Say goodbye to one of the worst Bears teams ever fielded. Say hello to a 1998 White Sox crew that looks to be no great shakes either. More than five months before the first curveball of the season, general manager Ron Schueler was already warning fans not to expect too much next year. Chicago’s new sports motto: Wait until the year after next! (Wait until the next millennium?)
Say goodbye to Ald. Jesse Evans (21st) who, after being caught on tape accepting bribes from an undercover investigator, was sent to prison in December for 41 months. Say hello to Fred Roti and Dan Rostenkowski. Roti, a one-time colleague of Evans in the Council, was released in February after serving nearly four years in prison for bribe-taking. Rosty, the one-time Capitol Hill powerhouse, was set free in October after serving nearly 15 months in prison for mail fraud.
Say goodbye to the Silver Eagle riverboat casino near East Dubuque, the first floating betting parlor in Illinois to go out of business and a signal that the booming gambling industry in the state isn’t booming anymore.
And say goodbye to Arlington International Racecourse . . . maybe. Owner Dick Duchossois, who rebuilt the track for $200 million after a 1985 fire, says he won’t open it for racing in 1998 and maybe ever again. Duchossois has made such threats in the past, but this time people are believing him. What he wants are slot machines. They’re not as pretty as horses, but the oats and vet bills are less formidable.
Say goodbye to 88-year-old Sid Yates, retiring from Congress after representing the North Side lakefront for 47 of the last 49 years. (He took off one two-year term in the early 1960s for an ill-advised run against Everett Dirksen for a seat in the Senate.) Say hello to his replacement: most likely either Jan Schakowsky or Howie Carroll or J.B. Pritzker, the three major candidates in the March Democratic primary. (Schakowsky, 53, and Carroll, 54, were just out of diapers when Yates first went to Washington. Pritzker, 32, wasn’t even born when Sid lost to Dirksen.)
Say goodbye to Dickey Simpkins who, through no fault of his own, was made the whipping boy of the Chicago sports media–the butt of all jokes, the punch line of every silly story–for much of his three years on the Bulls. “I felt it was too easy for (reporters) to say bad stuff about me,” says Simpkins, now with the Golden State Warriors. “It was like a big bully messing with a kid, the quietest kid.”
Say hello to . . . Chicago as the Second City again? It could happen. A move’s afoot by some of the 1.5 million people in the San Fernando Valley to sever ties with Los Angeles. That would leave L.A. with only 2.2 million people, or half a million less than Chi-town. But don’t hold your breath. The earliest it could happen is 1999.
