Chicago Sports Stuff: Three For the Books

BATSHIT bold predictions.

Freakish fake trades.

Hilarious hot and crazy cold takes.

And way too many mediocre jokes.

That, kids, is the Chicago Sports Stuff Substack page.

Virtually each weekday since early 2024, I’ve taken to my MacBook Pro and pounded out some words, sentences, and paragraphs about what’s happening — or what might (or might not) happen someday — in the world of Chicago sports.

With almost 800 columns in the bank, I figured it was time to compile some of them into…something.

This something is an ebook — three ebooks, actually: one for football, one for basketball, and one for everything else. And the amount of stuff in these stuff books is cuckoo.

We’re talking 439,000 words, and here’s where that absurd number sits in the world of real literature:

• Moby-Dick — Herman Melville: 209,000 words

• Lonesome Dove — Larry McMurtry: 365,712 words

• Gone with the Wind — Margaret Mitchell: 418,053 words

• A Dance with Dragons — George R. R. Martin: 422,000 word

• A Storm of Swords — George R. R. Martin: 424,000 words

• Chicago Sports Stuff (all three volumes) — This Guy: 439,000 words

• It — Stephen King: 445,134 words

• The Stand: Complete & Uncut — Stephen King: 471,485 words

• Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace: 489,000 words

• Atlas Shrugged — Ayn Rand: 561,996 words

• War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy: 587,000 words

• The King James Bible — Various: 783,000 words

There’s me, sandwiched in between GRRM and Uncle Stevie. For some reason, that sounds about right.

Anyhoo, a few notes about a collection that, if we went physical rather than digital, would shake out to approximately a 1,000-page hardback:

• About half of these pieces are super-time-sensitive, and might not be even the teeniest bit relevant when you read them today, let alone next week, let alone next year. But I dig some of the mediocre jokes, so what the heck.

• Despite their relative irrelevance, I included a bunch of my bold predictions, mock trades, and fantasy prognostications because A) They’re sometimes kinda fun, and B) It’ll give you the opportunity to see where I went right (rarely) and where I went wrong (often).

• There isn’t a single Blackhawks article. You’re welcome.

• These three books collect 414 articles, just over half of the entire CSS Substack, so before you kvetch about the length, remember it could’ve been 900,000 words.

• At the end of the day, this is a bathroom book. You pick, you choose, you skip, you roll your eyes, you wipe, you flush.

But most importantly, you enjoy.