A Grip on Sports: We’re pretty sure soon-to-be President Kennedy was checking the Chronicle for the Red Sox box score

A GRIP ON SPORTS • Who would have thought? Here we are, right in the middle of the 21st Century and the Spokane Chronicle is back. Didn’t we bury it back in the early 1990s? For sports fans, what was bad news then is good news now.

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• We have a confession to make. There were a lot of years in my journalism career when we didn’t have anything to do with sports. Professionally, of course. Personally, sports were always an important aspect of the 1980s and 1990s, even as we worked every day on the design and graphics side of the newspaper business.

But when we drove across the South Hill back then and arrived at the downtown office, we were more involved with other things. Like the Chronicle.

If you have seen the ads recently heralding editor Rob Curley’s decision to bring back Spokane’s afternoon paper, albeit digitally, you probably saw an image of the final day back in 1992. That sad-looking design the Chronicle featured as it said goodbye? We have to admit it was our creation.

Yep, we played a part in the Chronicle’s demise. That horrid-looking front page was the result of the creative part of my brain in my first year as the paper’s graphics editor. Something we came up with back in 1985, when we had just left the sports department. It was supposed to make reading the afternoon paper a quick, easy, painless endeavor. All it really did was hasten its eventual end.

Why are we sharing this news on a day when we are celebrating the Chronicle’s return? Guilt, probably. And to let you understand why we always wanted to, someday, return to sports.

It took a couple decades but it happened. And now, here we are, occupying the same newspaper space once filled by folks like Dan Weaver and Chuck Stewart and Jeff Jordan and Dan Webster. Folks we worked with, folks we liked, folks we admired.

The afternoon paper, and its impact on sports fans for decades, hasn’t been the same since television came around. Think social media before social media. TV took away the afternoon paper’s biggest advantage: immediacy. News that happened early that day was on your doorstep when you got home from work. And only in the local afternoon paper.

The Chronicle always had every box score from the night before, no matter how late the game went. It had second-day stories, with more depth and context. And, if anything had gone amiss the night before in the Review, it was fixed for the Chronicle version the next day. For years, afternoon papers had a monopoly on after-work news consumption. Television took that away. And the papers, including the Chronicle, disappeared.

But here we are, two decades into a new century, and even greater changes in communication have allowed the newsroom to revive Spokane’s afternoon paper.

And we get to be a part of it.

Call it penance. Call it atonement. Call it a special privilege. Ya, that’s it. That last one works for us. And we hope we are up to it.

• It’s baseball’s All-Star break. The traditional time your favorite major league team evaluates its season and makes a decision on which way to go. So why don’t we do that as well.

Our favorite team is going for it. The Dodgers, we mean.

Your favorite? Well, the M’s are kind of in limbo, as they’ve been for the better part of two decades. Our guess is Jerry Dipoto, Scott Servais and the rest of the brain trust will not sell the farm to make the postseason this year. Instead, they will use the next three months to evaluate talent – example, bringing up catcher Cal Raleigh this week – and see what pieces are needed for next season.

Even though neither have a contract for 2022 as of yet.

It sounds a bit counterintuitive, but it would fit perfectly with what Dipoto has said about the franchise rebuild, considering he (and others) feels a year was lost to COVID-19.

Will management give Dipoto a chance to see it through? The feeling here is yes. One year. Which will make 2022 interesting, don’t you think?

• You know what is also interesting? Novak Djokovic’s domination of men’s tennis right now.

The discussion of whether Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal is the greatest player of all-time seems so pre-covid these days. In the course of just a couple months, Djokovic has won the French Open for a second time and won his third consecutive Wimbledon title (and sixth overall). He has 20 Grand Slam titles, the same as Federer and Nadal, and, at the top of his game at 34, the chance to win all for majors in the same calendar year with a U.S. Open triumph in September. He would become the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to do that.

One thing is obvious. Those four players occupy Mt. Rushmore for the men’s side of the game. But before he’s done, Djokovic should actually have a monument of his own.

• We’re not going to go in-depth here, but we were quietly rooting for Italy to defeat England yesterday. Maybe it was the call of the motherland. Maybe it was the bet we stood to win. Maybe it was just because we like the color blue. Whatever.

Let’s just say it’s all those things. But knowing we won’t have to mow the lawn for a month, now that’s the best part.

• Finally, Gonzaga basketball games are going to be something next season. Watching Chet Holmgren play with and against the best players his age in the world – he was named MVP of the FIBA U19 World Cup the U.S. team won – has sparked such interest.

Well, that and keeping tabs on him the past couple years, ever since he visited GU with the Jalen Suggs, Dom Harris and Julian Strawther back in the day.

We’ve written it before and we’ll write it again: Holmgren is the best defensive center we’ve seen at the high school level since Bill Walton. And that’s the highest praise we can give.

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WSU: Around the Pac-12 and college sports, though no one from the conference represented the U.S. in the FIBA U19 World Cup, Arizona and Utah had players there. … Colorado hopes its tight ends grow up quickly.

Gonzaga: We mentioned Holmgren above, but it’s Jim Meehan who has the coverage of his title-winning performance yesterday.

Indians: Though Spokane fell to Vancouver on Sunday, 4-3 in Hillsboro, Ore., there was still good news for the franchise. First baseman Michael Toglia hit a home run at baseball’s Futures Game in Denver. Dave Nichols covers both events in this story.

Mariners: David Fletcher continued his hot hitting against the M’s, leading the Angels to a 7-1 victory and extending his hitting streak to 24 games. … It was a Mariner fan’s dream in the Futures Game. … Yusei Kikuchi was placed on the injured list Sunday. Ryan Divish reports it is COVID-19 related. But because of his vaccination status, Kikuchi might still be able to participate in Tuesday’s All-Star festivities. … The M’s went a different direction with their first draft pick this year.

Storm: Seattle heads into the Olympic break with a 92-85 win over Phoenix.

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• Why is everything so “now” oriented these days? The Suns win the first two games of the NBA finals – at home – and everyone starts planning a parade. Uh, there are seven possible games, and three of them are going to be in Milwaukee. Just saying. Until later …