Imrem: Weighing in on Sox moves, Bears blues and Cubs news
Let's boost the sophistication quotient of this exercise by referring to it as a potpourri rather than tidbits:
• Of all the local analysts and fans opining on the White Sox trades of Chris Sale and Adam Eaton, did more than 3.7 percent ever hear of Yoan Moncada or Lucas Giolito before this week? Much less any of the other minor-leaguers headed here?
Hopefully someone associated with the Sox did.
• The report that Bears defensive coordinator Vic Fangio won't return next season sums up the mess this team is in.
Head coach John Fox and Fangio tried to quell speculation Wednesday but generally where there's smoke there's firings ... or maybe resignations.
Fangio probably is the one person surviving unscathed from this season's rubble. If he's destined to be finished here sooner than later, he will depart as respected as when he arrived.
Oh well.
• Wednesday's trade for Royals closer Wade Davis effectively ended Aroldis Chapman's tenure with the Cubs.
Their gamble on Chapman was among all the victories the Cubs enjoyed on the way to a World Series championship.
Chapman arrived in Chicago this summer as baseball's best closer and as a player who was suspended 30 games in 2016 for violating the league's domestic violence policy. The impression was that the Cubs decided to hold their breath, hold their nose and hold out hope that Chapman would stay out of trouble for three months.
Mission accomplished.
Now Chapman can move on to a mega-contract elsewhere and the Cubs can move on as World Series champs.
• If Jorge Soler doesn't make it as the Royals designated hitter, maybe the Bears should bring him back to town as a tight end.
• Rashaan Salaam's death this week at age 42 revived a memory of just how big a name he was at one time.
No, the vision wasn't of him running toward the 1994 Heisman Trophy at Colorado or being the NFC offensive rookie of the year for the Bears in 1995.
The vision was of an autograph session during the NFL Experience leading up to Super Bowl XXX in Arizona.
A line of fans snaked all through the Phoenix Convention Center to get a signature, photograph or mere glimpse of Salaam, at the time a huge name in pro sports on the way to becoming bigger than huge.
Didn't work out that way.
Salaam was out of the NFL after three more seasons. Twenty years later he is dead instead of headed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Such a sad end to such a promising start.
• Michael Kopech, the hard-throwing pitcher that the White Sox acquired from Boston in the Chris Sale deal, can't get here soon enough.
Kopech's girlfriend is Brielle Zolciak-Biermann, a reality-TV personality on some Bravo show that I never heard of.
With the Bears expected to divorce quarterback Jay Cutler before next season, gone with him will be his reality-TV-personality wife Kristin Cavallari.
A vacuum will be left in Chicago for an athlete with a TV-personality partner and Zolciak-Biermann is the most promising candidate to fill it.
Cavallari expressed a disdain for living in Chicago, while Zolciak-Biermann already expressed an affection for the city.
Let's propose that Kopech propose marriage to Zolciak-Biermann at home plate in Sox Park.
• Finally, what exactly is a potpourri?
mimrem@dailyherald.com