Chicagoans are getting an early jump on St. Patrick’s Day, which according to local bartending sources begins on Friday and ends on Monday, just in time for a 5 a.m. wakeup call for the Cubs’ season opener in Japan on Tuesday.
While searching for things to argue about during the Green Beer Agenda, we discovered a cornucopia of magically delicious topics from our ever-changing sports world.
Just what we need to get our mind off politics — President Donald Trump plans to settle the Great Golf War. Tanking the stock market and indiscriminately firing federal employees apparently aren’t the only items on Trump’s to-do list. He’s also trying to unify the PGA Tour and the breakaway LIV Golf tour to make golf great again.
According to The Athletic, Trump has already met twice in the Oval Office with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, and has also met with Tiger Woods and LIV officials.
“He wants to see the game reunified, we want to see the game reunified,” Monahan said. “His involvement has made the prospect of reunification very real.”
Maybe Elon Musk can go over the rosters of both leagues with a chainsaw and trim it down to a reasonable number.
In truth, no one outside the sport really cares about reuniting LIV players with their former colleagues on the PGA Tour. The only ones who matter — Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm — all play in the majors, so no one misses them the rest of the tour season.
The LIV’s calling cards — 54-hole tournaments, music and team play — aren’t something most golf fans seem to crave. It’s just a gimmick, and one that obviously failed to gain traction or a huge network TV deal.
The real stars of the PGA Tour are the golf courses — Augusta National, Pebble Beach, TPC at Sawgrass, Torrey Pines and the rest. Watching several great players and some fresh faces compete for four days on a scenic, familiar course beats watching a few ultra-rich stars compete with music playing in the background on a Trump-owned course.
Outfielder Travis Jankowski went from playing in Cubs camp to signing a minor-league deal with the White Sox without anyone announcing he was even gone. As a longtime practitioner of the Irish Goodbye, I salute this young man and look for great things from him in 2025.
Everyone gets old and in the way. Usually at 60 you start thinking about what’s next. But Rory McIlroy, who turns 36 in May, told reporters he’s already mapping out his exit strategy.
“Whenever I feel like the time is right, I’ll have no problem moving aside and letting the next generation do their thing,” McIlroy said, according to AP. “I’d also like to walk away with a little bit left in the tank. I don’t want to be out there embarrassing myself. I’d like to walk away maybe a little before I should, put it that way.”
I’d bet against that happening. Most great athletes have to be forced into retirement, and the money in sports for even scrubs and has-beens is so bountiful that athletes hang on as long as they can to bank a few extra million for a rainy day.
Kevin Love, for instance, is making $3.85 million with the Miami Heat at the age of 36, averaging 11 minutes a game in only 22 games. Love has no problem letting the next generation wait to take his seat on the bench, and kudos to him for getting what he can.
As long as McIlroy is upright, he doesn’t need to worry about embarrassing himself on a golf course.
The White Sox game against the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday was televised on MLB Network, a rare chance for Sox fans to watch their team in Cactus League play. Too bad the network stopped its coverage while the Sox were up to bat with two runners on in the bottom of the ninth to cut to MLB Tonight.
The Sox and Angels tied 1-1 at Camelback Ranch in the return of ex-Sox shortstop Tim Anderson. No standing ovation was noticeable.
It makes little sense for Chicago Sports Network not to carry more spring training games in its first year as the new Sox network. They might not garner great ratings, but those ratings would probably be higher than a rerun of a Blackhawks or Bulls game. It would also be good public relations for the Sox, who need to create some kind of a buzz after last year’s disastrous, 121-loss season.
Unfortunately for CHSN, one of the seven scheduled telecasts — a Cubs-Sox game on March 7 — was rained out. That’s known in the business as Sox luck.
Northwestern won’t make it to the NCAA men’s tournament unless it wins the Big Ten Tournament, an unlikely scenario despite their first-round win over Minnesota. But coach Chris Collins deserves credit for getting the most out of his team after losing Brooks Barnhizer to a foot injury at the end of January. If Indiana is watching, he’d be a perfect choice as the next coach of the Hoosiers.
About five weeks into baseball’s free agent season, Juan Soto signed his megadeal with the New York Mets, unofficially starting the signing period for stars. That period extended into spring training with Alex Bregman’s big deal with the Boston Red Sox. Meanwhile, almost all the NFL’s top free agents had deals in place on March 10 when contact and negotiations were permitted, leading up to the official start of free agency on Wednesday. Obviously having a salary cap gets things done quicker. But there’s no question that MLB free agency is one long snore when compared to NFL and NBA free agency.
No crying in the press box, even though veteran White Sox beat reporter Daryl Van Schouwen announced last week he was leaving the Chicago Sun-Times after 37 years of duty. His final day, appropriately, will be at the end of the Sox’s spring training.
Van Schouwen covered both the Cubs and White Sox in his baseball-writing career, including 15 years on the Sox beat. He always had a better year than the teams he covered. “Three kids, seven grandchildren and one buyout later, it’s the perfect time to call it a career,” he wrote on social media. Sun-Times readers will miss his solid reporting and professionalism, and all his friends on the beat will miss his daily presence in the press box and in the clubhouse.
Godspeed, “Dutchman.”
