Hinsdale South must dismiss its head basketball coach

...along with any administrators who enabled his appalling act of retaliation against a star player

11-30-2023 (issue No. 116)

Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

This week:

• Last week’s winning tweet

• The varsity hoops coach must go at Hinsdale South

• News and Views — On boundary vs. nonboundary high school sports competitions and the move to further limit opportunities to turn right on red lights

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go

• “Songs of Good Cheer” update — One week from today is the first show!

• A thought that had never occurred to me about “the”

• “The Mincing Rascals” podcast preview

• Notable quotables

• Re:Tweets — The winning visual tweet and this week’s contest finalists

• Tune of the Week — “Burn it Down” by Cassandra Violet

• Correction — What a stupid I am!

Mary Schmich is taking her birthday week off!

Last week’s winning tweet

Topping the Thanksgiving-themed poll was:

Sorry I didn’t make mashed potatoes. The potato masher was stopping me from opening the drawer. — @sixfootcandy

The winner of the “Dad tweets” poll was:

I'm going to write a book about all the things I should have done with my life. l'll call it my oughtabiography.

But the two runners-up were so close behind in the voting I’m giving them honorable mentions:

• The umbrella was going to be called the "brella," but the inventor hesitated.

• Did you hear about the two thieves who stole a calendar? They each got six months.

Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-tweets poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.

Fire Belcaster!

Your first reaction to this online headline —

— might well have been the same as mine:

Eh! Entitled parents in an upper-income suburb who’ve never been told “no” in their lives are running to court to protect the feelings of their precious child.

But read beyond the headline, and it’s clear that Hinsdale South head coach Michael Belcaster grotesquely abused his authority to take revenge on a star athlete, cutting him from the team not because he wasn’t easily good enough or because he’d violated any team rules, but, quite evidently, because the boy had had the temerity to file a complaint about Belcaster’s predecessor.

Deadspin summarizes the matter succinctly:

Brendan Savage, who is in his senior year at Hinsdale South, played almost every game and was an All-Conference pick in his sophomore and junior years. He also dropped 35 points on perennial powerhouse Proviso East last season. … Last year, however, Brendan spoke out against his varsity coach, whom Brendan accused of bullying him. While the school district investigation did not find that the coach had engaged in the district’s definition of bullying, it did find that “[the coach’s] interactions and communication with your son have been inappropriate and inconsistent with the high standards of professionalism expected of all employees under Board Policy. … Further, please be advised that the District does not tolerate any form of retaliation because you have made this complaint.’’

Despite the district’s findings, the varsity coach, Michael Moretti, was demoted from varsity to freshman coach, seemingly as a result of Brendan’s complaint. A new coach, Michael Belcaster, took over for the upcoming season and, allegedly, cut Brendan from the team in retaliation.

Certainly this raises the question of why a coach who was found to have engaged in “interactions and communication” that were “inappropriate and inconsistent with the high standards of professionalism” is still coaching at any level at the school.

The Sun-Times reported that Brendan’s family filed suit last week in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. The suit names “Hinsdale Township Board of Education, interim superintendent Linda Yonke, Hinsdale South principal Patrick Hardy, Hinsdale Township School District assistant superintendent of human resources Cheryl Moore, Hinsdale South athletic director Art Ostrow and Belcaster,” claims a violation of Brendan’s First Amendment rights and seeks his reinstatement to the team and $75,000 in damages.

The Hinsdale Township School Board reinstated Savage to the team on Monday night, but he sat behind the bench out of uniform during Tuesday’s home opener. The Sun-Times’ high school sports editor Michael O’Brien reported:

Belcaster, a first-year head coach, didn’t decline to answer questions about Savage after the win against Glenbard South on Tuesday. He acted like he couldn’t hear them. …

I asked Belcaster if Savage would be in the rotation Friday and what the plan was for working him back into the team. 

Belcaster cupped his hand around his ear and leaned forward. I asked the question again. He repeated the motion. Then another reporter asked how Savage’s integration to the team would go. Belcaster said he couldn’t hear anything and walked away. 

Belcaster is clearly far too spiteful and immature to be a coach. A simple “I can’t comment on that” is how an adult answers such a question. The Hinsdale Township School Board needs to remove him from the job immediately and come down hard on anyone in the administration who looked the other way or otherwise enabled this egregious, abusive conduct.

No, this is not opening the legal floodgates for mommies and daddies to file suit every time their little darlings get cut from a team or don’t get enough playing time. A harsh judgment against Belcaster will not apply to any coach making honest assessments of talent and performance for what he or she thinks is for the good of the team, which is the solemn responsibility of any coach.

Parents and fans will always second-guess decisions by coaches. But this was not a “decision” rooted in athletics. It was an ugly act of off-court retaliation.

News & Views

News: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s transition plan calls for “restricting right turns on red” at traffic-light intersections in the name of “pedestrian and cyclist safety.”

View: I don’t favor restrictions or bans on activities that are more than 99.9% safe and have distinct advantages. The Associated Press reports that the idea is under consideration or has been enacted in some cities across the country, but given what a time/energy saving right turns on red are, I’d much rather municipalities dramatically increase the penalties for collisions caused by those turning right when the light is red. It’s unclear exactly what restrictions Johnson has in mind — there are numerous intersections in the city where right turn on red is already banned — so here are four options I’d like you to choose from:

News: Three of the state high-school football champions in the four biggest classes — 5-A through 8-A — were private schools able to recruit from much bigger areas than those that define the attendance boundaries of public schools, leading to a call to separate public from private schools in the playoffs.

View: Makes total sense to me. As the Sun-Times reported:

Batavia fans had two signs at the Mount Carmel semifinal game that read “one town/one team.” That’s a reference to all of the Bulldogs’ players living in Batavia, while Mount Carmel (a Catholic high school in the Woodlawn neighborhood) can draw players from a 30-mile radius, according to Illinois High School Association Rules.

Illinois is one of many states that use enrollment multipliers to move smaller private schools up into higher categories, but this does not seem to level the playing field when it comes to such perennial sports powerhouses as Mount Carmel, Loyola Academy and Joliet Catholic.

News: The University of Minnesota’s football team went 5-7 this year, one win short of the 6 wins required to play in one of the more than 40 post-season bowl games. But due to a shortage of six-win teams, Minnesota qualified because its academic progress rate score was the highest among the five-win teams.

View: The proliferation of bowl games is absurd — this year we have the Pop Tarts Bowl, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, the Scooter’s Coffee Frisco Bowl, among many others on the schedule — but the nod to academics is nice.

Note to subscribers and potential subscribers:

This is a good time to remind you of two things:

1. Many paying subscribers are coming up on their automatic renewal dates because the support program launched in early December two years ago. I have very little control over how the subscription interface works, but in the interest of extra transparency, I want to give you a heads-up (and urge those of you who have changed credit cards in the last year and are willing to continue supporting this publication to update your information).

2. A subscription to the Picayune Sentinel is an excellent holiday gift! Thoughtful, personal, just the right size and color. And gift subscriptions do not automatically renew. Note that the cost is still what it was two years ago — the lowest that Substack allows me to charge.

Land of Linkin’

• Watch the first 300 days of a Christmas tree’s life in this two-minute time-lapse video. It will take another six years before it ends up being cut and decorated.

• Speaking of Christmas, check out “Marduk is also not the reason for the season,” an entry in this week’s Picayune Plus about why so many around the world celebrate at this time of year.

• My brother-in-law made a buttermilk-brined spatchcocked turkey for Thanksgiving. The video promo asks, “Could this be the best Thanksgiving turkey recipe out there?” My answer is an unequivocal yes.

• “Why Do We Only Say ‘Merry’ for Christmas? And why do Brits tend to stick with ‘Happy Christmas’?” (Mental Floss)

• “Amazing Studio Photos of People Wearing the Same Clothes for a Photoshoot From the 19th Century."

• In “Just a matter of time,” I offer some helpful suggestions on how to improve football.

• Transom has posted a long and lovely tribute to the late local audio genius Mary Gaffney, who “chased sound like storm chasers chase storms.”

• Johanna and others tell me that Picayune Sentinel readers would not be interested in my recent Twitter spat with former Tribune columnist John Kass so I shouldn’t chronicle it in this publication. But in case a handful of you are interested, it begins on this thread and continues here, with illuminating background available in my 5,000-word essay in 2022, “The truth about John Kass’ dispute with the Tribune and the Tribune Guild.”

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:

■ Teachers are less afraid of students cheating with ChatGPT than you might think. (The Conversation)

■ Not so fast, Midwesterners: An Argonne National Laboratory science director advises against putting stock in that cliché about the Chicago region dodging global warming’s worst: “It won’t be what we are used to.” Meanwhile, author and columnist Cory Doctorow warns that “insurance companies are making climate risk worse,” and “the browner and poorer you are, the worse you have it.”

■ Pornography in the news: A former Republican Illinois state representative’s off to 90 days in jail after pleading guilty to distributing revenge porn: Nude photos online without permission of the victims—including a former girlfriend. And Popular Information explored the case of a mysterious woman who blames her porn addiction on a Scholastic book.

■ Popular Information also introduced readers to “America’s most unhinged, unelected official.”

■ Veteran Chicago and network news correspondent Jim Avila is coming out of retirement.

■ Sports Fabricated: Exposed as having published articles attributed to fake, AI-generated personae, Sports Illustrated deleted ’em all.

■ The Cook County treasurer’s office has rolled out a new tool that breaks down the property tax bill for an individual address, showing how many dollars go to each government agency—and how much more or less that amount is compared to the year before.

■ Some of your files (possibly) are missing: Google Drive users may have a problem.

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.

Cheer Chat

One more long rehearsal this weekend and we’ll be ready for the 25th annual “Songs of Good Cheer” programs. The tradition that started with Mary Schmich writing a column lamenting the lack of festive caroling during the winter holiday season and me daring her to join me and some musician friends in putting on a charity singalong at the Old Town School of Folk Music is still going strong. This year, we’ll do five shows over the long weekend beginning a week from today — Thursday, Dec. 7 — and each one will kick off with “Somerset Wassail,” which I learned only this year:

It’s an example of the fun but familiar songs we sprinkle in with many old favorites along with a bit of whimsy and sentiment. Come sing with us! After all, it’s your wassail, and it’s our wassail. Here is the link to buy tickets.

About ‘the’

This intriguingly nerdy post on social media is attributed to Hal Sawyer:

My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word "the" used in phrases like: "the more I look at this, the stranger it seems, or "the bigger they come, the harder they fall". This "the" is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English "þā", pronounced "tha" which means either "when" or "then". Back in early Middle English the structure "if - then" had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if - then relationship you said "þā whatever, þā whatever", meaning "when such-and- such, then such-and-such". "þā" sounds almost the same as "the" and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. "the more, the merrier" literally means "when more, then merrier" or "if more, then merrier'; same as centuries ago.

It prompted a similarly nerdy rejoinder from “Matt:”

This is not quite accurate. this 'the' comes from þȳ, the old instrumental case of the definite article. So it's like 'whereby x, therefore y' or 'by how much x, that's how much y.'

þā ... þā does indeed mean 'when ... then' in Old English, but this temporal correlative is not where we get 'the more the merrier' construction. I'm afraid someone took an OE class and mixed a few things up.

So it doesn't originally mean 'if more, then merrier' as suggested in the comment. It has always meant 'by how much more, that's how much merrier' i.e. double or triple the quantity leads to double or triple the merriment.

Minced Words

In this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast, I joined panelists Cate Plys and Monica Eng to talk with host John Williams about the migrant challenge, the trial of former Ald. Ed Burke and the Hinsdale South basketball scandal (my word!). I’m proud to have slipped in a “Monty Python” reference.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Quotable

At this point, I’m the old man by the fire, clawing my hands into an approximation of the mighty bear’s paws, telling stories of the hunt. … Neil Steinberg on his role as a Sun-Times columnist

A generation ago, film director Eli Roth made “Hostel: Part II,” one of the most heinous things, never mind movies, on the planet -- a film of lingering torture sequences, bad faith, worse misogyny and galling laziness. … Michael Phillips

If you vote for the Democrat in 2024, you're deciding which party controls the White House for the next four years. If you vote for the Republican, you're deciding which party controls the White House for the rest of your life, because they'll never give up power peacefully. … Mark Jacob

2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the war mongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our Country, we will route the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL. … Donald Trump

There is a large graveyard filled with my enemies. I do not wish to add to it, but will if given no choice. Those who pick fights with me do so at their own peril, but maybe this is their lucky day. … Elon Musk

Re: Tweets

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

Here is the pre-Thanksgiving winner:

And here is this week’s winner:

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• Pulling my treadmill out of the closet after an 11-month vacation, I’m pretty sure I heard it say “Not this again.” — @ddsmidt

• OK wow… unfollowing now. Was a big fan of their music but I was not aware they were using it to lure sailors to a watery grave by dashing their ships against the rocky coast of their island. — @YuckyTom

• My sleep apnea was diagnosed at a staff meeting. — @WilliamAder

• Elon Musk has lost his wife, his kids and $40 billion. Then his spaceship crashed. It’s like a genre of country music that doesn’t even exist yet. — @zachreinert0

• A shark could swim faster than I do, but I can run faster than a shark. So in a triathlon, it would all come down to who is the better cyclist. — @EmmaManzini

• I want a Hallmark Holiday Movie sequel where the heroine wakes up six months later, remembers why she broke up with her old boyfriend in the first place, learns there are only so many cupcakes you can sell in a town of 837 people and says, "FUCK! I ran a PR firm in Manhattan!" — @RichardERoeper

• People should say “bless you” in the same pitch as the sneeze. — @Rollinintheseat

• Me: It's not about how many times you fall, it's about how many times you get back up. Cop: That's not how field sobriety tests work. — @HenpeckedHal

• I told a teenager today I used to get 10 CDs for a penny in the mail, and I'm not sure if she thinks I'm lying about what a CD was, what a penny is, what the mail is, or all three. — @ThatEricAlper

• U.S. Rep. George Santos of New York, when confronted on allegations he used campaign funds for Botox, appeared unmoved. — @GayLaVie

@YuckyTom’s brilliant tweet would do very well on egghead Twitter, but I don’t like its chances here against one of the better selections in a long time.

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Tune of the Week

One of the highlights of my family’s weeklong Thanksgiving reunion gathering was having Los Angeles-based recording artist Cassandra Violet lead a sing-along of her new release “Burn it Down” in our living room.

I had a perfect little life, but inside it was just a lie
And I’m so tired of starting over I don’t know why 
I even bother
But I know what I want is out there.
Until then I’ll light a match
And watch it burn down ... 

Cassandra Violet // Eric Zorn photo

Cassandra is our niece. She’s best known for her cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” in the 2021 Nicholas Cage movie “Pig.”

I know a bit of the story behind the angry lyrics to “Burn it Down,” and I’m happy to report that Cassandra is now happily engaged to her new beau, a charming man she brought to our weeklong festivities.

We sang a few other songs together, and she took solos that demonstrated her unusual talent for whistling.

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

Errata

Yes, I am aware that the online inflation calculator image in last week’s emailed version of the newsletter wrongly compared 2001 to 2023 rather than 2021 to 2023. The image has been updated in the online version. The correct image shows that the subscription price of $50 when the Picayune Plus began two years ago is now worth $58.81. I regret the error.

When I become aware of errors in the Picayune Sentinel, I quickly correct them in the online version, but since many of you read just the email version, which I can’t correct after the fact, I will use this space periodically to alert you to meaningful mistakes I’ve made. (Not typos, in other words.)

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