Ever watch a baseball game on TV and the announcers start talking about high school or college baseball programs that sprout a high number of major league players? Well, keep listening because in three or four years they may just be talking about the baseball juggernaut at Riverside-Brookfield High School.
Last week in the 2022 major league draft two recent RBHS grads got drafted and have subsequently signed with major league teams.
Owen Murphy, drafted as a pitcher, signed with the Atlanta Braves. He was chosen 20th overall in the first round. A while later Ryan Cermak, a center fielder, was drafted in the second round by the Tampa Bay Rays.
It is a long way from rookie ball in Florida to The Show. Not many make it.
But this is a moment of promise and hope for these two Riverside natives. And it is a moment of genuine pride for both the village and our high school.
We’ll be following their progress and rooting for them along the way.
Will this bridge be built?
News late on July 25 that union workers had reached a tentative agreement with employers in the aggregate concrete business may hold promise for the Brookfield Avenue bridge.
Lately it has been is much quieter at the local quarry in McCook where operations have taken a long break. Hard-working union members were holding out for more and doing it with confidence. Tons of major and critical infrastructure and building projects across the Chicago metro have hit brick walls as there is no concrete to be poured.
And the Brookfield Avenue bridge reconstruction had, once more, come to a discouraging halt.
What once seemed liked a straightforward project to rebuild a bridge over Salt Creek has been stymied multiple times. Rerouting of water and electric utility lines turned into a costly and time-eating feat of engineering. Now all the prep work is done for the concrete footings in the water. But there was no concrete to pour.
Now, maybe this seemingly cursed project will finally get completed.
Not every election is won by money
It was an upset for certain when Abdelnasser Rashid beat state Rep. Mike Zalewski in the Democratic primary a month ago. When our Bob Skolnik dug into the financial donations received by each campaign during the closing quarter, a few things became clear:
An enormous amount of money, mostly from outside the district, was raised and spent in this election for a state rep’s seat. That said, Zalewski won the funding battle decidedly with his $810,000, nearly doubling what Rashid brought in.
There’s some comfort in this moment in our politics to understand that Rashid’s path to victory was almost certainly in his door-to-door ground game, which took him, and his diligent supporters, to every corner of the district to knock on doors and listen to voters.
Gratifying that it can still work that way.
