Olympic Night at U.S. Cellular Field

by: Paul Banks

The 162 game grind that is the Major League Baseball season is a marathon filled with unexpected surprises and sometimes unfortunate circumstances along the way. Much like in an Olympic event, it requires physical and emotional resolve. Sometimes a lifetime of training can be halted by an abrupt, but severe setback.  Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, known worldwide for his candor addressed the media before the second to last game of the season using an Olympic metaphor.   “I feel like when people go to the Olympics, you practice for months, for years, and all of a sudden, first shot you go down. You go back and wait for four more years,” Guillen said describing the injuries and other adversity his team has dealt with while in the midst of a pennant race. He continued to describe the measure of his resolve by using an analogy to the most popular and talked about sport in Beijing 2008. “We’re swimming through it and we get up and we’re going to feel good, and I feel it’s the same way, I keep saying second place is the first loser, and I said that when I was a loser.”

Whether intentional or just coincidental, Ozzie made this remark on a special night for the Olympic and Paralympic games. On Saturday September 27^th, the White Sox, before their game against their division rival Cleveland Indians, honored three Olympic athletes with local ties: Cappie Poindexter (women’s basketball), Ogonna Nnamani (women’s volleyball) and Christian Vande Velde (men’s cycling.) Soccer player Brian McBride was scheduled, but unable to attend. They were announced during a special on-field pre-game ceremony that was accompanied by a scoreboard video greeting from internationally recognized basketball superstar and 2008 Gold medalist Dwyane Wade. After the video message from Wade -who hails from Robbins, IL- the scoreboard displayed the 2016 Chicago logo before a sold out crowd of nearly 40,000.