Dorfman: Chicago Sports Offer Clues About How To Cope With Temps
By Daniel I. Dorfman-
CHICAGO (CBS) With brutal heat expected to encompass Chicago and most of the rest of the country for the next few days, suggestions are being made on how people can cool off. Getting a half-gallon of ice cream to every home game isn't feasible, so we have to go with alternate plans.
If appropriate officials reached out to Chicago sports organizations to get some ideas for the local populace to beat the heat, I'm guessing here are some of the proposals that would come back.
1) To get at least some mileage out of his multi-million dollar contract, Adam Dunn will come over to as many homes as possible and practice swinging and missing. Since he has 124 strikeouts already this season, Dunn is very familiar with this practice and should be able to give some instant relief for many people. Too bad he isn't providing any relief for the inconsistent White Sox offense.
2) Cubs players will now be penalized if they make an error, which happens very frequently, as indicated in their National League – worst .977 fielding percentage. When a representative of the North Side team makes a goof, he has to come over someone's house and deliver several gallons of a cold drink of a person's choice. If that proposal were to ever become reality, let's hope the players make for good bartenders. They will have a lot of practice.
3) With the NFL lockout apparently about to end, there may only be a few days for Jay Cutler to give personality lessons. Given the icy demeanor of the Bears quarterback, if he is successful, those lessons should do the trick for even the hottest of people.
4) Since Derrick Rose has plenty of time on his hands and looks like he and the rest of his NBA brethren won't have any games to play for quite a while, Rose will have to showcase his talents somewhere. How about some pickup games to be played in public so the 2010-11 MVP can blow by defenders the way he does in the NBA? That would certainly create a much needed breeze.
Also, for the hot spells in upcoming summers, Bulls players will face the same punishment for missing crucial free throws as the Cubs do for making errors. Remember some of the post-season games in May and June?
5) Hockey. The ultimate cold weather game. It was two and a half years ago when the Blackhawks played at Wrigley Field against the Detroit Red Wings at the NHL Winter Classic when the temperature was almost 100 degrees lower than what it is supposed to be today. Do some mind games and try to remember what it felt like that afternoon with frosty winds coming into the ballpark?
Doesn't work? Then just think of the Vancouver Canucks choking in Game 7 against Boston last month. It won't make anyone cooler, but it will make most Blackhawk fans happy.
6) If a person can't get out of the heat, chances are he or she is going to have trouble sleeping. There is a surefire cure for that: the embarrassing state of local college basketball. With the sorry state of the programs, putting just a few minutes of any game into a DVD with any of the local schools ought to induce zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzs for any and all people.
Of course, there are no guarantees that any of these methods will work, but they are a worth a try.
Daniel I. Dorfman is a local freelance writer who has written and reported for the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and the Boston Globe among many other nationally prominent broadcast, online and print media organizations. He is also a researcher for 670 The Score. You can follow him on Twitter @DanDorfman To read more of Daniel's blogs click here.
