The police said gunmen opened fire in the River North neighbourhood. At least three victims are in critical condition.
Four people in the United States have been killed and at least 14 others wounded when gunmen opened fire on a crowd outside a lounge in downtown Chicago, according to police.
According to authorities, the mass shooting took place around 11:00pm (04:00 GMT) on Wednesday, when shots were fired from a vehicle travelling along Chicago Avenue in the city’s River North neighbourhood.
Chicago police reported that 13 women and five men, all between the ages of 21 and 32, were struck by the gunfire. Among the dead were two men and two women.
As of Thursday, at least three victims remained in critical condition. The injured were transported to local hospitals.
Police said the driver fled the scene immediately, and no arrests have been made. Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling urged the public to submit anonymous tips to help detectives identify the suspects.
Local media reported that rapper Mello Buckzz, also known as Melanie Doyle, was hosting a private event at the lounge Wednesday evening to celebrate the release of her new album.
Snelling said police were trying to determine a motive and that the venue, Artis Lounge, is closed “until we get to the bottom of this”. He did not identify the number of attackers involved in the incident but said police found two different calibres of casings and were still reviewing footage.
“Clearly, there was some target in some way,” Snelling said. “This wasn’t some random shooting.”
Artis Lounge confirmed they were working with authorities as the investigation continued.
‘I can only describe it as a warzone’
In the hours after the shooting, Buckzz asked for prayers and expressed her anger and sadness on social media.
“My heart broke into so many pieces,” the artist wrote on Instagram Stories.
In her posts, the rapper revealed that many of those injured were her friends, and that she had been in a relationship with one of the men who was killed.
“Prayers up for all my sisters god please wrap yo arms around every last one of them,” Buckzz wrote across several Instagram Story slides. “Feel like everything just weighing down on me … all I can do is talk to god and pray.”
Chicago pastor Donovan Price, who works with communities affected by violence, described the scene as a “warzone”.
“Just mayhem and blood and screaming and confusion as people tried to find their friends and phones. It was a horrendous, tragic, dramatic scene,” he told The Associated Press.
The shooting took place days before the Fourth of July weekend, when Chicago and other major cities often see a surge in gun crimes. In recent years, however, Chicago has seen an overall decrease in gun violence.
During the last Fourth of July weekend in Chicago, more than 100 people were shot, resulting in at least 19 deaths. Mayor Brandon Johnson said at the time that the violence “has left our city in a state of grief”.
When Candace Parker was on the court, the Sparks were dominant. On the afternoon her jersey was retired, they had a chance to channel that energy — but the Sparks were anything but overpowering.
In a matchup between the two franchises Parker led to WNBA titles — the Sparks and Chicago Sky — her hometown team played spoiler, earning a 92-85 victory at Crypto.com Arena.
Angel Reese, the self-proclaimed queen of “Mebounds,” proved too much for L.A. to handle — for the second time in five days.
Reese finished with 16 rebounds, including four on the offensive glass. Her impact extended beyond the boards, with Reese adding 24 points and seven assists.
Entering the game, Sparks coach Lynne Roberts praised Reese as “elite,” underscoring her high motor and physicality, adding that the Sparks would need to be the aggressors to slow her down.
But they were out-hustled and out-muscled down the final stretch of the game.
“We just got to be tougher,” Roberts said. “Sustain runs, handle adversity, performance issues, bad calls — whatever.”
For the Sparks, it was a must-win game — not only to build on their recent 85–75 win over the Indiana Fever, but also to avoid spoiling Parker’s retirement celebration.
“We would have loved [to have won],” Roberts added. “I think we all wanted that win for her, so it’s disappointing — it’s kind of extra disappointing.”
Sparks guard Kelsey Plum (10) draws a foul while driving in front of Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese Sunday at Crytpo.com Arena.
(Jessie Alcheh / Associated Press)
While the Sparks (5-12) struggled against Reese for most of the game, forward Emma Cannon gave L.A. a surge off the bench. Undersized Cannon made life difficult for Reese during key stretches, drawing a technical foul during a tense third-quarter exchange in the post.
Cannon’s second-half performance briefly turned the tide. With the Sparks trailing by 12 — their largest deficit of the game — Cannon helped fuel a 24–5 run that put L.A. ahead 60–53. She finished with a season-high 15 points in four minutes.
But the Sky didn’t go away. By the end of the third, the Sparks led just 62–61 — and in the fourth, Chicago closed strong. Behind Reese, the Sky ballooned the lead back to double digits — 82–72 — too much for the Sparks to overcome.
“We have to learn how to finish games, and it’s not necessarily what the other team does,” Cannon said. “It’s just about us actually digging in and buying in and finishing it.”
A rally in the final minutes, led by Kelsey Plum, Azurá Stevens and Dearica Hamby, fell short.
Plum (22 points), Stevens (17 points) and Hamby (20 points) accounted for the bulk of the Sparks’ offense, combining for 59 of the team’s 85 points.
“It’s a choice when you’re hit with adversity or you lose, when you don’t perform the way you want to,” Roberts said on learning lessons from losses. “It’s a choice as to how you approach it, and there is no magic formula.”
Parker honored
The game was a tribute to Parker. At the arena entrance, fans were greeted by a purple and gold floral arrangement shaped like the No. 3. Video messages from Lakers legends, including Magic Johnson and Michael Cooper, played throughout the festivities.
Before Parker received a thunderous ovation as her No. 3 jersey was revealed in the rafters, she addressed the fans.
“They say athletes have two deaths — one being when your career ends — but I look at it as two lives,” Parker said during her halftime speech. “It’s never easy to put the ball down and move from your first love. That’s something I learned throughout my career here through basketball, and I’m going to carry it into the next phase of life.”
Former Sparks star Candace Parker waves while standing beside her family during her jersey retirement ceremony Sunday at Crypto.com Arena.
(Jessie Alcheh / Associated Press)
Before the game, she also reflected on the full-circle moment — standing in the same arena where she won her first WNBA championship, fittingly against her hometown team, the Chicago Sky. She won a title with the Sky in 2021 and will see her jersey retired by the franchise this August.
“Seeing the No. 3 in the rafters where I first picked up the ball, and where is home now, is incredible,” Parker said. “It’s about dreams and opportunity. … So I hope that that inspires those little girls out there.”
Her jersey is just the third retired in Sparks history, joining former teammate Leslie’s No. 9 and longtime general manager Penny Toler’s No. 11.
“When it was time for me to say goodbye, I knew when I handed the keys to Candace Parker,” said Leslie, who introduced Parker during the halftime jersey retirement ceremony. “She not only took the key to the building — but she ran with it.”
The Lakers have made a move to a better position in the second round of the Thursday night’s NBA draft, moving up to the 45th pick and sending their 55th pick and cash to the Chicago Bulls, according to people not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The cost of the pick was about $2.5 million, and it may put the Lakers in position to draft a center.
People around the league said the Lakers are trying to put themselves in position to draft center Ryan Kalkbrenner out of Creighton University. Kalkbrenner is older at 23, but he’s 7-1 and averaged 19.4 points and 9.0 rebounds last season, and he shot 66.3% from the field and 34% from three-point range.
And the Lakers’ biggest need this offseason is a center.
For Chinaka Hodge, it’s important that Riri Williams is unapologetic.
Comparing the young engineering prodigy to the billionaire tech CEO and Avengers founding member Tony Stark, the head writer and executive producer of Marvel’s “Ironheart” says she wanted her show’s lead character to share some of that brash confidence to speak her mind yet still feel grounded.
“I wanted her to be unapologetic about her intellect,” says Hodge during a recent Zoom call. “I wanted her to be unapologetic about the people she hung out with — that they would look and feel like the America we inhabit.
“It was really important to me to make a character that didn’t just feel like a superhero in a skirt [but someone with] real dimension, real depth and real challenges and concerns,” she added.
Out now on Disney+, “Ironheart” follows Riri (portrayed by Dominique Thorne), a 19-year old MIT student introduced in the 2022 film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” as she finds herself back in her hometown of Chicago.
After getting whisked away to Wakanda to help save the day, Riri is more driven than ever to complete her own version of a high-tech Iron Man-like suit to cement her legacy. But unlike Tony or the Wakandans, Riri doesn’t have unlimited resources to do so, which leads her to make some questionable decisions.
Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) in “Ironheart.”
(Jalen Marlowe / Marvel)
“She’s incredibly reverent of Tony Stark [being] ahead of her, but her path is not the same as his,” says Hodge, who can relate to Riri having “no blueprint” for her journey. “How to empower your idea without resource, without changing your morals, is a really difficult road, and that’s basically where we put Riri for the life of the series.”
Compared to most of her Marvel Cinematic Universe counterparts, Riri is a fairly new character. Created by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato, the 15-year-old tech whiz made her comic book debut in a 2016 issue of “Invincible Iron Man.” Besides Tony Stark, Riri has crossed paths with characters such as Pepper Potts (Rescue), Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel) and Miles Morales (Spider-Man).
A self-described “Marvel head,” Hodge explains that Riri initially hit her radar because of her friendship with fellow poet and scholar Eve Ewing, who was the writer on the first “Ironheart” comic book series.
“My first encounter with Riri was watching Eve literally leave a poetry [event] and say, ‘I have to go to my house … I’m working on some cool things,’” Hodge says. “In a true fan kind of way, I’m interested in characters that look like me, and low-key, Riri really looks like me, [so] I very much leaned in.”
“Ironheart” head writer Chinaka Hodge says Riri Williams is in for a difficult road.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
As she became more familiar with the character, what also struck Hodge, as someone on the autism spectrum, is how Riri can be read as neurodiverse. “One of the most important things about Riri [is] how she feels like me and my mom and other women who lean into their brains,” she says.
Fans of Ironheart from the comics will recognize that elements of Riri’s characterization and backstory draw upon what has been established in the books, but Hodge notes that they were not beholden to those storylines in terms of whom the teen could encounter on the show, regardless of the timeline or dimension. Hodge’s learning curve, however, did include discovering the different levels and types of magic that exist in the broader Marvel universe, as well as potential storylines getting derailed because it fell under another character’s purview.
Though she is still a teen genius, the Riri in the series is slightly older than in the comics. Hodge also describes this Riri as more of an antihero because she has the potential to land on either side of the hero/villain line based on the choices she makes.
Hodge, along with “Ironheart” directors Sam Bailey and Angela Barnes, sing Thorne’s praises, for her portrayal of Riri and as a collaborator. Hodge calls the Cornell-educated actor “a genius” and says she strove to pull Riri’s dialogue up to the level of Thorne’s intellect, rather than the other way around. Bailey, who directed the first three episodes of the series, says Thorne “brought such a soulfulness to the character.” And Barnes, who directed Episodes 4 through 6, commends her capacity to be present for her fellow actors.
“It was exciting to just create the environment to let her do her thing and feel safe within doing that,” Bailey says.
“Ironheart” marks the first time the MCU has spotlighted Chicago, and for the show’s creative team, it was important to get the city right. Hodge, who grew up in Oakland, admits that while she may not have direct knowledge as an outsider, she can relate to how Riri regards her home and wanted to treat the city with respect.
“Chicago’s my favorite cast member,” Hodge says. “I think Riri feels about Chicago how I feel about Oakland. It’s a hometown, but it’s [also] a legacy we’re carrying. Us being from there means something if we do something right with our lives.”
That type of hometown pride was shared by many in the “Ironheart” cast and crew. Hodge says the aim was to tap as many Chicago artists and musicians — from local bucket drummers to cast members like Shea Couleé — to capture the true texture of the city. Among those with strong personal ties to the city is Bailey, who is from Chicago, and Hodge credits the director with helping to bring their vision to life.
Zoe Terakes, left, Sonia Denis, Shakira Barrera, Dominique Thorne, Shea Couleé, Anthony Ramos and Manny Montana in “Ironheart.”
(Jalen Marlowe / Marvel)
“I feel like Chicago has this beautiful chip on its shoulder,” Bailey says. “We don’t trust a lot of people. We’re very protective of the city and its inhabitants. … There was a bit of rebelliousness I wanted to capture … and the different types of people that populate that city, which I don’t feel like we get to see a lot onscreen.”
As the director of the first half of the series, Bailey’s goal was to set up the backstory and establish the vibrancy of everyone introduced in the early episodes to prepare for the adventure to come.
“It was really important to really make these characters feel like people and feel like people you wanted to be around and feel like people you want to root for,” says Bailey.
Among these characters in Riri’s orbit are those she shares a history with, like her mother, Ronnie (Anji White), her close friend Xavier (Matthew Elam) and even the neighborhood’s youngest businessman, Landon (Harper Anthony). But Riri soon finds herself in the company of a new crew led by Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), who some might compare to Robin Hood or a freedom fighter, at least initially.
Mindful of spoilers, Barnes only teases that the second half of the series involves Riri having to face some of the consequences of choices she made in earlier episodes.
“[Riri] made this decision to maybe hang out with people that aren’t necessarily the most savory of people,” says Barnes. “They also have their own reasons for doing what they’re doing, but … she gets in a little deeper than she imagined.”
A self-proclaimed MCU fan, Barnes emphasizes how the show was intentional in everything from its set pieces to decoration, including how the design for the heads-up display of Riri’s suit was inspired by infographics from the works of W.E.B. Du Bois. But she also recalls the fun they had during production, like flipping a truck and building a White Castle in a parking lot.
Chinaka Hodge wanted to make sure people could see themselves reflected on the show.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
For Hodge, “Ironheart” marks one of her highest-profile projects to date. The poet and playwright turned to screenwriting after realizing she wanted to expand beyond working in first person and enrolled in USC’s graduate film school in 2010. There, she’d meet fellow student filmmakers like “Black Panther’s” Ryan Coogler, who is an executive producer on “Ironheart,” and “Creed II’s” Steven Caple Jr. (“I would just follow Ryan around campus [saying], ‘Hire me,’” she says. He eventually did.)
Among the things Hodge was excited about while working on the series was getting to explore larger themes around access, autonomy and safety through specific situations that consider how a young girl from Chicago’s South Side might be perceived differently than Tony Stark for owning a weapons-grade tech suit because of what they look like. She was also eager to populate the show with people who reflect the diversity of the real world.
Broadly speaking, “you’re gonna see yourself if you turn on the screen on this show,” says Hodge, who is glad the MCU has moved to “feel like a universe that’s inhabited by the people who read publishing and go to the movies.”
“I’m excited for the little, quirky Black girl watching the show who sees herself in it [and] for the queer kid who finds it for their Pride Month activities and wants to watch it,” she says. “I’m really excited for that Black boy who wants to play with a Riri Williams action figure and finds it in the store and gets to fly it around his own house. I’m excited and I’m nervous [and] thrilled, and I feel like that’s exactly how Riri feels when she’s flying over the Chicago skyline.”
CHICAGO — Kamilia Cardoso scored a career-high 27 points, Angel Reese had a double-double and the Chicago Sky beat the Sparks97-86 on Tuesday night.
Reese finished with 18 points and 17 rebounds. Ariel Atkins scored 13 points for the Sky (4-10).
Chicago took its first lead, 74-72, at 7:23 of the fourth quarter on a driving layup by Cardoso and outscored the Sparks 30-17 in the final period.
Azura Stevens scored 21 points and Kelsey Plum had 20 for the Sparks (4-11), who lost their fourth straight. Dearica Hamby had 15 points and Rickea Jackson 11.
Cardoso followed her tiebreaking basket with a short jump shot, and moments later added a free throw to make it 77-72, and Chicago’s lead increased from there.
Cardoso will miss the next four games playing for her Brazilian national team at a tournament in Chile. The Sky also announced veteran point guard Courtney Vandersloot had successful ACL surgery on her right knee.
The Sparks took control early, jumping out to a 10-2 lead in less than 90 seconds and had a 27-17 advantage after one quarter. Chicago cut the deficit to 31-28 early in the second quarter before the Sparks surged again, going up 44-32 . The Sky rallied again, getting to within 48-42 at halftime.
In the closing minutes of the third quarter, Rebecca Allen made a three-pointer and a runner, tying the score at 65-65 and 67-67, but the Sky never led. Plum’s basket in the last minute of the third gave the Sparks a 69-67 lead heading into the fourth.
June 17 (UPI) — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is warning President Donald Trump to “respect the Constitution” after the president ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to ramp up deportation efforts in Democratic-led sanctuary cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles.
In response, Johnson and city officials announced Tuesday they will relaunch a “Know Your Rights” ad campaign to educate Chicago residents.
“Even if the federal government doesn’t know or care about the Constitution, Chicagoans deserve to know their constitutional rights,” Johnson told reporters at a City Hall news conference.
The ads, which will educate residents about their rights if they are stopped or detained by ICE agents, will be displayed on more than 400 screens across the Chicago Transit Authority system.
The ads direct transit riders to the campaign website with a more in-depth resource guide, which is translated in multiple languages. The guide instructs residents how to react if stopped, but warned the information “should not be construed as legal advice.”
“We can’t tell people not to be afraid,” said Beatriz Ponce de León, Chicago’s deputy mayor of immigrant, migrant and refugee rights. “Folks are seeing what is happening here and in other cities. But what we can do is give people information. The best that people can do is be prepared.”
Earlier this month, Trump deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles to help protect ICE agents and federal buildings after protests in the downtown area turned violent. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom objected to the president’s actions, calling the deployment unjustified.
Other sanctuary cities, including Chicago, are now bracing for a similar crackdown. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has joined Johnson in opposing the president’s actions, while Trump denounced state leadership.
“I look at Chicago. You’ve got a really bad governor and a bad mayor. But the governor is probably the worst in history,” Trump said.
Pritzker responded by saying, “I think you can see that this has not gone well for him politically, and he’s all about the politics.”
Acting director of ICE, Tom Homan, told CNN in January that Chicago’s efforts to educated undocumented immigrants have made deportation efforts “very difficult.”
“For instance, Chicago is very well educated,” Homan said. “They call it ‘know your rights.’ I call it how to escape arrest … how to hide from ICE.”
In his first words directed specifically to Americans, Pope Leo XIV told young people on Saturday how to find hope and meaning in their lives through God and in service to others.
“So many people who suffer from different experiences of depression or sadness — they can discover that the love of God is truly healing, that it brings hope,” the first American pope said in a video broadcast on the giant screen at Rate Field, the White Sox baseball stadium on Chicago’s South Side.
The event — set in Leo’s hometown and at the home stadium of his favorite major league team — was organized by the Archdiocese of Chicago in honor of his recent election as pope. Leo seized the opportunity to speak directly to young people, tying his message to the Roman Catholic Church’s ongoing Jubilee year of hope that was declared by Pope Francis.
In Saturday’s message, Leo urged those listening in the stadium and online to be beacons of hope capable of inspiring others.
“To share that message of hope with one another — in outreach, in service, in looking for ways to make our world a better place — gives true life to all of us, and is a sign of hope for the whole world,” he said.
The afternoon program, emceed by Chicago Bulls announcer Chuck Swirsky, highlighted Leo’s roots, including music by the city’s Leo Catholic High School Choir and a musician from Peru, where Leo lived and worked for years. There was also a discussion featuring a former teacher of the future pope as well as a high school classmate and fellow Augustinian.
The event also celebrated the mixing of Catholicism and baseball, including a special invitation from the team for Leo to throw out a ceremonial first pitch at a future White Sox game.
Leo, formerly Robert Prevost, was elected May 8, becoming the first American pope in the 2,000-year history of the church.
Leo, 69, spent his career serving as an Augustinian missionary and ministering in Peru before taking over the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops. He succeeded Pope Francis, who died April 21.
“When I see each and every one of you, when I see how people gather together to celebrate their faith, I discover myself how much hope there is in the world,” Leo said in the video message.
The program was followed by a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago who was part of the conclave that elected Leo.
Pope Leo XIV has previously been photographed wearing a White Sox hat, the team he grew up cheering for in a working-class neighborhood.
Leo is the first person from the United States elected to serve as Pope.
Long before he was Pope, Prevost witnessed his White Sox win the 2005 World Series, capturing baseball’s title for the first time in 88 years after winning four straight games over the Houston Astros.
In addition to the Pope’s address, Saturday’s event features a serenade from a Chicago Catholic school boys’ choir competing on the reality TV program America’s Got Talent. Chicago Bulls play-by-play voice Chuck Swirsky is serving as Master of Ceremonies.
The taped appearance comes just over a month after the 69-year-old was elected to the Papacy, to the delight of many Chicagoans and its large Catholic population.
The Archdiocese of Chicago estimates more than 2 million Catholics live in the region.
Saturday’s festivities come a week after the Pope asked God to “open borders, break down walls and dispel hatred,” during weekly mass in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.
On Friday, the Pope confirmed the date on which Italian teenager Carlo Acutis will be canonized. Acutis, who died at the age of 15 from leukemia in 2006, will become the first saint from the millennial generation on Sept. 7.
It’s a good thing too — otherwise the event being thrown in his honor at the team’s home stadium this weekend might be a little awkward.
While the White Sox play the Rangers in Texas on Saturday afternoon, the Archdiocese of Chicago will be at Rate Field celebrating the new leader of the Catholic Church — who was born and raised on the city’s South Side — with a Mass by Chicago Archbishop Blase J. Cupich and other festivities.
Leo will also be represented in mural form. The White Sox unveiled a graphic installation featuring his likeness on a concourse wall before a May 19 game against the Seattle Mariners, less than two weeks after Leo was selected as the first U.S.-born pope. He replaced Pope Francis, who died on April 21 at age 88.
The Chicago White Sox have commemorated the fandom of Pope Leo XIV with a graphic installation at Rate Field.
(Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press)
The graphic was installed next to Section 140, where Leo sat in Row 19, Seat 2 for Game 1 of the 2005 World Series between the White Sox and Houston Astros. As remarkable as it might sound, there is footage from Fox’s national broadcast of that Oct. 22, that shows the man then-known as Father Bob in the stands at the stadium then-known as U.S. Cellular Field.
Hosting a World Series game for the first time since 1959, the White Sox led by two runs with one out in the top of the ninth inning. Chicago closer Bobby Jenks had just thrown a 95-mph fastball past Houston’s Adam Everett for an 0-1 count and was preparing for his next pitch.
That’s when the camera panned to a nervous-looking Father Bob, who appears to be wearing a team jacket over a team jersey.
Viewers never got to see the future pope’s reaction to what happens next, but he must have been ecstatic as Jenks strikes out Everett in two more pitches for a 5-3 Chicago win. The White Sox would go on to sweep the Astros for their first World Series win since 1917.
“That was his thing. He liked to get out and go to a game once in a while,” Louis Prevost told the Chicago Tribune of his brother, the future pope. “Eat a hot dog. Have some pizza. Like any other guy in Chicago on the South Side.”
His favorite team may have fallen on harder times since then — the White Sox are an American League-worst 23-45 and 20.5 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers in the Central Division — but Leo is still willing to put his fandom on display for the world to see.
On Wednesday, he wore a White Sox hat along with his traditional papal cassock while blessing newly married couples in St. Peter’s Square outside the Vatican.
Kelly and Gary DeStefano, who live in Haverhill, Mass., and are Boston Red Sox fans, gave him the hat. Kelly DeStefano told Boston.com they were just trying to get the new pope’s attention.
“I just wanted to make sure everyone at home knew that we did not turn on our team,” she told Boston.com. “It was all in joke and good fun.”
Chicago White Sox fans dress up like fellow White Sox fan Pope Leo XIV to watch a game against the Cubs on May 17 at Wrigley Field.
(Paul Beaty / Associated Press)
It worked, with Boston.com reporting that Leo gave the couple a good-natured ribbing once he found out where they are from.
“You’re going to get in trouble for this,” he told them, in a video of the meeting.
“Don’t tell anyone in Massachusetts,” Kelly DeStefano replied.
While Leo might be a little too busy to attend a game anytime soon, White Sox executive vice president, chief revenue and marketing officer Brooks Boyer said last month that the pope is welcome to return to Rate Field whenever he wants.
“He has an open invite to throw out a first pitch,” Boyer said. “Heck, maybe we’ll let him get an at-bat.”
Mary Alice Vignola scored the equalizer in the 80th minute and Angel City salvaged a 2-2 draw with the Chicago Stars at BMO Stadium on Saturday night.
Angel City (4-4-3) took a 1-0 lead into halftime on Kennedy Fuller’s goal from inside the box in the 29th minute.
Chicago (1-8-2) made it 1-1 just before the hour mark when an attempted cross from substitute Nadia Gomes took a wild deflection and looped over the head of goalkeeper Angelina Anderson.
The Stars went up 2-1 up when Ally Schlegel scored from 25 yards out in the 66th minute. Anderson got one hand to the shot but could only tip the ball onto the crossbar and into the back of the net.
Vignola rocketed in a rebound from close range to make it 2-2.
The tie was Alex Straus’ first game as Angel City coach. Straus, who has never previously coached in the NWSL, arrived from Bayern Munich last week.
Yankees supporters are accustomed to Dodger Stadium being hostile ground, but being hit by a chunk of concrete falling from the stadium ceiling is beyond what fans steel themselves to encounter.
That is indeed what one Yankees fan says happened to him at Friday’s Dodgers-Yankees game.
Ricardo Aquino of Mexico City told the Athletic via a translator that a piece of the ceiling hit him in the back while he was seated in the top deck of the stadium during the third inning of the game. A photo showed the piece to be roughly the size of a baseball.
Aquino said he was in pain but applied an ice pack and soldiered on through the rest of the game, which the Dodgers ultimately won, 8-5, the news outlet reported.
A day later, a piece of concrete netting was installed in the area of the ceiling in the Section 10 reserve where the incident was reported, The Times confirmed.
“We had professionals and experts at Dodger Stadium this past weekend to examine the facility and ensure its safety,” Dodgers spokesperson Ally Salvage told The Times. “We will also be undertaking a longer-term review.”
Dodger Stadium, which opened in 1962, is the oldest Major League Baseball stadium west of the Mississippi and the third oldest in the nation, after Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago — both of which have also experienced issues with aging concrete.
In July 2004, there were three reports of chunks of concrete tumbling from the upper deck at Wrigley Field, prompting the Chicago Cubs to install protective netting and review stadium infrastructure, according to the Associated Press.
A major $100-million renovation project was completed at Dodger Stadium before the 2020 season. It included a new center field plaza with food and entertainment areas, more elevators and new bridges allowing fans to walk the entire perimeter of the stadium from any level inside the venue.
More renovations were completed in advance of this year’s season, this time focused on upgrading the clubhouse.
In something of a grand gesture, Caleb Williams stood at a lectern Wednesday to explain that excerpts from an upcoming book were old news. A year after scheming to avoid playing for the Bears, he is committed to turning around the franchise.
Leaping from the USC campus to the top rung of the NFL draft a year ago, Williams aspired to be like John Elway and Eli Manning.
Just not in the way one might expect.
Sure, he wanted to lead a team to multiple Super Bowl titles like those two quarterbacks, whose career statistics were remarkably similar. Both played 16 years in the NFL for only one team — Elway with the Denver Broncos and Manning with the New York Giants — and both passed for 50,000 yards and 300 touchdowns.
But Williams, egged on by his father, is described in American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback by ESPN journalist Seth Wickersham as entertaining creative ways to spurn the team that held the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft.
Just like Elway and Manning had done.
Elway proclaimed his refusal to play for the Baltimore Colts after they drafted him first overall in 1983, leading to a trade to the Broncos. Manning refused to play for the San Diego Chargers after being drafted first overall in 2004, forcing a trade to the Giants.
However, Williams was unsuccessful in his effort. The Bears drafted him and he pledged his allegiance to them while enduring a rocky rookie season in which he was sacked more than any other NFL quarterback and the team struggled to a 5-12 record.
Yet he felt compelled to hold a news conference at the Bears training camp in Lake Forest, Ill., to explain why he entertained thoughts of spurning Chicago and instead landing in, say, Minnesota. Williams admitted he and his parents discussed ways to dodge the Bears.
Williams couldn’t speak for his father. Carl Williams told Wickersham that “Chicago is the place quarterbacks go to die,” and consulted with Manning’s father, Archie, a former NFL quarterback who had helped strategize his son’s trade from the Chargers to the Giants.
But Williams made it clear he is all in with new Bears head coach Ben Johnson and the franchise’s commitment to turning around its fortunes. He said he changed his tune about Chicago after meeting with Bears brass ahead of last year’s draft.
“After I came on my visit here, it was a … deliberate and determined answer that I wanted to come here,” Williams said. “I wanted to be here. I love being here.”
“I wanted to come here and be the guy and be a part and be a reason why the Chicago Bears turn this thing around.”
“This thing” is a franchise that hasn’t posted a winning record since 2018 and whose all-time leading passer is the middling Jay Cutler. The Bears’ most renowned quarterback is Sid Luckman, who helped them win four NFL championships in the 1940s while passing for a paltry 14,686 yards in 11 seasons. They won one more pre-Super Bowl title, in 1963, and have won only one of the LIX (59) Super Bowls, in 1985.
No wonder Carl Williams was against his son — a Heisman Trophy winner at USC in 2022 — getting locked into what amounts to a five-year rookie contract with Chicago. That son, now a 23-year-old man, said he no longer responds unquestioningly to his father’s marching orders.
“I shut him down quite a bit,” Williams said. “He has ideas and he’s a smart man and so I listen. I always listen.
“I’m very fortunate to be in this position in the sense of playing quarterback, but also very fortunate to have a very strong-minded father. We talk very often, my mom and my dad are my best friends, so being able to have conversations with them to understand that everything they say is also portrayed on me.”
Wickersham’s book will be published in September. Another excerpt describes Williams as becoming enamored with the idea of playing for Minnesota Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell after they had a predraft meeting.
But the overriding theme of his four-minute opening statement at the news conference was that he is focused on becoming the best quarterback possible for the Chicago Bears. He’d prefer that everyone just forget that he had misgivings a year ago.
“We are here focused on the future,” he said, “we are here focused on the present and really trying to get this train going, picking up steam and choo-chooing along.”
George Wendt, who will be famous as long as television is remembered as Norm from “Cheers,” died Tuesday. He passed in Los Angeles, where he lived, though the cities to which he is spiritually tied are Boston, where the show was set, and Chicago, where he was born and entered show business by way of Second City, and which he unofficially represented throughout his life, and which claimed him as one of its own. One of his last Facebook posts, earlier this month, as a Chicagoan educated by Jesuits, was, “pope leo XIV is a sout’ sider my friendts. his cassock size is 4XIV.”
Entering stage right, as the assembled cast shouted his name, Norm would launch his heavyset frame across the set to a corner stool where a glass of beer — draft, never bottled — would appear as he arrived. He was the quintessence of Regular Guy, a big friendly dog of a person, with some of the sadness that big, friendly dogs can carry.
“Cheers,” which ran for 11 seasons from 1982 to 1993 — Wendt appeared in every one of its 275 episodes — was a show about going where everybody knows your name but also, as in life and fiction, a place for people who had nowhere better to be, or nowhere else to go. Though Norm was nominally an accountant, and then a house painter, his real job was to sit and fence with John Ratzenberger‘s font-of-bad-information postman Cliff Clavin — they were one of the medium’s great double acts — and drink beer, and then another. His unpaid tab filled a binder. (“I never met a beer I didn’t drink,” quoth Norm, though there was never any suggestion of alcoholism, or even of drunkenness.)
But as a person with work troubles and a marriage that could get the better of him — Wendt’s own wife, Bernadette Birkett, supplied the voice for the off-screen Vera — he was also the vehicle for some of the show’s more dramatic, thoughtful passages. (That his service to the series was essential was borne out by six Emmy nominations.) Unlike some other “Cheers” regulars, there was no caricature in his character. His woes, and his pleasures, were everyday, and he played Norm straight, seriously, without affectation, so that one felt that the Wendt one might meet on the street would not be substantially different from the person onscreen.
Like many actors so completely identified with a part, Wendt, who spent six years with Second City, worked more than one might have imagined; there were dozens of appearances on the small and big screen across the years, including his own short-lived “The George Wendt Show,” which took off on public radio’s “Car Talk.”
After “Cheers,” he’s perhaps most associated with the recurring, Chicago-set “Saturday Night Live” sketch “Bill Swerski’s Superfans.” But he also did theater, including turns on Broadway as Edna Turnblad in “Hairspray,” as Yvan in Yasmina Reza’s “Art” and as Santa in the musical adaptation of “Elf.” There was “Twelve Angry Men,” with Richard Thomas in Washington, D.C., and he was Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” in Waterloo, Canada. In Bruce Graham’s “Funnyman,” at Chicago’s Northlight Theatre in 2015, he played a comic cast in a serious play, breaking out of typecasting.
We were connected on Facebook, where he regularly liked posts having to do with music and musicians; he was a fan, and sometimes a friend, of alternative and underground groups, and tributes to him from that quarter are quickly appearing. (When asked, he would often cite L.A.’s X, the Blasters and Los Lobos as among his favorites.) One of his own last posts was in memoriam of David Thomas, leader of the avant-garde Pere Ubu, twinned with “kindred spirit” Chicago Bears defensive tackle Steve McMichael, who died the same day.
Once, after he messaged me to compliment an appreciation — like this — I’d written about Tommy Smothers, I took the opportunity to ask, “Do I correctly remember seeing you at Raji’s a million years ago, probably for the Continental Drifters?” Raji’s, legendary within a small circle, was a dive club in a building long since gone on Hollywood Boulevard east of Vine Street; it wasn’t the Roxy, say, or other celebrity-friendly spots around town — or for that matter, anything like “Cheers,” except in that it served as a clubhouse for the regulars.
“Yep,” he replied. “Tough to get out like I used to, but please say hi if you see me around.” Sadly, I never did, and never will.
