DOWNTOWN — When Jackie Robinson West was stripped of the Little League U.S. title on Feb. 11, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, like a lot of Chicagoans, immediately came to the team’s defense.
It was just two weeks shy of the February mayoral election when Emanuel called Little League CEO Stephen Keener in a failed attempt to use his clout to get the decision reversed.
And two days later, while Emanuel made campaign stops, the City Hall spin machine leaked a juicy tidbit to the mayor’s favorite newspaper.
“Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to give a Little League championship ring to each member of the beleaguered Jackie Robinson West All Stars," Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed wrote.
Each ring made by Lester Lampert Jewelers on Oak Street and paid for by an anonymous private benefactor courted by Emanuel would bear a JRW player’s uniform number and "42," a tribute to the league’s namesake, Jackie Robinson. And the rings were “slated to arrive in Chicago in the coming weeks,” according to the column.
Well, that’s the last anyone heard of the rings Emanuel promised to the JRW kids … until now.
As things turn out, Emanuel’s championship rings were expertly crafted. The bill was paid. But the mayor still hasn’t delivered on his campaign-season promise to the kids blindsided by the adult-orchestrated cheating scandal that got the national title stripped from the team.
I called the chic Oak Street jeweler commissioned to make the rings. The founder’s son, David Lampert, told me the rings look “very cool,” and the shop still has them because “we’re waiting to coordinate with City Hall about the giving of them.”
He told me that his “PR lady” would give me a call with more details, but that call never came.
At first, my calls to City Hall about the rings got the kind of brush-off reporters have become accustomed to when asking questions the mayor’s administration doesn’t want to answer.
After lots of prodding, Emanuel’s spokeswoman Kelley Quinn still wouldn’t go on record to explain why the mayor hasn’t followed through on giving the kids the championship rings.
“Right now we’re working on the budget and handling other issues,” she told me.
A day later, Quinn sent along a “quote” in an email — that's what the spin machine does instead of answering questions — that aimed to explain the mayor’s official position on the JRW cheating scandal but didn’t mention the rings he promised the kids.
"The Mayor has and will continue to support these young men, who have been champions, both on and off the field. They did nothing wrong, other than go out and play baseball. Their play on the field was real,” she wrote.
“The way they carried themselves off the field was real. And the way they captivated our entire city was real. To many in Chicago, these young men will always be champions.”
You could say the ring Mayor Emanuel promised to give each Jackie Robinson West kid is real, too.
But like the Little League U.S. championship title, the players don’t have that either — and adults are to blame.
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