy, dark on their undersides, but they were so spread out and […]

What extraordinary good fortune! Not to gloat, but after being lucky enough to have seen the Bulls win their second consecutive championship, I was also there on that glorious evening, a week ago Tuesday, when the Cubs made it back to the .500 mark. While concentrating on the Bulls, I managed to miss the worst […]

The image was immediately recognizable: Michael Jordan leaping, legs akimbo, and pumping his fist in the air. It was his response to the Shot, three years ago, when he lifted the Bulls toward the top of the National Basketball Association with the last-second jumper that defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers, and it was how he commemorated […]

The long break between the National Basketball Association semifinals and the finals was both surprising and welcome–like an intermission in a presentation of Shakespearean tragedy, except, of course, it wasn’t clear whether the Bulls’ season would come to a tragic end. Still, the Bulls elevated their reputation–at least as far as I was concerned–from potential […]

Craft is far weaker than necessity. — Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound Rarely has a sports team done such a complete and rapid about-face as the Bulls between the sixth and seventh games of their playoff series with the New York Knicks. The Bulls ended the sixth game in New York a week ago Thursday a team […]

Expectations are a funny and dangerous thing in sports. So easily did the Bulls’ championship a year ago seem, in memory, to have been achieved that after the Bulls amassed the best regular-season record in the National Basketball Association everyone expected their run to a second championship to be equally easy. Then the New York […]