Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 239

"tap INSIDE SECTION 5 Horoscope 5 Box office 6 Comics 8-9 Dear Abby 9 Bridge 9 Crossword 9 'FINAL ODYSSEY Author Arthur C. Clarke is back with "3061" and so is Frank Poole, the astronaut killed in "2001." See Page 3 Wednesday, March 26, 1997 Bob Greene Chicago's 55-year-old secret: Jackie Robinson's tryout with the WhiteSox Heiple angling for an advantage he denied others By William Hageman Tribune Staff Writer The two young ballplayers showed up unannounced and uninvited at the Chicago White Sox's spring training facility in Pasadena, requesting a chance to try out. It A rl ill tvik jj1 JF i iMrwuJ JtA 1 kmT The child who was known as Richard turned 6 years old this month. The adoptive parents and adoptive brother with whom he lived for the first four years of his life the family he loved went out and shopped for a present for him, made a card for him, and sent the gift off to the house where he is said to be living. They do this every birthday; they do this every Christmas.

As usual, they have no idea at all whether Richard received their gift, or whether he even was told that they remember him. This is because, despite all the promises, that child still has been permitted not one word, even on the telephone, with the people he knew as his family. Even prisoners are permitted phone calls with loved ones. That little boy is not. On Richard's birthday as on every day of the year his 9-year old adoptive brother waited to see if there would be a call It has been 23 months now since, on the orders of the Illinois Supreme Court, Richard was carried off in tears, loaded into that van and driven away.

The Supreme Court with James D. Heiple as its voice ordered him taken, and refused to do anything at all to protect him or make sure he was allowed some contact with the family he loved. So the birthday came, another day with no word. What was the day like for the 9-year-old who waited? "It was his brother's birthday," his mother said, those words explaining it all. "He was very sad." This is worth bringing up because Heiple, chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, has been making a lot of legal noise lately, trying to influence the case that has been brought against him and which will be heard by the Illinois Courts Commission.

Heiple has been officially charged with "con Sox manager Jimmie Dykes watched the pair one an infielder, the other a pitcher go through their paces on the field at Brookside Park. Afterward, Dykes reportedly told the infield hopeful that he was quicker than anyone the Sox had in their outfield. But Dykes and the two prospects knew that this workout, however impressive, PC i would not eobevond the manager's L-u- Sox manager Jimmie Dykes words of encouragement. This was, after all, 1942. nd no matter how dazzling Jackie Robinson, or any other black player, was in that workout on that March day, there was no spot for them with the White Sox.

A pril 15 marks the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, signaling the end of major-league baseball's 60-year-old exclusion Tribune file photos Jackie Robinson as a member of the minor league Montreal Royals in 1946. are unaware that the tryout, if it could even be called that, ever occurred. During his lifetime, Robinson collaborated on three books and numerous magazine articles on his life, yet that day at Brookside Park was never mentioned in print. None of Chicago's daily papers the Tribune, Sun, Herald American or Daily News reported the event. Nor was any mention made in the weekly Chicago Defender, the black newspaper.

Only one newspaper, the American Communist Party's See Robinson, Page 7 years before his arrival in Brooklyn. Almost as interesting is the speculation as to what Robinson might have meant to the White Sox, Chicago and race relations in the city Robinson, then 23, and pitcher Nate Moreland, 25, appeared at Brookside Park in mid-March 1942, asking for a tryout. Dykes and his staff let them go through the motions, knowing full well the whole effort was an exercise in futility The event today is shrouded in mystery. Many baseball historians and most fans duct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice and conduct that brings the judicial office into disrepute." As has been reported, Heiple nominated his close friend Moses Harrison II to chair the commission that will judge him; Heiple has used intricate legal maneuvers in an attempt to prevent the commission, and the citizens of mi- of black ballplayers. Nearly lost in all of this spring's hoopla players and umpires are wearing commemorative arm patches, special baseballs are being used at games, and various events are planned at ballparks around the country is the virtually unknown story of Robinson's contact with the White Sox more than five Twenty-three months, and not even a phone call.

Notorious B.I.G.1 Channel 5 news turns to 'Mr. Glitz' in push for No. 1 'Devil's Own' is troubled by lack of emotional core By Michael Wilmington Tribune Movie Critic The Devil's Own" starring Brad Pitt as an Irish nois, from hearing any witnesses or testimony about the facts of what he did to be charged with misconduct The charges against Heiple have nothing to do with what he and the colleagues who supported him did to Richard. Yet in a way those charges have everything to do with what Heiple did to that child and with what he did to the central Illinois child who was known as Joe, the child whom a Heiple-written order removed from a loving home where he was to be adopted, and handed to a convicted felon and his wife who were not related to the boy in any way. The connection between what Heiple so forcefully denied those voiceless, helpless children, and what he is seeking to do in his own case, is striking.

The connection is that when it was those little boys whose lives were at stake, Heiple could not find a way to permit the courts to allow them even the decency of a hearing on their own behalf. Yet when it is Heiple himself who faces a day in court, he is willing to utilize every trick, every questionable loophole, to steer the system to his own advantage. Heiple appears to believe that he is some sort of victim a victim of the news media who are reporting on him. But the person who first put Heiple's confrontation with Pekin police officers into the press was Heiple himself. Hours after Heiple's arrest, through his attorney, he contacted reporters in Pekin and Peoria, claiming that the police had treated him poorly and threatening to sue them for violating his rights.

It was the first that the press had heard of his arrest; it was a pathetically transparent attempt at a preemptive strike. Heiple apparently figured that if he went to the press first, before the, news of his arrest became public, he could influence the coverage and make himself look like the wounded party. It didn't work. Now he faces the disciplinary hearing about what he did during that arrest, and how he allegedly bullied and disobeyed police officers repeatedly in other Illinois cities. The way he has tried to subvert the courts commission process is now a matter of public record.

He can no longer get away with blaming the police; he can no longer get away with blaming the press. Thanks to Heiple, as his fellow Illinois Supreme Court justice Charles E. Freeman has stated: "The integrity of this court is subject to question even from within." By Steve Johnson Tribune Television Critic Joel Cheatwood's reputation precedes him into the WMAQ-Ch. 5 cafeteria, which is why it is almost a surprise when he arrives toting neither the National Enquirer nor a personal police scanner. The new WMAQ-Ch.

5 news vice president, derided for bringing tabloid glitz to Miami newscasts, then less-bloody glitz to those in Boston, takes a seat at a corner table and sounds more like a rational TV news executive than the demongenius expected from newspaper headlines that have called him, among other things, "Hurricane Joel." Cheatwood talks about making the Channel 5 newscasts more attractive to the senses, yes, but he also talks about beefing up investigations, being sure to put crime stories in context, demonstrating sensitivity to the "idiosyncrasies and intangibles" of the city, and not talking down to viewers. See Cheatwood, Page 3 i Mi Murdered rapper's last album resonates with its candor, glimpses of prophecy A Republican Army revolutionary and killer and Harrison Ford as the Irish-American cop who unknowingly hides him is a big, beautifully filmed action movie whose soul sometimes seems to have dropped away. Set in Brooklyn and Belfast and made by a director (Alan Pakula) and cinematographer (Gordon Willis) who have keen eyes for modern urban landscapes, the picture looks great Deceptively so. Both these cities and the two lead actors who are meant, in some ways, to embody them seem to simmer with tension and confusion, desperate for a moment of peace. Here, as in star Ford's slick but vacuous 1992 "Patriot Games," we see the clash between American and Irish cultural violence, between America's melting-pot crime waves and the stark and bloody tragedies of the age-old Irish "troubles." Caught in this contrast are Ford's tough but decent family man and cop, Tom O'Meara, and Pitt's seductive, young killer, Frankie McGuire (aka Rory See Devil's, Page 3 By Greg Kot Tribune Rock Critic adly, the artwork and music on the Notorius B.I.G.'s new album, "Life After Death" (Bad Boy Records) completed in that declare "Somebody's Got to Die" and "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)." On the cover, B.I.G.

stands next to a funeral hearse. The words and images hit so close to home they verge on the exploitive, and the rapper's record label was compelled to issue a statement to the media that the disc had not been altered in any way after B.I.G. had completed it weeks before See B.I.G., Page 10 'I don't think you're going to see a lot of Joel Cheatwood its entirety before the rapper's recent slaying proved prophetic. Released 15 days after B.I.G. was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles, the double CD is framed by songs i A.