Dayn Perry

Dayn Perry, a Chicago-based writer, is a baseball columnist for FoxSports. He is the author of a new book, which you can buy here.

Recent Posts By Dayn Perry

The Race Against Barry

In Print - April 3, 2007 | View Print Version (PDF)Bulletin: Barry Bonds needs only 22 home runs to break Hank Aaron's all-time career mark. Bulletin: Some people aren't too happy about this. Yes, neither bit of "breaking news" is terribly shocking to anyone who follows baseball with even a passing interest. Bonds, whether because of his surly and aloof nature [read more...]

Kings of Mediocrity

In Print - March 27, 2007 | VIEW PRINT VERSION (PDF) As we all know by now, the Cubs this past winter doled out roughly $300 million in guaranteed player salaries, thereby energizing an easily inspired fan base. For all their efforts and dollars, though, the Cubs aren't a great team. Heck, they're not even a particularly good team. Yet on the [read more...]

The Anti-Jordans?

In Print - March 20, 2007 | View Print Version (PDF)There's a scene in Spike Lee's contemporary classic Do the Right Thing in which the character "Buggin' Out" is bumped by a passerby, who then tramples and muddies his cherished Air Jordans. After Buggin' Out's friends ooh and ah over the gravity of the affront, he takes off down the sidewalk [read more...]

Unhappy Union

In Print - March 13, 2007 | In Print Version (PDF)Not long after Roger Goodell took over as NFL Commissioner, Bryant Gumbel, editorializing from the set of HBO's Real Sports, offered him this withering bit of advice: "Roger, before Paul Tagliabue cleans out his office, have him show you where he keeps Gene Upshaw's leash." Tagliabue, of course, is Goodell's predecessor, [read more...]

Futile Fantasy

In Print - March 6, 2007 | View Print Version (PDF) You could feel the buzz -- temporary, speculative buzz -- but buzz nonetheless. Last week, Radar Online, citing unnamed sources, reported that Dallas Mavericks owner and professional billionaire (and blogger) Mark Cuban was offering a whopping $625 million for the Chicago Cubs. Cuban, of course, is the impassioned, opinionated, tilting-at-windmills type [read more...]

Bending the Rules

In print - February 27, 2007 | View Print Version (PDF) One of the fundamentals of sport is fairness. The games we play and watch must operate with consistent rules and structure, otherwise we have little reason to trust what happens on the field. We want the rulebook to be unfailingly adhered to, we demand that officials and caretakers be free [read more...]

World Wide Leader / Entertainer

In some corners, it's now derisively known as the "BooYah Network."They speak, of course, of ESPN, the World Wide Leader, or WWL, the global sports empire that's worked assiduously to blur the lines between journalism and entertainment. Sadly, they're doing a helluva job. Since its founding in 1979, ESPN has devolved from a legitimate sports news outlet into a sprawling conglomerate whose compromised [read more...]

Should There Be Outrage at the NFL Over Steroids?

In this the "Steroids Era" of sport, you may have noticed a curious phenomenon: the NFL has been spared most of the outrage.Baseball certainly has its share. There's the constant fretting over Barry Bonds' moral standing, there's Mark McGwire and his paltry Hall-of-Fame support, there are the congressional hearings, there's the furor created by BALCO and the best-selling Game [read more...]

Barbaro's Blood Sport

Photo by Pouya Dianat - US PRESSWIRE After a grueling and ultimately abortive eight-month convalescence and "flood the zone" media coverage, Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was finally euthanized last week. Barbaro, of course, shattered his leg in May of last year during the early moments of the Preakness Stakes. He was never able to recover. Illnesses set in, surgeries were performed, and [read more...]

Funnyball

In Print - January 2007 | View Print Version (PDF) It's been an engaging winter for baseball partisans in Chicago. The Cubs have been among the most active and free-spending teams this off-season, and the White Sox have pulled off a handful of surprising moves. The statistical and on-field consequences for both teams have been analyzed ad nauseam in other quarters, but [read more...]