A’ight stop what you’re doin’ because I’m about to ruin the image and the writing that you are used to. I write funny, and I ain’t making money see, but, yo, Chi, I hope you’re ready for me. Now gather ’round because I’m the new kid in town, and my style’s laid down by the underground (South Side!). Lemme buy that bottle of Henn that’s sitting up on ya’ shelf (take a sip), and just let me introduce myself …
Welcome to Summer Chi. Yes, it is definitely a thing. Especially — especially! — when it comes to sports. But too few view it that way. We get caught up in the weather breaking, beaches opening, construction starting, schools closing, festivals jumping off, potholes finally getting filled. We see the official beginning of summer — particularly those years when by the time the official day of summer begins both the Cubs and White Sox are already out of postseason contention — as our escape from the 24/7/274 sports think tank the city is come Bears/Bulls/Hawks/Loyola/DePaul/(sorry, Northwestern, y’all not there yet)/Notre Dame/Illini/Mount Carmel/Simeon/Marshall/Montini season. When all of the cold-weather sports that over centuries have come to define this city’s marriage to sports are in full game mode.
Beyond the Sox and Cubs — and the annual hope, prayers and anxiety that come with loving baseball in Chi — there’s a ChiSky team who the city as a whole tends to act like the chip they won two seasons ago didn’t count. The Red Stars and Fire over the last 17 and 25 summers, respectively, have given professional soccer a semblance of relevance and meaning here. The Dogs have been making Impact Field in Rosemont a summer destination go-to for six seasons now. Along with, of course, the yearly soap-operacentric drama attached to our winter sports teams that keep sports year-round AH: The Blackhawks having the No. 1 pick and our awaiting of the Connor Bedard Era; the non-stop “can’t wait until next season” Justin Fields talk to the “thank you, thank you, thank you Aaron Rodgers is gone” sermons that are occurring from Park & Field in Logan Square to Judi’s on 103rd; the “will he or won’t he still be here?” bar and barbershop debates around Zach LaVine’s Chicago time clock; hell, the Bears’ Arlington Heights saga alone has been (and this week proved itself in it continuing to be) its own sporting event.
So many other sports-adjacent, sports-related things we take for granted and don’t pay attention to simultaneously. Our sports oxymoron for we morons who should know that in Chicago, even politics are considered an extended variation of our sports culture. Just this 2023 “welcome back outside” summer alone there’s Cubs vs. Cards in London; the CONCACAF Gold Cup USA vs. Jamaica match at Soldier Field; NASCAR’s insane and insanely frustrating lakefront/McCormick Place/Grant Park takeover (that contractually has two more summer invasions); the PGA’s BMW Championship in August at Olympia Fields. Summer staples like The Gibbons 5K Run and 3K Walk for Leukemia; new twists on legendary activities like the Chicago Basketball Academy at Whitney Young; from rooting for Taylor Townsend to win a doubles Grand Slam during Wimbledon and the U.S. Open to the freeness that is the 20th Annual World Naked Bike Ride Chicago, a sporting event that damn sure is never about to happen during the winter months. It’s all so Chicago. The Chicago Fitness Festival in July, the countless beer and cider runs, the Rosemont Rumble on July 7, the Chi-Town Multicultural Film Fest Golf Invitational in Marquette Park. All capped off, of course, with the Chicago Marathon in October, the singular end-of-summer spectacle all 77 neighborhoods seem to engage in while 29 of our ’hoods serve as concrete hosts for the damn-near 2 million people who come outside just to watch.
Then there’s softball, always softball. The 16-inch version that is so specific to Chicago, I once had to inform one of the managers at Wilson’s (a Chicago-based company) when they opened their brick-and-mortar shop two years ago on Rush Street that “that 12-inch ‘Clincher’ you all have on display and for sale is not going to do anything here. You need four more circular inches for anyone in this city to even care about that ball.” Now the Wilson “Windy City 16” Slowpitch” softball is on sale for $195.95.
Truth be told, Chicago, low-key, is a summer sports city unlike many. We go deep. And just as there’s “nothing in the world like Summer in Chi,” the same can be said about sports in our area codes. People forget that the Fresh Prince (before he turned into Will Smith) actually wrote (and recorded) the anthem “Summertime” while in Chicago after visiting the Lake on 31st and 39th Street. Our summer sports scene can invigorate that same feeling. That feeling of joy, warmth, community, inclusiveness and togetherness, with a little competition on the side. No ketchup.
For Chicago and sports there is no offseason. It’s just seasonal. From one to the next. Whether we’re involved in or spectating — we in it. Cubs, Sox, Sky, softball, 5Ks-to-marathons and everything at the intersection of all of it. Simply put: Summer is when we in Chi hold on to Giannis’ line of: “Down the line, you never know. Maybe I play for Chicago.” That’s what our summers are for.
And, oh, by the way, I forgot, my name is…
Who is this guy?
About Scoop Jackson: A native and “never gonna leave” Chicagoan who as a kid used to have his Afro out like Jose Cardenal and in high school would sneak into Comiskey Park, risking jail time in juvy just to watch the SOX. In the summers, Jimmy “In The Gym” Smith was his Harry Caray; Austin Y his basketball sanctuary. In college he was with the Bears in New Orleans when they won the SB; today life’s come so full circle that Jarrett Payton calls him his OG. A veteran journalist and columnist (Slam magazine, 11 years; ESPN, 18 years) and author (five books, including 2000’s ‘‘Sole Provider: 30 Years of Nike Basketball,’’ 2020’s ‘‘The Game Is Not A Game: The Power, Protest and Politics of American Sports’’ and 2023’s soon-to-be-released autobiography of the legendary George Gervin, ‘‘ICE: Why I Was Born To Score’’), Scoop has also been a contributor to many Chicago publications from New City to Chicago magazines. And very much a part of ESPN’s ‘‘The Last Dance’’ in real time, he mysteriously wasn’t in the documentary. Guess you could say that makes him a hidden figure in Chicago sports. He is our newest addition to the Sun-Times sports-columnist roster.
