Chip Shots: Quickshots: You Can't Fix Crazy

Chip Shots
A Sports Blog

Meet the Staff

I'm Chip Ramsey a career broadcaster who has been a sports radio program director in Milwaukee and Nashville. I've covered everything from high school and college sports (including the SEC, Big Ten, MVC and OVC) to Major League Baseball, The NFL and the NHL. I have a few things to say, and when I want to say them, I say them here.

I mostly talk about my teams, which would be the White Sox, Bears, and Blackhawks, but I do talk about other things as well. Thanks for dropping by. I hope you will bookmark this site and visit often!

Chip's broadcast career

Chip Shots: Quickshots: You Can't Fix Crazy

Quickshots: You Can't Fix Crazy

It's the oldest dodge in the book. Someone behaves in an unacceptable manner and immediately checks themselves in for evaluation, therapy or rehab. That's the latest with Carlos Zambrano. He'll be undergoing "evaluation" to determine the source of his volcanic anger. Then, when he comes back to the Cubs, it will be "I'm sorry, I have a disease and I am working to be a better person." Then, the twelve step deal. The truth is, Zambrano is a competitor. He wants to win. He wants his teammates fired up and to get up off their dead asses and play like they give a damn. This is not a bad thing if properly channeled. The other issue is that Zambrano's skills have appreciably declined the last few years and if you can't walk the walk, the talk is as cheap as one of Tiger Woods' dates. Bottom line: Zambrano needs another team to play for, but no one will take him not because he gets emotional but because he's not the pitcher he was three years ago.
No sooner do the Sox crawl back into the AL Central race, the talk goes from selling to buying. When you realize how bankrupt the Sox farm system is right now, you'd realize gambling on a big name rent a player at this point isn't the answer. If these guys can win 11 straight, they can't be too bad. Remember, Alex Rios was supposed to be the final piece last year and he wound up hitting .129. Sometimes things on paper don't work out. In the words of Headly Lamar, "gentlemen, relax your sphincters."
The US may be considering jettisoning their soccer coach Bob Bradley . Here's what I find interesting. In a country were maybe six people give a damn about soccer and two of them are actually form this country, the fact that Bradley got the US into the second round is a huge thing. It's like being coach of the Clippers and making the playoffs. Why would you want to replace someone who has actually raised the bar for US soccer? Don't delude yourselves: The US will never, ever win a world cup because we don't have the talent or the passion to win one. Anyone, including the guys with names needing vowels that run USA soccer are deluding themselves if they think otherwise. Why? Because in the foreign countries, their best athletes play soccer. In our country, our best athletes play football, basketball and baseball. It is not a level playing field and never will be.
Ron Santo is being honored by the Cubs for his fifty years in baseball. It's a most deserving honor. For you youngsters that never saw the man play third base and only know him as the goofy guy that moans every time the Cubs hit into a double play, you have no idea who he is. And, I'll say it for the billionth time: Why isn't he in the hall of fame?
This is interesting. In Saturday's victory over the Cubs, the White Sox hit for a team cycle. Check this out .
It's funny how sports and politics are opposites of each other. In politics the longer you stick around, the more revered you are. Robert Byrd and Teddy Kennedy were remembered as great men when they died, forgetting of course Byrd once hung with the KKK and Teddy had his little car accident. But that happened so long ago, the media tends to laud them with recent accomplishments (as they should.) In sports, it's how you finish. When you think of Willie Mays in the 1973 world series, Ron Santo with the 1974 White Sox or Michael Jordan with the Wizards, it haunts you and tarnishes their memory.