Sports Notes, 11/19/06 (formerly KotH notes)

Before we begin, my sincere condolences go out to all the Michigan faithful on the loss of Bo Schembechler. No matter what you think of the program he built, I can imagine what it would be like for Illini fans to lose Lou Henson, and I can empathize. My sentiments go out in particular to Pam, who graciously took her share of abuse in the KotH notes that spawned this site, and Lori, who is never the Michigan fan I’m trying to piss off. For you two, here’s hoping there’s a maize and blue heaven somewhere.

But life and blogs go on. So now we turn to the silly stuff …

-- It turns out Aramis Ramirez is worth $14.6 million a year. To break that down into chunks of money the rest of us can understand, that's $486,666 for every home run, $140,385 for every RBI, or roughly 17 cents for every disinterested stare.

-- The Cubs also resigned Kerry Wood for a spot in the bullpen and, among many other personnel moves, acquired Neal Cotts from the Sox. Cubs fans, we may have lived to see the day that Kerry Wood will come on in relief of Neal Cotts. To steal a line from the great columnist Bernie Lincicome (who originally said this about Bo Jackson), try to think of Kerry Wood's career as half-full instead of half-empty.

-- We almost found out how thin the Illinois basketball team is on Wednesday night. Something called Jackson State built early leads of 10-0 and 18-4 on a depleted Illinois team, which was missing Jamar Smith and Brian Randle to injury and Rich McBride to a suspension. Perhaps scarier still, JSU was still leading by 10 late in the first half. Illinois, now 3-0, ended up winning by 21, but any time you’re struggling with a State that’s not even a state, the state of your program is in a precarious state.

-- Don’t look now, but the Blackhawks have eight points in their last five games, including a shootout win Friday night at the home of the mighty Anaheim Ducks, who confused us all by taking the captial-M Mighty out of their name the year they became lower-case-m mighty. The streak includes two other wins and two shootout losses, and the first-ever shutout for rookie-ish backup goalie Brian Boucher (rhymes with “douche, eh” – must be a French-Canadian thing).

-- OK, so Boucher’s actually from Rhode Island. But I wasn’t going to pass up that line.

-- If I’m going to pick on him, I should also note that Boucher’s goals-against average is a commendable 2.87, almost half a goal lower than Nikolai Khabibulin’s 3.27. Boucher’s record is only 1-7-2 versus Khabi … Hobby … the other guy’s 5-2-0, but Boucher shouldn’t be held accountable for his team’s inability to score.

-- Lastly, I need YOU to NAME THIS SITE! “Kevin’s Chicago Sports Blog” was a placeholder from the beginning. Now that I’ve mostly got the template whipped into the shape I want (except that I still need an email link on here somewhere), I can turn my attention to giving this monster a proper name. I guess I could call it Sweet Home Sports, so that the name will be the same as the URL, but that would be too easy. Add your thoughts by clicking on “comments”, or just email me using the handy email link located at … oh, never mind.