Milwaukee's Miller Park is a fine home away from home for Chicago's baseball fans. Like Milwaukee itself, it's friendly and inviting, big but not too big, and with a pleasantly diminished volume level compared with our ballparks -- and our city. The stadium has its idiosyncracies: three Harley-Davidson motorcycles (a local source of civic pride) lined up just below where Bernie Brewer goes down the slide on Milwaukee homers, pom-pom girls (there are no cheerleaders in baseball!), and, of course, the wienie race of hot-dog mascots midway through the game. (The place takes as much pride in its eats as Sox Park, which is saying something, and a lot more than Wrigley.) The V-shaped opening in the retractable roof makes for a high contrast of light and shadow on sunny days, and, with the unusual configuration according to the compass, the shade from the grandstand crosses from the first-base line to left field, making left an even more wicked sun field than at Sox Park. Still, it's a lovely ballpark, impressive on my first visit.

It was almost enough to overshadow the Sox' Jose Contreras Saturday -- almost but not quite. Since his return from exile in the minors, Churchy, as I like to call him, for the big Cuban Churchill cigar, pitched his second straight start of eight shutout innings. That's 16 straight and running since coming back from Charlotte. First, it's astounding that he's back at all after tearing his Achilles heel last year, a career-threatening injury. He got himself in the best shape of his big-league career this spring in rehabbing, but while he had the stuff and the velocity, he wasn't sharp in putting it together. Since going back to the bushes, he's refocused and simplified his plan of attack: sweeping sidearm sliders to right-handed hitters and overhand split-finger fastballs to lefties, mixed with plenty of fastballs, both sidearm and overhand, and the odd curve. When the Sox staked him to a 7-0 lead, he stepped on the gas, stuck to the fastball, and mowed the Brewers down. If Gordon Beckham had made a couple of tough chances at third base -- the sort of plays no-hitters are based on -- Churchy would have taken a perfect game into the eighth, and who knows what would have happened from there? As it is, he left after eight frames, and the Sox claimed a 7-1 win -- an enjoyable day at the ballpark all around for Sox fans.

A good time not to rely on the experts is when what they tell you is palpably ridiculous.

In Wednesday's column, the Sun-Times's Richard Roeper offered a little amplification. He allowed that the day before (actually two days before), "I made light of media reports that referred to Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird and Preakness winner Summer Bird as 'half brothers,' as if they were in a cartoon." His jokey point had been that just because their dams enjoyed a quickie with a common sire, that didn't mean the two colts regarded each other as family.

Now he'd been fully edified. He explained, "A number of horse-racing experts contacted me and said the 'half brother' label doesn't apply to those thoroughbreds." For instance, Andy Ulrich, formerly of the Daily Racing Farm, told him, "Many people, both in and out of the horse-racing industry, believe that if a horse is sired by the same stallion they are related, [but] this is a misconception. Thoroughbred racehorses can only be related on the female side. Both [Summer Bird and Mine That Bird] were sired by Birdstone, but they are not related. To be related they have to have the same mother. Same mother, different sires means they are half brothers. Same mother, same sire means they are full brothers."

Roeper accepted this.

But it's nonsense. Two horses with the same sire are related whether the horse racing industry wants to admit it or not. Tell their DNA there's no connection.

The willingness of the horse racing industry to delude itself is more evidence of how serious a problem it has on its hands with inbreeding. I refer you to a New Yorker article (registration required) published just before this year's Kentucky Derby. Reporter Peter Boyer was discussing the death of Eight Belles, a championship filly who broke down at the finish of last year's Derby and had to be destroyed on the track.

"The incident occasioned much introspection within the industry," Boyer wrote. "Thoughtful people involved with racing knew that it was a deeply troubled sport, with a shrinking fan base, a battered reputation, and one intractable problem: the horses themselves. Breeding practices, motivated by the enormous sums paid for elite bloodlines, have produced a modern thoroughbred that is structurally unsound. Every horse in the 2008 Derby was related, descending from the brilliant Vanderbilt horse of the early nineteen-fifties--Native Dancer, who lost only once in twenty-two starts but had to be retired because of bad ankles. His son, Raise a Native, raced only four times, never losing, before breaking down. Raise a Native's great-great-granddaughter was Eight Belles, who was also related to Raise a Native through two other ancestral lines."

The 13 previous Derby winners were also descendants of Native Dancer. So were the dams and sires of this year's Derby winner, Mine That Bird, Preakness winner, Rachel Alexandra, and Belmont winner, Summer Bird. 

Before moving to Chicago in 1989, Louis Susman was a big shot in Saint Louis. Among other things, the now retired investment banker who has raised a ton of money for the Democratic Party and just been rewarded by President Obama by being named our ambassador to Great Britain, was a director of the Saint Louis Cardinals -- and an active one at that.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Rick Hummel recalls that Susman played a key role in a trade that brought slugging first-baseman Jack Clark to the Cardinals from San Francisco before the 1985 season began. "That deal really won two pennants for us," Whitey Herzog, the Saint Louis manager during the 80s, told Hummel. (The other pennant came in '87.)

But Herzog also remembers that Susman refused to sign off on a deal that would have kept relief pitcher Bruce Sutter (who's now in the Hall of Fame) in Saint Louis for the '85 season. Sutter, a free agent, wound up going to Atlanta, and that fall Herzog had to put the ball in a rookie's hand to preserve a 1-0 lead over Kansas City in the bottom of the ninth of the crucial sixth game of the World Series. Thanks in part to a blown call at first base, it didn't happen, and the Cardinals lost the seventh game too.

And Herzog thinks Susman had a hand in costing the Cardinals a pennant in the strike-shortened 1981 season. His theory has to do with Susman and club president Gussie Busch scheming to oust Bowie Kuhn as baseball commissioner.

Herzog apparently didn't think much of Susman as a person. And Carol Felsenthal reports on HuffPo that Susman has a bit of a reputation as a "name dropper...and social climber." That's a shame. Most people who leave Saint Louis for Chicago feel they have nothing to prove.

If Derrick Rose had to be embarrassed by front-page headlines suggesting he's dishonest and either stupid or lazy, at least he picked the right day. 

Thursday Tribune: "Allegations of academic fraud touch Bulls star Derrick Rose."

Thursday Sun-Times: "ROSE GRADE SCANDAL."

But there was a story played even bigger on the front page of the Tribune: "Clout goes to college / Rezko relative is among those admitted to U. of I. in shadow system influenced by trustees and other insiders."

Because that story was the result of a Tribune investigation, the Sun-Times ran its version back on page five: "U. of I. admits secret clout list."

The upshot: If Rose did something wrong, he has lots of company. Anyone can go to college whether they belong there or not. If it's not what you do, it's who you know. The Tribune said about 800 undergraduates have landed on a University of Illinois "clout list," since 2005, but it gave no names. So Rose stands alone in the spotlight.

The Tribune reported: "Politically appointed trustees and lawmakers routinely behave as armchair admissions officers advocating on behalf of relatives and neighbors -- even housekeepers' kids and families with whom they share Hawaiian vacations. They declare their candidates 'no brainers' for admission and suggest that if they are not accepted, the admissions system may need revamping."

And just the other day Gail Collins was saying in the New York Times about how the student loan system has become a racket that makes lenders rich and screws students.

So whatever happened to Derrick Rose at Simeon High and the University of Memphis, it was a schooling in the real world.

Have you heard the news? The White Sox, not the Cubs, have obtained ace pitcher Jake Peavy from the San Diego Padres, contingent on Peavy agreeing to the deal. The Sox reportedly give up a package of youth including promising young pitchers Clayton Richard and Aaron Poreda, who will be missed. Yet otherwise what's not to like? It commits the Sox to competing this season with the last of their core group from the 2005 world championship (I never get tired of writing that clause), but as Peavy is signed through 2012, with a club option for an additional year, he also gives them an ace in front of John Danks and Gavin Floyd for the next-wave Sox of Gordon Beckham and Dayan Viciedo. ESPN reports that the only thing holding Peavy back is the idea of working for the mercurial Ozzie Guillen. Yet Ozzie's a blast on a daily basis, and Scott Linebrink has supposedly sent back nothing but positive reports. So come on, Jake, make the rest of the American League Central -- and the Cubs -- peeved.

UPDATE: Several sources are now reporting that it's unlikely Peavy will agree to the deal. White Sox reliever Scott Linebrink told reporters that it was fifty-fifty whether his former teammate would be coming to the south side. Other potential deal breakers are AL lineups as compared to the National League's and homer-friendly Sox Park. The San Diego Union-Tribune predicts that it's more likely that Peavy will face the Cubs on Friday than that he'll be suiting up for the Sox. 

The San Diego Union-Tribune has posted an interesting list -- "arrests and citations involving NFL players since 2000 that were more serious than speeding tickets."

There are 455 of them, and the paper stresses that the list "cannot be considered comprehensive."

The incidents are presented in reverse chronological order, but they can be quickly rearranged by by name, position, or team. For instance, if you're curious -- and why wouldn't you be? -- you'll discover 10 Bears involved in 17 incidents. Leading the way is "Tank" Johnson, arrested on a felony gun charge in 2005 (pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor), on misdemeanor aggravated assault and resisting arrest charges in 2006 (the charges were dropped) and later the same year on charges of possessing an unlicensed gun (house arrest and four months in jail for violating probation), and for DUI in 2007 (the charge was dropped but so was Johnson, by the Bears).

In several of the 455 cases, charges were eventually dropped. If your favorite player made this list let's hope he's one of them.

The Cubs do nostalgia as well as anybody, perhaps because they usually have little to celebrate in the present. Funny, isn't it, how the Cubs are always celebrating a glorious past that was never quite glorious enough to produce an actual championship?

Even so, Sunday's ceremony retiring jersey No. 31 for Ferguson Jenkins and Greg Maddux -- two of the Cubs' best pitchers ever, both of whom wore that number -- was a joy, in part because it celebrated two greats who were for the most part quiet and understated. From the trumpet fanfare to the raising of the numbered flags in the outfield corners, it was pure pleasure, for the players as much as the fans, who showed up remarkably early on this Sunday. Beforehand, in the media interview room, Fergie Jenkins seized the stage with his eloquence, especially reminiscing about Cubs manager Leo Durocher, who with his old-school ways got the Cubs out of the second division in the 60s, but drove the team so hard he could never get them to the playoffs, worst of all in 1969, when the gassed Cubs blew a big lead in September and watched the younger, fresher New York Mets pass them on their way to a championship. "He was tougher than a night in jail,"Jenkins recalled of Durocher, but "he was always fair to me."

If Jenkins was more talkative, Maddux somehow found a way to steal the show with a couple of well-placed remarks, like the deceptive pitches he'd typically use with guile rather than strength. Asked to comment on Jenkins's pitching style, Maddux had to admit he hadn't seen him much growing up, but as a youngster coming up with the Cubs, drafted a year after Jenkins retired, Maddux had Jenkins's methods drilled into him: "He could paint." The same could be said of both. Both worked the corners and rarely left pitches over the middle of the plate with their pinpoint control, which produced 3,000 strikeouts for both against fewer than 1,000 walks. Both spoke of how they felt a duty to team and teammates. "I always felt like it was a privilege to wear that uniform," Maddux said. "Because I felt that way, I tried to do it right." That was the essence of both, players who did things correctly and let the wins and losses fall where they may -- an attitude that served them through thick and thin with the Cubs.

The Cubs won their second in a row, by the way, 6-4, as they showed signs of life after their disappointing last road trip. Still, one can't help thinking that Derrek Lee and Carlos Zambrano and Geovany Soto are heading for their own career celebrations without a celebration of a championship team along the way. The Cubs, anyway, didn't look much like champs in the early going this season. May they be as inspired as the fans were by Sunday's ceremony. 

ESPN has selected Chicago as the first major metropolitan area to receive a Web site and daily SportsCenter (Web only) dedicated to its sports teams. Articles, breaking news, and blogs are regularly updated, and there's a new SportsCenter podcast--typically about five minutes in length--every morning. The site already has plenty of content--like Scoop Jackson's list of reasons ESPN chose the Windy City and the news that the White Sox have re-signed Scott Podsednik.

When the White Sox and Cubs won Monday afternoon, it placed them both -- however briefly -- in first place.* The Cubs opened with a 4-2 road trip -- the first time in more than 20 years they won two road series to start the season -- then won an impressive home opener. The Sox, after a stumbling start, were equally impressive at home Sunday, then won their Monday start on the road in Detroit against the Tigers in a 10-6 slugfest that found the Sox' Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye hitting their 300th homers in back-to-back at-bats. Now, I know it's only two games in what amounts to a 324-game season for both teams, but I was struck by the similarities. Sunday the Sox backed up a classic quality start by Mark Buehrle--who gave up a homer only to retire the next 15 batters--to post a 6-1 win over the archrival Minnesota Twins. On Monday the Cubs' Ted Lilly took a no-hitter into the seventh inning, as the Cubs took a 3-0 lead, which held with the help of a solid performance by the bullpen. The Sox game Sunday was more enjoyable, thanks to the sunshine and complete with money falling from the sky during the singing of "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch (no doubt lost by some hapless vendor in the lower deck and caught up in the wind off the lake). But the Cubs' win Monday was more gritty, earned in the mist and fog and chill of a game that easily could have been called. Let me be the first to dare say there could be magic on both sides of town this summer. And the weather can only get better -- for Cubs fans, at least.

*With Saint Louis's 2-1 win at Arizona last night, the Cubs are now in second.