Chicago.com
Perhaps it was the best thing that happened to the Blackhawks.
Raffi Torres’ hit on Brent Seabrook in Game 3 has put one of the best players on the Blackhawks out of the lineup but it has ignited the rest of his teammates. Torres is known as a player who delivers blows like the one on Seabrook with an alarming regularity and it should not come as a surprise he did it again. The stupid part is that he was coming from a 4 game suspension for a hit similar to the one on Seabrook and he engaged into same kind of behavior in his first game back. Just for having no common sense to do something of that nature the NHL should have suspended him, but as is NHL’s nature it failed to penalize a repeat offender for not learning his lesson. 
Torres, his teammates and the Canucks coach all said that he didn’t lead with his elbow but the video and his reputation state otherwise. He clearly saw Seabrook looking away and wanted to send a message to Seabrook and the Blackhawks that this is Vancouver’s year. The message was sent alright but the recipient took it in a completely different manner.
For all we know the series seemed to be over. The first game in Vancouver saw the Hawks get physically manhandled by a bigger, stronger Canucks team looking for revenge. Canucks’ players all wanted to erase the memories of ’09 and’10 when they were ousted by the Hawks, all the while loosing their cool as another good year went down the drain. Game 2 was similar from a physical perspective although Hawks showed some signs of life. They kept fighting the whole game and in the end lost a tough one 4-3, while putting Canucks on their heels in the dying moments with the hope that the same energy will appear in Game 3 in Chicago. Game 3 came and so did another tough loss, a 3-2 defeat with most experts believing the current Stanley Cup champions were down and out. They all forgot something: Torres’ hit on Seabrook. The Blackhawks defender went into the locker room for observation but came back only to see his team lose and go down 3-0 in the series. The game may have been lost but something else, something that’s been missing was gained in that defeat – a champion’s wake-up call.
The Hawks came out flat in the first 3 games of the series for whatever reason. Following the hit on Seabrook in Game 3 they played with more intensity and fire and it has now translated into Games 4-5. They came out all guns blazing in Game 4 en route to convincing victory in front of a raucous United Center crowd. Conventional wisdom had everyone thinking that Vancouver would come out in Game 5 and try to enforce their physical presence on the Hawks yet again. Not this time around. 
The Hawks survived and early onslaught on Corey Crawford’s goal only to begin playing like last year’s team for the remainder of the game. Three Chicago goals in the first period, including two powerplay conversions, saw the noisy Rogers Center crowd become completely irrelevant bringing back memories of last year and two years ago. Even then you didn’t feel like the lead was safe enough, you felt like the Hawks would need to do some more scoring and simple dump-the-puck defending in order to force Game 6. That’s exactly what they did. Two more goals in the second period and some great defense by Corey Crawford saw the Hawks go on to a “comfortable” 5-0 victory, sending the entire British Columbia region into a massive state of panic.
Vancouver is still in the driver seat, no doubt about that. They are still the No.1 team with a potential Game 7 in its arena. It’s still Vancouver’s series to lose but that’s what so great about this matchup. Vancouver has shown to be a weak team – mentally, especially in the playoffs and especially against the Blackhawks.
Are they the more talented team? Yes, most experts will tell you so and not many can really argue with that. Throughout the first three games Canucks had the momentum and the belief that this is the year when all the demons go away and they finally skate by the Blackhawks. Over the past two games, however, that belief and most noticeably momentum has switched to the side of the Blackhawks. The Hawks are playing with confidence now and a chip on their shoulder, something that was missing before the Raffi Torres hit. A hit that was supposed be a message intimidating the opponent did the exact opposite; it woke up a sleeping giant and angered it on top of that. The Hawks are playing with conviction now and one can only imagine how loud the United Center will be come Sunday night. The city of Chicago knows when it sees a team on a mission, just ask the team from last year or even this year’s Bulls team.
The crowd will be incredibly loud tomorrow everyone knows that, no one better than the Vancouver players. This is not what they wanted. They wanted to finish this series quick all the while avenging their losses from the past two years. Now they are looking at neither of those. The series turned out to be anything but short and with the momentum completely on the Hawks side Vancouver might end up on the short end – AGAIN.
It’s a two game series now and for that we all have to thank one person that initiated the comeback: Raffi Torres.
Thanks Raffi. See you Sunday.
Sincerely,
Blackhawks fans everywhere
Who is ready for a warm summer day in the bleachers with a couple of hot dogs and a brew? I would assume it’s the entire Chicagoland area after the winter we’ve all endured.
The baseball season is two and half weeks old and it is my duty and pleasure to look at the team on the Northside through my crystal ball, with all the happy moments and heartbreaks that will inevitably happen in the next 6 months.
The season is underway and the team looks, well, the way most experts had predicted: a .500 ballclub with potential for surprise and heartbreak. Yes, it is way too soon to generalize and assume it’s going to be another heartbreaking year at Sheffield and Addison but it’s not too early to draw some conclusions and predictions.
Hitting
This isn’t going to be a year where the team breaks records for most home runs hit in a season but that is not necessarily a bad thing. 
Cubs have had some very power-oriented squads in the last 5-10 years and it hasn’t brought them the title, so it will be interesting to see how a more single/double minded lineup will do this year. There is still power in the lineup with the likes of Ramirez, Soriano and Pena but the rest of the team are mostly guys that rely on singles and doubles to produce numbers.
Starlin Castro is a superstar in waiting and after a very impressive rookie season last year he should only improve this year. He has the physical tools to become one of the best hitters in the game and seems like a very coachable young man. His athleticism should win him a couple of Gold Gloves in his career, but he will have to improve significantly after his error-filled rookie campaign.
Pitching
Bullpen is where the Cubs think they have a major advantage on other teams, in particular the back end of the bullpen with Marshall, Wood and Marmol. The 7th, 8th and 9th innings should be the strength of the team and it’s up to the starting staff to get the lead in the first six innings. 
The starters consist of Dempster, Zambrano, Garza, Randy Wells and youngster Andrew Cashner( when all healthy.) The biggest questions on the starting staff are about Carlos Zambrano and Andrew Cashner. Can Zambrano duplicate what he did in the 2nd half of the season and can the youngster make a transition from bullpen to starting and give the Cubs a legitimate starter out of the 5th spot? Dempster and Matt Garza are warriors, people usually know what to expect of them while Randy Wells needs to give the Cubs a solid season if the Northsiders are expected to make any kind of noise in 2011. The talent on the pitching staff is there (both starting and relief), now it’s up to the players to perform and make believers out of all the nay-sayers.
Coaching
This, to me, is the least important key to this years’ Cubs success. I am not saying that coaching is not important and doesn’t make a difference at all; I just believe that 95% of the time the players are to blame for the failures and not the manager. Of course the manager can and does impact the game, he can win the games for you but he can also lose them…just ask Dusty Baker.
Mike Quade is the man on the Northside and people across the board seem to be content with that decision. He has paid his dues throughout his career and has finally received his big opportunity. He took over for Lou Piniella last year and led the Cubs to a very respectable finish, at least from the point he took over for Lou.
In my opinion giving Quade this chance was the right decision, although I am not sure if he was given enough talent to succeed. The Cubs are expected to compete in the division and cut salary by the season’s end, including in the offseason until they make an astronomical bid for Albert Pujols this summer (Hey, it could happen.)
Yes, the team is talented, it can and should succeed but they are not one of the teams to beat in the National League. This doesn’t mean they won’t make it to the playoffs but in order to get far in October some players, perhaps even majority of them will have to have a career year.
Will this happen? Who knows? Wrigley is still going to be Wrigley, full and loud as always. Will it be friendly to the Cubs or the opposition remains to be seen. I think the Cubs will have a respectable season and overachieve in the eyes of many (lots of experts have the Cubs finishing 4th in the division behind Reds, Cardinals and Brewers) but it will not be enough to go to the postseason. I think they finish 2nd in the division and miss the postseason by 3 games.
Prediction: 84-78 (2nd place in the Central Division behind the Reds)
Six days ago Goose Island sold the majority control of its company to Anheuser-Busch. For the past week both companies have been silent on the matter aside from a press release. Then yesterday Goose Island CEO John Hall responded to many of his customers’ concerns in the Tribune’s Business section. His argument for the sale is just: the craft beer market is rapidly growing and becoming increasingly competitive. If his company did not make a drastic move it risked failure. That’s fair enough. No one wants to see their business collapse. I have two concerns with Hall’s response to his customers and critics: He seems oblivious to Anheuser-Busch’s true intentions; and he acts as if Goose Island would be bankrupt without this cash infusion.
The day that this sale was announced, I wrote an op-ed on why this is a terrible setback for microbrewies. In that piece, I argued that Anheuser-Busch will demand a return on its investment. Goose Island’s best craft beers (i.e. Night Stalker, Pere Jacques, Sofie, etc) do not appeal to mainstream American tastes. Most Americans prefer beer with muted flavors. Goose Island has two products that fit this need: 312 and Honkers (some people may add Matilda to this list). In order for Anbheuser-Busch to see a reasonable rate of return on its investment, Goose Island will have to mass produce its muted flavor beer, which means it will invest less in its more distinctive beers. And over time Goose Island will fall out of the craft beer market and become yet another crappy beer company.
Hall responds to that criticism by saying, “But Anheuser-Busch didn’t buy us to change us. It bought us because we can do things its people can’t. They’re megabig, so it’s harder to get people who sell huge brands to really push new products.”
That brings me to my first concern. Hall seems oblivious to Anheuser-Busch’s true intentions. I sincerely hope that Hall does not believe what he wrote. He should know that Big Beer in the America (Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors) are in this business to make money, whereas small breweries are in this business to make good beer. He honestly cannot believe that Anheuser-Busch will allow him to mass produce beer that does not appeal to mainstream taste.
The second point Hall made that concerns me is this: “I’m not alone in believing that craft beer is going to, at minimum, double its overall sales in the next five-plus years. I’d like Goose Island to be part of that: for craft-beer drinkers, for what we’ve created and for Chicago. We now sell about 1 percent of the beer sold in Chicago. If we don’t continue to grow, we disappear.”
Hall completely ignores all markets outside of Chicago. Take my hometown for example. It’s a small farming community in the middle of nowhere Illinois. There is one bar in the town that has tap beer. Take a guess what’s on tap. It switches between 312 and Goose Island seasonal. In a small town where Big Beer has conditioned its customers to accept sub par beer as the pinnacle of alcoholic ingenuity, Goose Island still makes a place for itself using something as simple as a keg as its proposition value. There has to be thousands of examples like this across the country where Goose Island and other small breweries have crafted a market for themselves. So why does Hall act like none of this exists?
In addition, Hall operates two Goose Island brewpubs in Chicago. Has he ever been to them on a Saturday night? Or even a Tuesday night? One stop inside of either brewpub during peak hours is proof enough that Hall is understating his position in the market.
I have had a week to think this situation over, and I have come to the following conclusion. Anheuser-Busch has masterful sales tactics. It has been able to position its terrible products better than anyone else in America. The company functions because it is somehow able to convince us that something as repulsive as Bud Light is wonderful. Likewise, Anheuser-Busch has taught Goose Island how to sell this terrible deal to the public as if it is the best thing that has ever happened to to craft beer. Unfortunately for Hall, some of us aren’t that gullible. Goose Island selling out to Big Beer is a detrimental setback to microbrewing and craft beer in America. The history books will write this story akin to the destruction of the electric car. Don’t you get it, America? This is why we cannot have nice things!
With that said, I will end this op-ed the same way I ended the last one:
Enjoy your millions of dollars, Goose Island stakeholders. You have just been added to the list of beers I boycott. Luckily there are still plenty of microbreweries left in Chicago, including Metropolitian Brewing, Rock Bottom Brewing, Revolution Brewing, and Piece Brewery.
What more can be said about this year’s Bulls team? Nothing. The entire city is swept by this incredible wave of being the No.1 team in the East and there doesn’t appear to be end in sight. Not only is this team very likeable, just think of Rose’s humble nature and lack of showboating from pretty much the whole team, but this rise to prominence came sooner than most expected and that will capture people’s interest every single time. Just like the Blackhawks captured the city last spring, the Bulls are well on the way to doing the same thing and even the biggest doubters are turning into believers, as the regular season is coming to a close.
This team has proven to be a good team all year long and only recently have people started talking about the Bulls as a serious contender for the title. I understand that the Bulls lost against the 76ers last night but that’s only one game. The team could have had a mental letdown so many times this year yet it DIDN’T. The team could have relaxed and let one slip away in Milwaukee knowing that there is a two game cushion on Boston, yet it DIDN’T. It’s this remarkable consistency and the lack of letdowns that have propelled Bulls to a title contender.
At the beginning of the season people had high expectation and rightfully so, but no one in their right mind had the Bulls as the Eastern Conference’s best team with 9 games remaining. The addition of Boozer was supposed to be the help that this team needed to get to the next level and the size needed to compete with Boston and Orlando.
Boozer’s addition has helped most definitely, although lots of people are unhappy with his performance as of late and in some cases throughout the year. People want and expect more from a guy who signed a five-year deal worth $75 million – there is no other way to say it. Boozer has been impressive at times but he is very much injury prone and he is a major liability on the defensive end. One has to wonder whether this was a good buy or not and if everyone is questioning this now, what happens 3-4 yours from now?
This team is a legitimate contender this year, not because of its record but due to chemistry on the squad and the fact how everyone seems to contribute night in and night out (apart from last night’s defeat). 
From the MVP-to-be Derrick Rose, possibly Most Improved Player Luol Deng to the bench guys (Gibson, Asik, Watson, Corver and Brewer) and a possible Coach of the Year Tom Thibodeau, this Bulls team has it all.
Superstar – check.
Excellent supporting cast – check.
Bench production – check.
Suffocating defense – check.
Great coach – check.
Am I guaranteeing they are going to win it this year?
No.
I am, however, saying that it’s not impossible either. They can beat all the big boys in the East, they’ve shown that. They have beaten all the major teams in the West, they’ve shown that, too. The quality, talent and the will to win have been displayed for all to see throughout the regular season. Experience is the only thing that is missing, especially in the later rounds. That is the only thing to stop them from winning it all.
Will it?
Goose Island, Chicago’s most famous and successful brewery, announced today that it will be acquired by Anheuser Busch, which controls half of the beer market in the United States.
Goose Island founder John Hall said, “The transaction is good for our stakeholders, employees and customers.” This is undoubtedly good for stakeholders, but whether or not this is good for everyone else is debatable. And what Hall does not say is that this is devastating news for the microbrewery segment of the beer market.
It is important to note that due to the amount of beer it sells, Goose Island is technically no longer a microbrewery. It is now classified as a regional brewery, but from the perspective of Anheuser Busch all of these small breweries pose the same threat.
To understand why this is detrimental to everyone everywhere we must take a look at three forces in the beer market in the United States:
Microbreweries are becoming more popular
Microbreweries have surged in popularity in the past 20 years. This year they are expected to make up 11% of all beer sales. And in a market where Anheuser Busch controls half of all sales, microbreweries are on Anheuser Busch’s hit list.
Anheuser Busch has a bad habit of crushing vulnerable microbreweries
Anheuser Busch usually deals with microbreweries by attempting to bankrupt them through lawsuits. It sued Dogfish Head, one of America’s most distinguished microbreweries, for using the terms Punk’in Ale and Chickory Stout, saying that these terms were too generic. In reality Anheuser Busch wanted to run Dogfish Head out of business with a frivolous lawsuit.
Anheuser Busch has gained a virtual monopoly on beer sales by taking advantage of antiquated post-prohibition era laws
Anheuser Busch benefits from the three tier system of alcohol distribution in the United States. Set up after the repeal of prohibition, this system separates brewers, distributors, and retailers. As a result brewers must sell alcohol to the distributors, who then resell the alcohol to retailers. Anheuser Busch monopolizes this system by buying out inventory in the distribution trucks, so there is conveniently no room left for the small brewers to sell beer.
Microbreweries, like Goose Island, got around the three tier system by opening brewpubs, which allows them to sell alcohol directly to customers. Goose Island’s brewpubs in Chicago are exempt from this takeover.
Given all of these facts how is this takeover bad for everyone everywhere? Anhesuer Busch’s takeover will allow Goose Island to expand its operations and produce more beer. Unfortunately, Goose Island will not use its expanded facilities to produce its more distinctive beers such as Pere Jacques, Sofie, and Night Stalker (my personal favorite).
Instead Goose Island will now emphasize the production of bland beer that has wider appeal, such as Honkers and 312. Right now you can walk into any liquor store in Chicago and find it stocked with at least a half dozen different kinds of Goose Island beer. But a year from now do not be surprised if you have to travel to one of Goose Island’s brewpubs to find the same beer as Honkers and 312 begin overtaking the shelf space of the company’s less popular beers.
Anheuser Busch became popular by creating ultra light beer with muted taste, and selling it at astoundingly low prices. Beers like Night Stalker do not fit in with the rest of Anheuser Busch’s products, so it and many other Goose Island beers will fall to the wayside. Who knows what kind of specialty craft beers will never be produced because of this?
Goose Island has influenced microbreweries across the country. Its small beginnings and booming popularity in the 90s and early 2000s proved that there was a market of beer drinkers who wanted more than what Anheuser Busch was willing to offer its customers. Despite hostile market conditions created by post-prohibition hysteria, and strengthened by big beer lobbyists in the following years, Goose Island created a niche for itself. Today Goose Island betrayed its humble beginnings and gave up on the microbrew segment altogether by selling out to a corporate behemoth.
Enjoy your millions of dollars, Goose Island stakeholders. You have just been added to the list of beers I boycott. Luckily there are still plenty of microbreweries left in Chicago, including Metropolitian Brewing, Rock Bottom Brewing, Revolution Brewing, and Piece Brewery.