Isn’t this great? Here we are, two losses into the season, and the NFL blesses us with a Sunday during which we will be sealed off hermetically from the Bears. Whoever invented the bye, buy him or her dinner.
One suspects that special person is, or was, a Chicago native with intimate knowledge of local sports history, or perhaps someone with no Chicago ties who felt sorry for us anyway.
Whatever, this bye is just what the doctor ordered, and the best part is that the man or woman or computer making up the NFL schedule had no idea when he or she or it made it up that this September Chicago would be the baseball epicenter of the planet. Or at least Illinois.
In a perfect world, which is what the NFL tries to create by rigging the next year’s schedule to reward teams for being awful the previous year, there would be more than one bye per team. But TV demands that each franchise play 16 games, even if every franchise can’t play.
Besides, let’s look at the big picture and not be selfish. If you’re one of the other 31 teams, what would you prefer on your itinerary? Bears? Or bye? Exactly. You don’t think the Division I-A Arizona Cardinals have Nov. 30 circled on their calendar?
Now, what if byes had been available to Chicago teams for strategic purposes in the past?
Take two aspirin and return to the 1984 National League best-of-five NL Championship Series between the Cubs and San Diego Padres. The Cubs won twice at home then went to the West Coast, where they lost two, the latter of which was the famous (or infamous) Saturday night game starring Steve Garvey.
The Cubs obviously were in a bad way, and it got worse when Rick Sutcliffe ran out of gas and they blew a three-run lead the next day to lose the deciding game of the NLCS 6-3. Presto.
If manager Jim Frey had had the luxury of declaring a bye, he could have said after Game 4: “There not only is no tomorrow. There won’t be a game tomorrow. Sutcliffe is tired from the opener, so we’re taking a bye. See you next week, folks. Hope you find the perfect wave.”
Is there doubt the Cubs would have won the pennant with the benefit of a well-placed delay?
Ditto with the Blackhawks, who won 11 straight playoff games in 1992, vaulting them into the Stanley Cup finals. Alas, they lost the first two games in Pittsburgh, during which coach Mike Keenan flew over the cuckoo’s nest and rarely put his best scorers on the ice. He rightfully was ripped for his maneuvers and before Game 3 in Chicago, Jeremy Roenick showed up with a cast on his right arm.
Roenick, on the phone recently from his present home in Philadelphia, still hasn’t decided whether Keenan wanted to avoid criticism of his group benching or get the referee’s attention.
“I did get slashed on my right arm in Pittsburgh,” Roenick recalled. “But it was nothing serious. I didn’t need a cast, but Keenan made the doctor put one on me. It was a ploy.”
It also was time for a bye.
Similarly, the White Sox needed to pause after two straight losses to Baltimore in the 1983 ALCS.
With a bye, Jerry Dybzinski’s fateful baserunning gaffe during the seventh inning of a scoreless Game 4 would have been mercifully postponed, maybe canceled. But they played, and the Sox never saw Game 5 because the Orioles won Game 4.
It’s all a matter of timing, and when the Bears emerge from this bye and two weeks of preparation, you will forget they had eight months to plan for the opening 49-7 rout in San Francisco. So on this joyous football Sunday, savor the three most cherished words in Chicago sports: No Game Today.
