Yes, that swampy Bears game was fun to watch, but ...

Sports in dreadful weather isn't fair to the players or the fans. Build that dome!

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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.

Who needs a dome? Bears fans, that’s who

Yes, Sunday’s Bears-49ers game at sodden, puddly Soldier Field was interesting to watch, satisfying in its outcome and even a bit thrilling when, after the final whistle, Bears quarterback Justin Fields and a cohort of other exuberant teammates turned one of the end-zones into into a slip-and-slide.

“Who needs a dome?” came the cry on social media.

But look. That game was ridiculous. Neither team was able to play at close to their best due to the terrible footing and the slippery ball, and while the novelty was diverting — as it was during the 1988 “Fog Bowl” at Soldier Field and as it has been during various games played in blizzards — and the disadvantages were mutual, playing under such lousy weather conditions violated the essence of sport.

Athletes train to play under ideal conditions, conditions that are always found under a dome. Some sports occur in venues far too large to shield from the elements — skiing, golf and auto racing come quickly to mind — but those sports that can be played indoors should be.

There’s a reason the NBA doesn’t have games outside where wind gusts and extremes of heat and cold would discombobulate the players. There’s a reason no one plays baseball games in weather like we saw Sunday at Soldier Field.

The idea that the cold temperatures on the lakefront in December make for “Bear weather” in which the wealthy and cosseted players paid to wear our jersey have some sort of advantage over the wealthy and cosseted players paid to wear the jerseys of other teams is, of course, nonsense. Here’s Al Yellon at SBNation:

I checked all the Bears' results in home games played after Dec. 1 since 1985 -- those would be the coldest games of the year, the ones most likely to be played in "Bear weather". Since 1985, the Bears are 121-78 in all home games -- a .608 winning percentage. That percentage actually goes down in games played after Dec. 1 at home -- it's 31-20 (.596), along with 3-3 in playoff home games since 1985, all of which were played (obviously) after the first of December.

NBC5 unearthed similar stats: “According to Pro Football Reference’s Play Index, the Bears are 46-48-1 when the temperature is at or below the freezing mark since the 1960 season.”

The goal ought to be to pit our best against your best in conditions optimized to result in excellence, with in-person fans being able to watch in the sort of comfort that allows them to focus on the action, not their own misery.

Had the Bears lost Sunday’s game, we would not be hearing the stout defense of open-air football. We would be left wondering what might have been and yearning for proper games played at a domed stadium.

Notes and comments from readers —lightly edited —- along with my responses

Some of these messages are in reference to items in last week’s issues of the Picayune Sentinel.

Bill L. —My initial reaction to Steve Chapman’s regular columns was that I loved reading him but disagreed with most of what he said.  Gradually he and I moved toward each other, so that by the end of his career he and I seemed perfectly in sync.

I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s line, “When I was 17 I was convinced my father was a damn fool. When I was 21 I was astounded by how much the old man had learned in four years.”

Anthony M. — (copy of a letter he sent to Steve Chapman): "I have read every one of your columns in the Chicago Tribune for many years. I can honestly say I believe you were the most consistently rational, objective, fair-minded, documenter of the current issues, problems and condition of our nation. Thank you so much for your many incisive observations over the years. We will miss you and your columns tremendously. “

Richard P. — (copy of a letter he sent to Steve Chapman): “I'm tempted to invoke the well-worn phrast, ‘Say it isn't so!’ But that would be self-serving because I'll very much miss reading your column. I've found you most reasonable and persuasive, presenting your stances, appreciated even more these days, given print media struggles and the downsizing of the Chicago Tribune. You have been the last vestige of reliably cogent and reasoned op-ed columnists, a trustworthy voice of reason and laudable conviction. Please know you have been a positive influence for this reader, even when I've disagreed with your opinion. Perhaps that's the more significant compliment--that you have caused me to to think, to reconsider. You have used your columns to speak truth to power--most recently and importantly in advocating holding Trump to deserved accountability--without the rancor and partisanship of political pundits. 

These and many other heartfelt, unsolicited tributes are exceedingly well deserved. I neglected to mention last Thursday that the e-book “Recalculating: Steve Chapman on a New Century”

Bob E. — I will miss reading Chapman. Maybe you can persuade him to do an occasional column for the Picayune Sentinel.

Of course he will always have a slot here if wants one, but he’s serious about getting off the deadline grind. And if he’s not, I hope he starts his own Substack, a publication I would eagerly promote and buy a subscription to.

Pete P. — You hazarded the cosmological/theological guess that “we are a fluke result in one of perhaps billions of iterations of a ‘big bang,’ and this is close to my belief. The life-supporting physics on our planet and in our universe are incredibly unlikely, such that some argue that only a super-intelligent creator could have designed them. But the idea that they are the result of an infinitely exhaustive trial of many big bangs allows us to remove the role of the creator. My current thinking, now faddish, is that a vastly superior being is exploring and tweaking the possible universes in a game or simulation to find ones that are interesting, like ours.

Or our iteration may not be proving all that interesting to this hypothetical superior being, what?

We have absolutely no way of knowing if life on Earth is a unique result throughout all of time and space or just one variation out of billions that have arisen and flamed out through an infinite number of expansions and contractions of matter.

And if there is an intelligent creator, we don’t have any way of knowing if life on Earth is its pet project or just a discarded experiment left to play itself out with no guidance or intervention. The concept of God is clearly not dead, but how would we even know if God had died? Or if God has simply moved on to dote over some other creation in some other galaxy or some other dimension?

Finally, and tangentially, there’s this from Christopher Hitchens:

The crucial verses (of the Biblical Book of Genesis) do not mention the marvelous creation of dinosaurs and pterodactyls, either because the semi-literate scribes who gathered the story together were unaware of these prodigies of design or because (shall I hint?) the Creator was unaware of having made them. … Most important of all there's no mention of the mind-warping variety and beauty and complexity of the microorganisms. Again either the scribes didn't know about viruses and bacteria, or the Creator didn't appreciate with how lavish a hand he had unleashed life on the only planet in the solar system that can manage to support it.

Funny or not funny?

In last week’s Picayune Plus I didn’t include the tweet below in the weekly visual-tweets poll because I doubted many people would get it.

Commenter JayG explained that @saltsaltgirl “believes that eggs should be removed from the end of the egg carton, not the middle. She lives with someone who removes eggs from the middle of the carton, not the end.” Which is plainly the case.

But what makes this funny, at least to me, is the depth of her overreaction to this minor violation of household etiquette. She considers the act monstrous.

Jim S. noted in comments, “Some people in my household advocate alternating the ends the eggs are removed from so the carton always stays relatively balanced. An unbalanced carton is more likely to accidentally come open and allow a couple of eggs to fall out.” So there are no monsters in Jim’s house.

Regarding last Thursday’s poll, reader Randy C. wrote, “WTF does the sugar tweet mean?”

He was referring to “My dad died when someone poured some sugar on him, you son of a bitch,” by @BuckyIsotope, and Randy’s question is certainly fair since “the sugar tweet” is in 10th place out of 10 finalists with just a third the number of votes as the current 9th place tweet (“By age 30, you should have two childhood friends who would come to Denmark at the request of your uncle to ascertain the cause of your madness” by @SparkNotes, an oddly specific variation of the “By age 30, you should admonition that references the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”)

I read “the sugar tweet” as an allusion to hypersensitivity and to the verbal minefields we encounter in everyday life when flip or careless remarks that seem to make light of serious subjects risk provoking anger and hurt feelings. Here, @BuckyIsotope is taking great, unexpected umbrage at “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” the signature song of Def Leppard.

And, again, it is the extreme nature of his reaction that provides the humor, at least as I see it.

Meanwhile, I found myself tickled by this absurd tweet, which I will include as one of 10 finalists in the weekly poll only if the electorate gives its blessing:

Pru @prufrockluvsong

[world where biscuits are gravy and gravy are biscuits] I'd like some gravy and biscuits please

Ya gotta see these tweets!

I often run across tweets that rely on visual humor and so can’t appear in the Tweet of the Week contest (the template for the poll does not allow the use of images). Here are a few good ones I’ve come across recently:

꧁ .and he joked again. ꧂ @AndyJokedAgain

Though I hear their Helpless cries I eat

Vote for your favorite. I’ll share the winner in Thursday’s main edition.

There’s still time to vote in the conventional Tweet of the Week poll!

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