Latest news with #Wrigley
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Sport
- Chicago Tribune
Today in Chicago History: Cubs hire Buck O'Neil who becomes first Black coach in major league history
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on May 29, according to the Tribune's archives. Is an important event missing from this date? Email us. Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago) 1962: The Chicago Cubs hired John 'Buck' O'Neil as the first Black on-field coach in major league history. 'I have never told anyone this before, but I was the one who talked to [then-Cubs owner] P.K. Wrigley and asked him to hire Buck,' Cubs Hall of Famer Ernie Banks told the Tribune in 2006. 'That had always been between just me and Buck. I'm saying this with love today; it was me. I said to Mr. Wrigley: 'There is a man I know who has a lot of talent with baseball, it's Buck O'Neil.'' A solid-hitting first baseman, O'Neil barnstormed with pitching legend Satchel Paige during his youth and twice won a Negro leagues batting title. He later became a pennant-winning manager of the Kansas City Monarchs. O'Neil — who fell short of induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by one vote in 2006 — was finally enshrined there in 2022. He died in 2006 at age 94. 1976: Six Flags Great America (which was originally known as Marriott's Great America) debuted in Gurnee. The $50 million-playland opened in miserable Memorial Day weekend weather, but 12,000 visitors still showed up. Roller coasters including the corkscrew barrel roll Turn of the Century were a big hit. 2013: Catcher Dioner Navarro had the first three home-run game of his career, connecting from both sides of the plate at Wrigley Field to lead the Cubs to a 9-3 win over the Chicago White Sox. Navarro had 6 RBIs, drove in a career-high 5 runs and scored 4 times. Navarro hit six home runs for the White Sox during the 2016 season, before he was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays. Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Economic Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Economic Times
Rebellious, retro, radical chiclet: How chewing gum may just sum up our times
Watching IPL , I noticed that no one quite chews as much gum as cricketers. In other sports - swimming, hockey, tennis, squash, football - gum gets in the way of playing. Not so in cricket. So, why doesn't IPL have an official gum? Just like Amul is the official ice-cream partner? Suryakumar Yadav a.k.a. SKY would make the perfect poster boy for a gum brand. The man's jaws are constantly working away at last time we had an official gum partner was in 2009, when Wrigley 's tied up with all IPL teams. Last year, Mentos was the exclusive chewing gum sponsor for Esports World Cup, the global gaming festival - 'to keep gamers fresh and de-stressed.'I am a gum chewer. There are some people who one can never imagine chewing gum - like Manmohan Singh, Narendra Modi, my folks. Back in the day, we didn't have Hubba Bubba in all its variety. Bubble Yum was the big one in North India in the 1980s. Wrigley's came via the phoren gum chewers, there was a ladder to climb. One started with chewing gum, then graduated to the big boys' club: bubblegum. It was a bit like learning how to blow smoke rings. Initially, one would get cock-eyed with concentration. It took some learning to pull the thin film of gum over one's tongue, then blow it out seemingly effortlessly with just the right amount of unassuming gum also had a touch of rebellion, a kind of insouciance to it. If you popped one in the school classroom, it was a minor offence. One was made to spit it out. Madonna went a step further and made bubble gum sexy. There are any number of images of her blowing big countries like Singapore, gum could potentially be dangerous. It was banned in 1992 due to its nuisance value. Extant stocks of gum were confiscated, and fines - even jail terms - announced. Reasons given were to do with littering, jammed lift doors, and disruptions caused to the mass rapid transport system by gum chewers sticking gum on door would travel to Johor Bahru in Malaysia to pick up gum and bring it in illegally. When a BBC reporter argued that such laws would stifle creativity, Lee Kuan Yew said, 'If you can't think because you can't chew, try a banana.'In India, classic chewing gum commercials have vanished from TV screens. Ask any copywriter/visualiser and they will tell you that gum TV ads allowed for wacky freedom. Popping a gum was akin to swallowing an LSD tab. Crazy things happened to the Shock went with the tagline: 'Hila ke rakh de'. In one ad, a man goes to his barber and gives him a picture of a spiky punk haircut that he wants. The barber puts a piece of Centre Shock in his mouth, blowing up his - 'Dimag ki batti jala de' - had a TV commercial featuring the evolution of man, which ends with a homo sapien turning tables on a donkey. People Tree in Delhi's Connaught Place subverted the Polo mint (not strictly gum) commercial by printing t-shirts which declared, 'There's a hole in my ass, so why shouldn't there be one in my mint?' It featured a donkey with a hole punched into its can we forget the Chiclets commercials? A memorable one had a couple seeking each other out inside a darkened cinema - by shaking their packets of Chiclets and following the is also a metaphor for the times we live in, what with bubble gum social media, bubble gum politics and religion, bubble gum cricket, and bubble gum attention spans. Even more reason to put bubble gum ads back on TV.
Chicago Tribune
24-05-2025
- Sport
- Chicago Tribune
Pete Crow-Armstrong's 2 home runs — including his 1st grand slam — rally the Chicago Cubs to a wild 13-6 win
CINCINNATI — Pete Crow-Armstrong knows other teams are aware of his hitting tendency. He likes to swing the bat, and where the ball is — or isn't — in the zone doesn't tend to matter. The Chicago Cubs' 23-year-old center fielder has proved he's capable of making contact and doing damage in all types of situations. Even when he might be looking for a different pitch than the one thrown. Crow-Armstrong geared up for Cincinnati Reds right-hander Tony Santillan to attack him with a first-pitch fastball with the bases loaded in the seventh inning Friday as the Cubs trailed by two runs. Instead, the two-pitch-mix reliever went to his slider, one that hung down the middle of the plate. Crow-Armstrong didn't miss and pulled the pitch down the line, but it wasn't immediately clear if he stayed back on it enough to keep the ball fair. He stood in the batter's box and leaned back watching the ball's flight. When the ball dinged off the right-field foul pole, a euphoric Crow-Armstrong tossed his bat toward the Cubs dugout and pounded his chest before rounding the bases to celebrate the grand slam and second home run of the game. His slam, the first of his career, gave the Cubs a lead they wouldn't relinquish. The Cubs went on to score 11 unanswered runs over the final three innings en route to a 13-6 win over the Reds. Seiya Suzuki (three-run home run) and Dansby Swanson (two-run blast) provided important insurance runs in the eighth and ninth innings. 'There's a lot of times in baseball where sometimes you don't even know what pitch was thrown, just because stuff syncs up and that was that,' Crow-Armstrong said of the grand slam. 'I was just ready for heater. I don't think that the slider was really in my mind or anything like that. It was just up enough. 'This is a sport where you should appreciate those moments, and we've had a lot of those this year, so it's been nice to be able to cherish those.' The grand-slam ball had a kiss-the-stars trajectory as it skied toward the foul pole, its 43-degree launch angle making it just the eighth to go at least that high for a Cubs home run in the Statcast era (since 2015). Off the bat, the Cubs experienced varying anticipation whether the ball would stay inside the foul pole. Crow-Armstrong thought it was heading foul, noting, 'I'm glad we didn't have any Wrigley wind.' 'I actually thought it was way fair,' manager Craig Counsell said. 'So when it kept curving I was getting a little nervous.' Added Swanson: 'I was shocked it stayed fair. That's what happens when you've got a good swing, the bat stays in the zone for a long time and obviously gives you a lot of margin for error. He hit it good, glad he's on our team.' The Cubs (31-20) have won eight of the last 10 games. With their 13 runs Friday, they recorded their MLB-best 11th game with 10-plus runs, the franchise's most through the first 51 games of a season since 1898, according to Elias Sports Bureau. Crow-Armstrong was part of rare company following his performance against the Reds. 'There's no question that Pete's doing some things very uniquely right now and he does some things that other guys can't do, and that's so much fun to watch,' Counsell said. 'That's why you hear people chant his name all the time, and the fans see that too. So we're lucky to be able to watch something like this.' Crow-Armstrong's big swing adds to the budding lore of his rocketing stardom and magical first two months of the season. But little moments leading up to his grand slam helped set the stage. Left-hander Matthew Boyd recovered from a 34-pitch first inning that saw him work out of a bases-loaded jam with nobody out and the Reds already up 3-0. He went on to pitch three more innings, holding the hosts to one run in that span, to give the Cubs offense a chance to chip away, which started with Crow-Armstrong's two-run home run in the fourth to cut the deficit in half. 'You start to have the conversation of, 'Do we have to get somebody up?'' Counsell said. 'But a credit to Matt, you trust him in those situations to continue to make pitches. … It just wasn't going his way, but that's when you've got to keep making pitches, and that's when pitches made in the first inning affect the outcome of the game.' The Cubs grinded against Reds starter Hunter Greene in the right-hander's return from the injured list, forcing him to throw 47 pitches in the fourth — featuring two walks and a 12-pitch at-bat that ended in a popout from Nico Hoerner — to cap his night after the frame. Hoerner's awareness running to second and his ability to successfully dodge Reds second baseman Matt McLain's tag attempt on Matt Shaw's ground ball gave the Cubs two on with one out in the seventh. Three consecutive singles followed from Ian Happ, Kyle Tucker and Suzuki, bringing Crow-Armstrong to the plate for his heroics. 'It didn't feel like a huge deal at the time, but it set up the opportunity for runs in that inning and we had some amazing at-bats to make that possible,' Hoerner said. 'You can't guarantee comebacks, but you give them a good chance when you get extra outs and guys on base for especially our power guys in the middle of lineup, and they came through.' Nearly one-third of the way through the season, the Cubs' propensity for big innings, especially late in games, is a continuing theme. For as bleak as a game might be trending, as they experienced just one inning into Friday's, the offense has a knack for a reliability that has proved they often aren't truly out of it. Friday marked the third time the Cubs have scored at least 10 runs from the seventh inning and later in a game this year. They have done that three times in a season just twice in franchise history, in 1883 and 2023, per team historian Ed Hartig. 'It's just so professional and competitive, the willingness to just go and take good at-bats, regardless of the score or who's pitching or no matter what's going on,' Swanson said. 'The guys are taking such great at-bats, and even when we're up or when we're down, it doesn't really matter. Guys are going up there looking to have a productive at-bat, and that's rare. It's really, really challenging mentally. 'It's just a standard, this what we're about as an offense and guys are willing to obviously buy into it, and it's just really fun to be a part of with guys that are about something bigger than themselves.'
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
Thief breaks into ambulance and steals crew's bags
Footage of a thief breaking into an ambulance and making off the paramedics' belongings has been released by the London Ambulance Service (LAS). The locked ambulance was parked in Sandridge Close in Harrow, north London while the crew were treating a patient inside their home. The CCTV from the ambulance was taken at around 17:00 BST on 6 May. It shows the offender jumping head first into the cab of the ambulance, grabbing two bags then running off. LAS acting chief executive Dr Fenella Wrigley said: "To deliberately target our crew in this way is appalling and they are understandably extremely upset." Dr Wrigley added: "The damage caused to the ambulance means it is now off the road being repaired, unable to respond to patients. "The money to repair the damage would be better spent on caring for our patients." CCTV is installed in the service's ambulances and response cars as part of a crew safety system which includes panic buttons and electronic tracking. London Ambulance Service has released the footage in the hope someone will recognise the thief so they can be brought to justice. Anyone with information about the incident has been asked to contact the police. Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to Retired London ambulances donated to Ukraine Life-threatening 999 calls reach record levels 'Working collaboratively is best for the patient' London Ambulance Service
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
Thief breaks into ambulance and steals crew's bags
Footage of a thief breaking into an ambulance and making off the paramedics' belongings has been released by the London Ambulance Service (LAS). The locked ambulance was parked in Sandridge Close in Harrow, north London while the crew were treating a patient inside their home. The CCTV from the ambulance was taken at around 17:00 BST on 6 May. It shows the offender jumping head first into the cab of the ambulance, grabbing two bags then running off. LAS acting chief executive Dr Fenella Wrigley said: "To deliberately target our crew in this way is appalling and they are understandably extremely upset." Dr Wrigley added: "The damage caused to the ambulance means it is now off the road being repaired, unable to respond to patients. "The money to repair the damage would be better spent on caring for our patients." CCTV is installed in the service's ambulances and response cars as part of a crew safety system which includes panic buttons and electronic tracking. London Ambulance Service has released the footage in the hope someone will recognise the thief so they can be brought to justice. Anyone with information about the incident has been asked to contact the police. Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to Retired London ambulances donated to Ukraine Life-threatening 999 calls reach record levels 'Working collaboratively is best for the patient' London Ambulance Service
