CHICAGO — It's Thursday already, you guys. And it's WARM and SUNNY. Here's what we're reading.
Swings a big shtick: Baseball fandom has been compared to religious fervor but in South Bend, Ind., there's a combination of the two, sort of. Chicago businessman Andrew Berlin, who bought the local Class A baseball team, an affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, also has converted a former synagogue outside the stadium into a team gift shop. Says the New York Times: "It has left scores of people in the community ecstatic, irked, amused or some combination thereof." A million bucks was spent on renovating the former house of worship, including a restoration of its stained glass windows and chandelier.
Senior editor Andrew Herrmann appreciates Berlin's ancient joke: "Everybody knows that Eve stole first and Adam stole second. Baseball is all throughout the Old Testament."
South Bend Cubs
Death on the Front Page: The South Side Weekly is asking how Chicago's media could responsibly cover violence in the city to make sure individuals are not washed away in the stats, but the bigger picture remains unclear. Sam Cholke is reading the interview with DNAinfo colleague Darryl Holliday and fellow Hyde Park reporter Jamie Kalven.
According to Dan: If you happened to check out the awesome Daniel Clowes exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 2013, you might be interested in this new Vulture interview with the cartoonist. He talks about getting handwritten hate mail before the Internet, discovering Scarlett Johansson for “Ghost World,” and how Jim Belushi “embod[ied] this aspect of Chicago that I really disliked.”
“I had nothing against Jim Belushi, really, but living in Chicago in the '80s, he was sort of the quintessential symbol of the way the city thought of itself: as this kind of guy who was both working-class but also a slick Hollywood guy; a guy who was sort of fresh, honest, but not. It was very grating to me.”
The NFL's Hefty Discount: The Chicago Park District waived $937,500 in permit fees for last month's NFL Draft, allowing the NFL — a $10 billion enterprise — to use Grant Park for free, reporter David Matthews is reading in the Tribune. The waiver came after requests from the NFL and local tourism booster Choose Chicago, the Tribune reported. The Park District told theTrib the NFL, like other nonprofit organizations including the Puerto Rican Festival in Humboldt Park, received a waiver because its Draft Town festival in Grant Park was free to the public and provided a "public benefit." The NFL, which last month gave up its nonprofit tax status, said it spent "millions" leading up to the draft and, among other things, reserved 1,000 Chicago hotel rooms the week of the draft.
All About the Ladies: Still bummed about missing Amy Schumer's pop-up show at The Laugh Factory last week? Us, too. But reporter Ariel Cheung feels The Hollywood Reporter almost made up for it with its A-list actress roundtable, featuring Schumer, Lena Dunham, Ellie Kemper, Kate McKinnon, Gina Rodriguez and Tracee Ellis Ross. From Hillary Clinton slogans ("Blondes Have More Foreign Policy Experience") to frank discussions about sexism and race in the media, the Q&A not only highlights the excellent sense of humor bestowed on these wonderful women, but also touches on serious issues in a refreshingly frank way.
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