Dick Groat dies at 92; former Pittsburgh Pirates star also played in NBA

• April 27, 2023

By Will Graves | Associated Press

PITTSBURGH — Dick Groat, a two-sport star who went from All-American guard in basketball to a brief stint in the NBA to ultimately an All-Star shortstop and the 1960 National League MVP while playing baseball for his hometown Pittsburgh Pirates, has died. He was 92.

Groat’s family said in a statement that he died Thursday at UMPC Presbyterian Hospital due to complications from a stroke.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of such a beloved member of the Pirates family and Pittsburgh community,” Pirates Chairman Bob Nutting said in a statement, calling Groat “a great player and an even better person.”

Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski, left, and Pittsburgh head coach Jamie Dixon, right, flank Dick Groat at a ceremony honoring Groat before a 2014 game in Pittsburgh. Groat played basketball and baseball at Duke in the early 1950s, earning All-American honors in both.

Groat, who was from the Swissvale neighborhood just east of Pittsburgh’s downtown, starred at Duke in basketball and baseball in the early 1950s, earning All-American honors in both. His No. 10 jersey hangs inside Cameron Indoor Stadium after the program retired his number following the end of his senior season in 1952.

Groat attempted to play both baseball and basketball professionally, signing with the Pirates and being drafted by the Fort Wayne Pistons of the then-fledgling NBA within weeks of each other in 1952.

While Groat said basketball was his first love, a stint in the military during the mid-1950s redirected the arc of his athletic career.

After leaving the service, Pirates general manager Branch Rickey persuaded Groat to focus on baseball, a decision that turned into a lengthy 14-year career split between Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Groat made the All-Star team in five seasons and led the majors in hitting in 1960 when he batted .325.

That season ended with Groat earning NL MVP honors for a Pirates team that upset the New York Yankees to win the World Series.

Groat finished with 2,138 career hits during a major league career that spanned from 1952-67. The Pirates announced last week that Groat would be inducted into the team’s recently established Hall of Fame later this summer.

A member of the college basketball and college baseball Halls of Fame, Groat was a two-time All-American guard at Duke in the 1950s and remains the second-leading scorer in school history, averaging 23.0 points for the Blue Devils. He was taken third overall by the Fort Wayne Pistons in the 1952 NBA draft.

Groat played 26 games for the Pistons, averaging 11.9 points, 3.3 rebounds and 2.7 assists. His basketball career, however, ended after he enlisted in the Army in 1953. He spent nearly two years in the service and when he was discharged, Rickey essentially threatened to take away Groat’s signing bonus if he didn’t turn his attention to baseball.

Groat relented and became one of the most consistent shortstops of his era. He played in eight All-Star games (there were two games a season for a brief period in the 1950s and 1960s) and during Pittsburgh’s improbable run to a World Series title in 1960, it was Groat and not future baseball Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente and Bill Mazeroski who spearheaded the Pirates’ unlikely rise from perennial also-ran to championship club.

The list of players who finished behind Groat in the 1960 NL MVP voting includes Hall of Famers Clemente, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial and Eddie Matthews.

A smooth defender who teamed with Mazeroski to lead the NL in double plays five times — a record that still stands — Groat played 1,290 games at shortstop for the Pirates, fourth on the club’s all-time list.

Pittsburgh traded Groat to St. Louis in November 1962. Groat responded by having the best statistical season of his career in 1963, finishing second in MVP voting behind Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax while hitting .319 with a major league-leading 43 doubles. Groat won a second world championship that fall as the Cardinals toppled the Yankees in seven games.

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Groat played briefly for Philadelphia and then the Giants before retiring after the 1967 season. He remained active in the Pittsburgh area following his playing days, including spending four decades as a color commentator for the University of Pittsburgh basketball team.

Groat is survived by daughters Tracey, Carol Ann and Allison, along with 11 grandchildren.

​ Orange County Register 

Fryer: Orange County releaguing plans just got more interesting

• April 27, 2023

Maybe the Trinity League football group stays as it is.

Or maybe the top six football programs in Orange County are placed in the same league, with a potential mix of public and private schools in that group.

And perhaps the Freeway League stays out of the football-only league plan and keeps its six schools together for football and everything else.

Orange County high school athletic directors met Monday to discuss possibilities for new league structures that will be in place for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years.

The plan for football-only leagues gathered support. That plan would be the creation of leagues that exist only in football. Those football leagues would be organized by using teams’ performances of the past two seasons to create a power-points profile and using that profile to place teams in football leagues. That power-points profile would be weighted: 65 percent would come from the most recent of the two seasons, with the other 35 percent derived from the first of the two seasons.

Three variations of the football leagues plan came out of the athletic directors meeting.

One of those three football proposals could lead to high-performing public school football teams like Los Alamitos and Mission Viejo landing in a six-team league with national powerhouses Mater Dei and St. John Bosco. If that proposed system was in place now Los Alamitos and Mission Viejo would be in that six-team group for the 2023 football season and current Trinity League football teams JSerra and Servite would not.

After that group of the top six power-points profile teams is assembled a second-tier group of six teams would be assembled and so on.

And that’s where the Freeway League comes in with this football-only leagues model. La Habra’s football team might be in that second-tier league with the likes of Edison, San Clemente and Yorba Linda, but La Habra’s other sports teams would remain in the current Freeway League, a league that’s been the same for 41 years, with Buena Park, Fullerton, Sonora, Sunny Hills and Troy.

But most of the Freeway League’s six schools want to stay out of the football-only leagues business and wants to remain intact for all sports. At least one school, though, would like to see La Habra playing elsewhere.

La Habra has won 21 of the past 25 Freeway League football championships, has won 93 of its past 95 league games and last season went 5-0 in the league with an average winning margin of 29 points.

Some Orange County athletic directors prefer that the Trinity League football group stay as it is, then using the power points profile system to organize the other 69 11-man football teams in the Orange County Area. The Orange County Area is not strictly based on geography, as St. John Bosco of Bellflower is placed in the Orange County Area for league affiliation purposes.

Mission Viejo football coach Chad Johnson supports that idea.

“If everything is equal,” Johnson said, “then I have no problem having the best teams grouped with the best teams. But when there are a lot of inequities … can we really make it equal or do we keep it separated?”

Johnson was an assistant coach at St. John Bosco so he knows about the inequities. Yes, Mission Viejo and many other public schools in a variety of sports get talented transfers and have student-athletes who reside outside of their attendance areas.

The large private schools’ major advantages are in fundraising. Most of the county’s public school football programs don’t have a golf tournament that raises thousands of dollars, something that is as common in the Trinity League as a pregame prayer.

And there’s more, like coaching stipends.

“When I was at Bosco we had an admissions department that helped us get out there to get kids and we had a much higher budget,” Johnson said. “I know coaches who were at my school who went from being a varsity coach here to working at Santa Margarita as a freshman coach where they’re making three times more than they made here.

“I want a budget that matches the teams we’re going to be in a league with, an advancement department to run a gala and a golf tournament to raise money like Mater Dei does. If we can do that, then put us in that league.”

Orange County high school principals meet May 15 at Christ Cathedral to discuss the proposals and select one that will be the way leagues will exist for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years.

That will be fun.

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​ Orange County Register 

California passes 1st-in-nation train emissions rules

• April 27, 2023

By Sophie Austin | Associated Press/Report for America

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Every day, locomotives pull rail cars filled with food, lumber, oil and other products through railyards near neighborhoods in Oakland, Commerce, San Bernadino and other California cities.

They run on diesel, a more powerful fuel than gasoline, and burning all that diesel produces pollution that is harmful for people who live nearby, as well as greenhouse gases. California’s Air Resources Board is trying to change that.

The agency voted Thursday to approve a rule banning the use of locomotive engines more than 23 years old by 2030 and increasing the use of zero-emissions technology to transport freight from ports and throughout railyards. The rule would also ban locomotives in the state from idling longer than 30 minutes if they are equipped with an automatic shutoff.

California would have to get authorization from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to move forward with the rule, which would be stricter than federal standards. Other states can sign on to try to adopt the California rule if it gets the OK from the Biden administration.

The rule is the most ambitious of its kind in the country.

“It’s going to be groundbreaking, and it’s going to address the diesel crisis that’s been poisoning communities near railyards for literal decades,” Yasmine Agelidis, a lawyer with environmental nonprofit Earthjustice said before the agency vote.

Diesel exhaust is a health hazard. According to California regulators, diesel emissions are responsible for some 70% of Californians’ cancer risk from toxic air pollution. The rule would curb emissions on a class of engines that annually release more than 640 tons of tiny pollutants that can enter deep into a person’s lungs and worsen asthma, and release nearly 30,000 tons of smog-forming emissions known as nitrogen oxides. The rule would also drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions from locomotives, by an amount akin to removing all heavy-duty trucks from the state by 2030.

It’s important to tackle emissions from a sector that often burdens low-income residents and communities of color, and that has plans to expand passenger rail, said Air Resources Board Chair Liane M. Randolph.

Rail companies can participate in incentive programs run by the state to ease the cost of transitioning to zero-emissions locomotives, the agency said.

For activists and residents who’ve lived in areas affected by heavy rail pollution, the fight for cleaner trains is decades in the making.

Jan Victor Andasan, an activist with East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, grew up in West Long Beach and now organizes residents there. It’s a neighborhood near the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach that is “surrounded by pollution” from trains, trucks and industry.

“We support rail, but we support rail if they’re doing all their best to mitigate their emissions,” Andasan said.

Supporters of the proposed rule shared stories Thursday of children who live near railways having to share inhalers to ease asthma symptoms and families taking extreme measures to rid their homes of diesel fumes.

Some activists would like California to go further, for example to limit locomotive idling to 15 minutes. They are also concerned that increased demand from online shopping is causing more rail traffic that burdens communities.

But some say it’s too soon to implement the locomotive standards. Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, said the rule would be expensive for rail companies, and increased costs will mean higher prices for many goods that move by rail.

The Association of American Railroads said in a statement “there is no clear path to zero emissions locomotives.”

“Mandating that result ignores the complexity and interconnected nature of railroad operations and the reality of where zero emission locomotive technology and the supporting infrastructure stand,” the group wrote.

Freight railways are an efficient means to transport the roughly 1.6 billion tons of goods nationwide across nearly 140,000 miles, much cleaner than if those goods were trucked, it said.

Kristen South, a spokesperson for Union Pacific, said in a statement the rail company wants regulators to continue to work with them to come up with a more “balanced” solution that is not too ambitious for the current technology and infrastructure.

Union Pacific is working to cut greenhouse gas emissions in part by spending $1 billion to modernize locomotives and testing out engines powered by electric batteries, South wrote.

“We need the strongest, most protective in-use locomotive regulation because we know these CARB rulings have impact not only in California but across the U.S.,” said Cecilia Garibay, a project coordinator with the 50-member Moving Forward Network based at Occidental College.

The EPA recently approved California rules aimed at reducing emissions from heavy trucks. The rules will require zero-emission trucks, depending on the type, to make up between 40% and 75% of sales by 2035.

Heidi Swillinger lives in a mobile home park in San Pablo, a small city in the San Francisco Bay Area, along the BNSF Railway. She estimates that her home is just 20 feet from the tracks. She said it’s not uncommon for diesel fumes to fill her house, resulting in a “thick, acrid, dirty smell.”

“Nobody wants to live next to a railroad track,” Swillinger said. “You move next to a railroad track because you don’t have other options.”

Sophie Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @sophieadanna

​ Orange County Register 

Pirates steal series from Dodgers on rough day for Julio Urias

• April 27, 2023

PITTSBURGH — Before boarding the team flight out of Pittsburgh on Thursday, the Dodgers needed to take a careful inventory of their equipment. The Pirates stole everything else.

Even the Dodgers’ best pitcher at controlling the running game, Julio Urias, couldn’t completely stop the Pirates’ thievery. They stole three bases in the first inning against Urias, running their total for the three-game series to 12 on the way to a 6-2 defeat of the Dodgers on Thursday afternoon.

Eight of the 21 runs the Pirates scored in winning two of three from the Dodgers were aided and abetted directly by stolen bases. The Dodgers have now given up a major-league high 38 steals in 44 attempts. Half of the six times the Dodgers have actually thwarted a steal attempt came on pickoffs by Urias, including one Thursday.

“It created a lot of offense for them,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I don’t know how many bases they stole, but it was certainly double digits. … It was something that, like I’ve said for the last few days, it’s hard to not see it, what’s going on and we’ve got to continue to try to manage it. But that was a big difference in how many bases we gave up.”

The rules changes MLB has implemented this season, encouraging more action on the bases, has created a new way of doing business for teams like the Pirates and Arizona Diamondbacks – young, athletic teams that put the ball in play and run aggressively.

The Dodgers have played those two teams 11 times in the early going and lost seven. The Pirates and Diamondbacks combined to steal 24 bases in 25 attempts in those games, averaging over five runs per game against the Dodgers.

They look like two prime examples of teams that have benefitted from baseball’s new world order.

“Yeah, they are,” Roberts said. “I don’t think they put a roster together based on things that have changed with the landscape of baseball. It certainly, in my opinion, levels the playing field and that’s a good thing for baseball.

“Just the bases that we’ve given up, it’s a lot. I’m not discounting that at all. But I think it’s more magnified because of the teams that we’ve played early on.”

The Dodgers finally did some running of their own and it turned an early 1-0 lead into a 2-0 lead.

Singles by Mookie Betts and Jason Heyward put runners at the corners in the first inning. Heyward stole second – just the 10th successful stolen base by a Dodger this season – and scored with Betts on David Peralta’s two-out single.

The Pirates stole that lead away from the Dodgers too.

Leadoff hitter Tucupita Marcano started the running with a bunt single, advancing to third on a wild throw by Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes.

Bryan Reynolds drove him in with a single. After Andrew McCutchen also singled, he and Reynolds moved up on a double steal – and scored on a sacrifice fly and a bloop single to give the Pirates a 3-2 lead.

“He had that first hitter with two strikes and it was starting to get into starting off on a good note,” Roberts said. “But then the two-strike bunt I think changed the dynamic of that inning. They capitalized. Couple other base hits, couple stolen bases put them in a situational hitting situation and they capitalized and scored some runs.

“When he gets ahead of that first guy, wants to put up a zero and then a two-strike bunt, we throw the ball away, he’s at third base and they hit a fly ball or base hit, another base hit, stolen base, stolen base and then a base hit or sac fly and they’ve got the lead. It kind of flipped the game, the momentum pretty quickly.”

It stayed a one-run game until the sixth inning when the Pirates scored three runs on back-to-back home runs by Connor Joe and Rudolfo Castro. It was the third consecutive start in which Urias has given up back-to-back home runs – Patrick Wisdom and Cody Bellinger and then Bellinger and Trey Mancini did it to Urias in his previous two starts.

The six runs Urias gave up to the Pirates were the most earned runs he has allowed in a start since June 2021. It is part of a poor three-start stretch by the left-hander. Urias has allowed 14 runs in 14 ⅔ innings over that time and batters are hitting .344 (22 for 64) against him with those six home runs.

“I have to pitch better. That’s what I have to do,” Urias said in Spanish.

“I feel like I’m too inconsistent right now and I’m paying the price.”

A lineup missing Max Muncy, Will Smith and J.D. Martinez was unable to fight back. The final 15 Dodgers batters went down in order against Pirates starter Mitch Keller and the bullpen.

“We kind of found our way in that position each game differently,” Roberts said of being short-handed due to injuries and paternity leave. “With the guys that we have, we’re going out there expecting to win. Today, I thought we had some good momentum and we just couldn’t keep that momentum from the first.

“As far as the guys that are here, there are some things we’ve got to get better at on both sides of the baseball. But we’re going to get our team back here, our full-strength team, soon.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Festival Pass: 🐴🤠🍻 Stagecoach returns to Indio this weekend; here’s what you need to know

• April 27, 2023

Festival Pass is a newsletter that lands in your inbox weekly. But during prime festival season you get bonus editions, too! Subscribe now.

Happy Thursday!

Yee-Haw! It’s time for Stagecoach!

The annual three-day country music festival is hitting the Empire Polo Club in Indio on April 28-30 and things are going to look a bit different this year.

Festival organizers over at Goldenvoice have rearranged the stages to give some of the activations additional space. They’ve also created new lounge, bar and VIP areas in the process.

We cover all of that and so much more in our Stagecoach preview with talent buyer Stacy Vee. Read about all of the changes and new amenities here.

Country music duo Brooks & Dunn played the very first Stagecoach back in 2007. They’ll be back to play the Mane Stage just before Sunday headliner Chris Stapleton on April 30 and we caught up with Ronnie Dunn to talk about the longevity of the pair and the lasting impact of its early ’90s hit “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” Read our full interview with Dunn here.

While the desert is yee-hawing all weekend long, the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles will be celebrating country icon Willie Nelson‘s 90th birthday with a massive lineup of special guests performing a variety of Nelson’s hits from throughout his lengthy career. We talked to event promoters about how the two-day, star-studded event featuring guests like Dwight Yoakam, Neil Young, Snoop Dogg, Tom Jones, Gary Clark Jr., George Strait, Emmylou Harris and more came together.

A look back at Coachella Weekend 2

The second weekend of the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is always slightly different than the first, but this year, it was wildly different. With Sunday headliner Frank Ocean bowing out of Weekend 2, he was replaced by Weekend 1 Sahara Tent surprise act Blink-182 and fans on-site had a lot of mixed emotions.

A few of the acts brought out different surprise guests for Weekend 2, including Gorillaz, which invited Beck and even Friday headliner Bad Bunny on stage for songs. Gorillaz vocalist Damon Albarn even boldly proclaimed that Weekend 2 was superior to Weekend 1 and he certainly looked to be having a blast.

Saturday headliners Blackpink were back for a fiery encore performance and Labrinth surprised fans by teaming up with Sia and Zendaya during his turn. And electronic duo Sofi Tukker got a boost during their performance courtesy of Bob’s Dance Shop, who we tracked down for a quick interview backstage.

Unlike Weekend 1, Sunday ended with a big ‘ol bang as Blink-182 closed out the main Coachella Stage with so much pyro and fireworks. The whole event officially wrapped with a DJ set on a satellite stage featuring Skrillex, Four Tet and Fred Again.

The Weekend 2 fan fashion had a different style and vibe and guests were also able to celebrate both Record Store Day and Earth Day on-site with several activities.

See our Coachella Weekend 2 photo galleries 

Coachella 2023: Our 50 best photos from Weekend 2

Coachella 2023: See photos of performers and fans from Sunday, Weekend 2

Coachella 2023: See photos of performers and fans from Saturday, Weekend 2

Coachella 2023: Photos of festival fashion during Weekend 2

Coachella 2023: Photos of performers and fans from Friday, Weekend 2

Get all of our coverage from the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival here.

As always, thanks for reading and keep rockin’.

Get Festival Pass delivered to your inbox weekly.

Read previous editions of the Festival Pass newsletter

Festival Pass:  With Coachella Weekend 1 in the books, here’s what to expect for Weekend 2

Festival Pass:Who to see, what to eat and where to go at Coachella

Festival Pass: BeachLife’s country music event, BeachLife Ranch, will return in September

Festival Pass:  Goldenvoice’s Power Trip metal fest is coming to Indio

Festival Pass: Punk in the Park brings music and craft beer to Ventura

Festival Pass: A tacos, tequila, margarita and hip-hop festival is coming to Norc

Festival Pass: Boots in the Park hits Norco with headliner Cole Swindell this weekend

Festival Pass: Rolling Loud takes over Hollywood Park in Inglewood this weekend

​ Orange County Register 

Dungeons & Dragons was invented in this Wisconsin town. Why no statue?

• April 27, 2023

Christopher Borrelli | Chicago Tribune

When Ed Schwinn thinks about the history of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin — and as president of the board of directors for the Geneva Lake Museum, he thinks about it quite a bit — he thinks of a summer retreat, a tourist town that has fewer than 10,000 year-round residents. He thinks of his own family living there year-round for 34 years. He thinks of his grandfather, who helped steer the Schwinn Bicycle Company into becoming a household name, buying a second home on the lakefront in the 1920s. He notes that a lot of summer families have long since become permanent residents, though “when I grew up on Lake Geneva, people with homes on the lakefront shut off the water on Labor Day, slipped a key under the mat and went home until May.”

He thinks of all those wealthy, famous names associated with the history of the town — the Schwinns, the Wrigleys, the Maytags, the Wards — then admits, “No matter how many well-known families have been coming here a century or more, I’m not sure any of us have done as much for the city of Lake Geneva as Gary Gygax.”

If the name doesn’t ring a bell, you’d be hard-pressed to learn more in Lake Geneva.

True, there is a combination store and small museum there centered on Gygax’s inventions. And yes, one of Gygax’s homes is now something like holy ground for true believers. But there are no historic markers or formal signs of civic pride, and the closest thing Lake Geneva has to formal recognition of Gary Gygax is a maroon brick alongside the lake itself, set into a promenade and inscribed with the following:

“In memory of E. Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons.”

“Call me biased because he’s my dad,” said Luke Gygax, one of Gygax’s six children, “but I don’t know another figure from Lake Geneva who had as much impact beyond Lake Geneva as my dad. You should drive into Lake Geneva and there should be a sign, at the least, saying: ‘Lake Geneva, Home of Dungeons & Dragons.’ Someone in local government should be arguing for this. Hopefully, the 50th anniversary will help.”

Chuckle, but he’s not wrong.

Next year will mark a half-century since Gygax and co-developer Dave Arneson debuted a radical new form of tabletop gaming, one that did away with a traditional board and relied on storytelling, a set of dice and a player’s imagination. In subsequent decades, the game’s popularity gave the fantasy genre new life, influencing video game designers, artists, authors, costume makers and generations of Hollywood producers. In March, a new Chris Pine-led “Dungeons & Dragons” movie became the highest-grossing film in the country, unseating the latest “John Wick” blockbuster. A few weeks later, Gary Con, an up-and-coming convention held annually near Lake Geneva in honor of Gygax, drew 3,000 attendees, including Vince Vaughn, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and “Game of Thrones” co-creator D.B. Weiss — not to speak or sign autographs, but to blend in and play alongside fellow gamers. According to Wizards of the Coast, the Seattle company that now owns Dungeons & Dragons (and is itself owned by Hasbro), more than 50 million people worldwide have played the game. After a lull in popularity, the pandemic gave D&D a renewed burst of energy, and now it’s more popular than ever, with an estimated 14 million active players.

Seems worth a statue at least, right?

“Lake Geneva has an opportunity here,” said Paul Stormberg, a Nebraska auction house owner and president of the Gygax Memorial Fund, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) set up more than a decade ago with Gygax’s widow, Gail, after Gygax died at age 69 in 2008. “But I don’t think the town has embraced yet what this could mean. There are whole towns that shape their economies around the legacy of a single author. D&D is niche. But so is chess. And if chess was invented in your town, you’d probably want to celebrate that.”

This is a story about how we choose to recognize a cultural legacy, particularly when the legacy is not that of a soldier, politician, activist or wizard of more accepted classical arts. Chess Records on South Michigan Avenue, one of the birthplaces of rock n’ roll, gets a small home and adjoining garden. Miles Davis gets a statue in his hometown of Alton, Illinois, north of St. Louis. And John Belushi, in Wheaton, his hometown, gets nothing at all.

Rarely, however, does any of it feel like enough.

Vintage game modules from the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons on display at The Dungeon Hobby Shop and Museum in Lake Geneva, which is located in the old offices of TSR, the company Gary Gygax created to sell the game. (E. Jason Wambsgans/TNS/Chicago Tribune)

Nearly a decade ago, I went to Lake Geneva to speak with Gail Gygax, who was trying then to get the Lake Geneva city government interested in a huge, wildly ambitious memorial to her late husband. City administrators felt that she needed the money for the memorial first. And better focus. Like any good D&D player — despite having barely played — I wanted to know what happened next. The answer was epic.

There are tangentially related businesses. The former headquarters of TSR, the company Gary Gygax started to publish D&D, is now a hobby shop and small museum devoted to TSR. The home where Gygax first played D&D is now rentable for D&D matches and parties. This summer, the Geneva Lake Museum will open a permanent exhibit about Gygax’s life. And for years, a local fan has been raising money to build a 30,000-square-foot immersive fantasy-themed entertainment center and restaurant in Lake Geneva named the Griffin & Gargoyle, with an eye on opening in time for 50th-anniversary festivities around D&D.

Yet it’s unclear if there will be any.

“I never really thought about this in the light of day, I suppose,” said Brian Waspi, head of Lake Geneva’s tourism commission, and himself a D&D player. “I grew up on the game. My brother tested it with Gary. I have D&D books on my shelf right here, and I know all about its resurgence, which is amazing. But if you’re from Lake Geneva, I think it’s just something that was always here. It’s felt like more of a local thing around here. It stayed sort of alternative and different for a long time, and only now seems to be in the mainstream.”

Not to mention, since Gygax’s death 15 years ago, there have been more lawsuits involving his estate and creation than even a Dungeon Master could juggle; one, between Luke and Gail, his stepmother, over a contested Gary Gygax will, was set for trial this spring in Lake Geneva. And none of that even touches the decades-long stink attached to D&D after concerned parents and evangelical preachers in the 1980s linked it with Satan worship, resulting in no less than “60 Minutes” devoting a full hour to this perceived epidemic; that scare would be so enduring the most recent season of “Stranger Things” was partly centered on its town attacking a harmless cadre of D&D players called the Hellfire Club.

Figurines for the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, on exhibit at the Geneva Lake Museum. (E. Jason Wambsgans/TNS/Chicago Tribune)

Asked why Lake Geneva still seems ambivalent about its famous creation, Ben Riggs, a Milwaukee author who wrote “Slaying the Dragon,” a 2022 history of the game, said: “I think, for one, the Satanic panic still lingers, in a way. In general, ask people around Lake Geneva what they think of the game, and a lot of them act like you’re pointing to a bug under a rock. There’s a sense of shame about it. In many ways, this new movie is a Wisconsin product, but I find that Wisconsin is like, what do you mean? It’s not cheese or beer or sausage. Having said that, I also think that their lack of understanding of D&D makes some sense.”

Dungeons & Dragons offers no winners or losers; it seeks cooperation among players, not competition. It’s known for having rule books so dense they fill bookshelves; it was never the easiest game to comprehend.

“During the Satanic panic, my kids were kids and I remember thinking, ‘Well, they’re not playing that,’” said Charlene Klein, the mayor of Lake Geneva and a native of rural Illinois. “But I also never realized what the game was until five years ago, when I visited Gary Con. They’re not all nerds. They’re professionals. They’re smart. Years ago, when I was president of the board at Horticultural Hall, I remember guys coming in to look around. I asked if I could help them. They said, ‘We just want to breathe the air.’ Gary held his first (gaming) convention in that hall. I thought, ‘Wow, they’re devoted.’ Now I think they’re creative and remarkable.”

Just outside of her office, high on the walls of the administration building, there are murals of Lake Geneva’s past, a narrative of bucolic summers, parasols, sailboats. There are no images of introverted middle-class teens huddled at basement card tables, jiggling 20-sided dice, pretending to be fifth-level warlocks. The town was established by business owners in 1837, and, partly thanks to railroads, became a seasonal destination for Chicago money. Tourism, and summertime, then and now, made its economy.

Patrick Quinn, the now-retired archivist of Northwestern University, grew up in Lake Geneva, raised by his grandparents and an uncle. He attended high school with Gygax. His uncle delivered mail; his grandfather, a plumber, installed toilets for the vacationing rich. “Was there tension? You mean between the working class and the wealthy?” He laughed. “Most people I knew worked for the rich bastards on the lake. And a lot were laid off after the summer. Was there resentment? In a way, it was like a feudal medieval village.”

He remembers Gygax and friends escaping into town swamps to smoke and talk castles and monsters. “Understand, Gary was a total geek in high school — way outside the mainstream of kids I grew up with.”

Gygax, originally, was a Chicagoan. His parents moved after his mother became concerned about raising a son in the Uptown neighborhood. She herself came from a middle-class Lake Geneva family. Gary found friends, though never graduated high school. After a stint in the Marines, he returned to Lake Geneva, married and commuted by rail to an insurance job in Chicago. Hobby gaming was never far from his mind.

By the late 1960s, he had founded Gen Con in Lake Geneva, a gaming convention that became not only a major influence on later nerd gatherings like San Diego Comic-Con and Chicago’s C2E2, but continues today in Indianapolis, attracting 50,000 attendees a year.

Photographs of Gary Gygax in the Lake Geneva home where he created and first played Dungeon & Dragons in 1974. (E. Jason Wambsgans/TNS/Chicago Tribune)

By the early 1970s, his small home in Lake Geneva was a Midwest mecca for a loose fellowship of gaming buddies. “It was a social club of guys, many driving over from Illinois, all of which eventually morphed into TSR,” said Jon Peterson, author of “Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons.” “So D&D was initially a white middle-class thing. That’s changed profoundly, in terms of race and gender. But in a town like Lake Geneva, you do wonder who would connect to a game like this.”

But internationally, TSR, Gygax’s company, became a leading publisher of role-playing tabletop games, with rule books so popular they made their way onto New York Times bestseller lists. Before moving to the West Coast, the company employed 500 people in the area, attracting artists and model makers and writers and toy designers. Its cultural influence would become far more familiar than the mechanics of its complicated gameplay. It became a rallying point in the 1970s and 1980s, organizing like-minded nerds into social networks. It moved tales of swords and sorcery beyond the shadow of J.R.R. Tolkien. It also introduced the idea that a player’s skills could increase with experience — a foundational tenet of contemporary video games. In fact, the concept (and slang use) of “leveling up” was a direct byproduct of the gameplay principle in D&D.

For better and worse.

D&D was so strange and original (and vaguely defined), it scared people.

“The Satan thing began in 1979,” Peterson said, “with a student at Michigan State who disappeared, presumably into tunnels under campus, because he was so into D&D presumably he confused the game with reality.” A few years later a Virginia mother claimed her teenage son’s suicide was a result of role-playing games. It snowballed from there. Gygax was a Jehovah’s Witness who hosted Bible study in his home. But D&D grew popular against a backdrop of ‘70s paranoia, Chicago’s Tylenol Murders and preachers eager to claim fantasy was leading to satanic rituals. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the FBI, would later disavow any link between suicides and D&D (and the existence of underground networks of Satanists massacring children in wooded areas). But to this day, the Federal Bureau of Prisons maintains a ban on prisoners playing (or owning) D&D, citing everything from it being a security threat to a gateway for gang activity.

A Dungeons & Dragons role-playing aide on exhibit at the Geneva Lake Museum. (E. Jason Wambsgans/TNS/Chicago Tribune)

“Still, the thing about people who said D&D was a tool of evil forces was that they actually made a trenchant observation about the game,” Riggs said. “Defenders would say that it’s just a game. And it was never just a game. It occupied attention in this scary, new way. You might even question if it was a game at all! I think it’ll join jazz and comic books as a seminal invention of the American imagination — but what kind of game could actually last for weeks?” Not to mention, TSR art featured demons. Imagine being a nervous parent in 1983 and finding your kids at a table, casting spells to resurrect the dead and call on dark forces.

Ask around Lake Geneva now about the link between the Satanic panic and their famous export and you get a lot of guarded eye rolls, then claims that some of the older residents still believe it’s dangerous, but no, not themselves. You’re more likely to hear about the messy afterlife of Gary Gygax: A few years ago, Gail Gygax was in a $30 million breach-of-contract lawsuit with a movie producer over control of the Gary Gygax name (the lawsuit was eventually dropped). Last fall, Wizards of the Coast, which purchased TSR in the 1990s but let the trademark lapse in 2000, filed an injunction against an owner of the Dungeon Hobby Shop in Lake Geneva and the latest iteration of TSR.

The only thing that anyone agrees on is that Lake Geneva should do more.

Inside the Lake Geneva home where Gary Gygax created and first played Dungeon & Dragons. (E. Jason Wambsgans/TNS/Chicago Tribune)

By the end of this summer, there will be two self-directed Gary Gygax walking tours of Lake Geneva. (He didn’t drive, so most of the stops are within blocks of each other.) One tour is offered by the Dungeon Hobby Shop, which itself is worth a look: Artifacts from TSR fill glass cases, most of the memorabilia donated by former TSR employees who still live nearby. But it’s not exactly a true museum — if you don’t understand much about D&D before stepping inside, you’d probably still feel lost afterward.

The other tour is organized by the Geneva Lake Museum. I went there with Yolanda Frontany, a bank manager from Portage Park who bought Gary Gygax’s former home. We walked through the museum’s half-finished Gygax exhibit, which will eventually feature D&D stained glass windows, a custom D&D gaming table and a brief history of role-playing games. A docent said he’d been there his whole life and he didn’t know much about D&D, only that people now come here from all over the world for a taste of its history.

“Yeah,” Frontany said, “they all show up at my front door.”

The Lake Geneva home where Gary Gygax created and first played Dungeon & Dragons. (E. Jason Wambsgans/TNS/Chicago Tribune)

About 18 years ago, while visiting Lake Geneva with her husband, she slowed the car outside a tiny white house on Center Street, not much bigger than a Chicago bungalow. Even after she bought it as a second house (along with the house next door), she still didn’t know the full history: Here Gary Gygax created the original Dungeons & Dragons rules and gameplay and first tested it with friends. There’s no historic marker out front that tells you this, only a rubber dragon mask in a picture window. Frontany recalled her grandmother — “a strict Roman Catholic” — imploring her to stay away from D&D. But now she rents the house next door as an Airbnb and, if you’re a D&D fan, for a little extra, she’ll let you play D&D in the very home where it was all started. She’s hosted D&D-themed bachelor parties here. She showed me pictures on her phone of Vince Vaughn playing there a few weeks ago, holding up a T-shirt that reads: “I Played D&D at Gary’s House.”

“People make pilgrimages here. They take off their shoes at the front door — holy ground! I’m already getting inquiries about the anniversary next year,” she said. “But I don’t have a clue what (the city) has planned.” She can feel a palpable disinterest.

Ed Schwinn of the Geneva Lake Museum said he spent a lot of time with city officials when the museum was still considering a Gygax exhibition, and “I’ve heard the whole gambit, from the enthusiastic, to they don’t get it, to they misunderstand what D&D is.” Mayor Klein noted the town’s history of attracting artists and said “there’s a lot of opinion about where, or if, stuff like this gets recognized.” She said Gary Con is drawing visitors to the town during its less-crowded months. She expects “to make a proclamation of sorts.”

An exhibit under construction at the Geneva Lake Museum about the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, which was created by Lake Geneva resident Gary Gygax. (E. Jason Wambsgans/TNS/Chicago Tribune)

Beyond that, there are no solid plans to honor Gygax or the anniversary of D&D.

Brian Waspi, the tourism commissioner, whose office gave the Geneva Lake Museum $10,000 for its exhibit, said “the town should and probably will lean into this eventually and own this — absolutely, it will.” But so far, he has “not personally heard of any initiatives.”

Paul Stormberg of the Gygax Memorial Fund is still preparing his.

He calls it the Greater Gygax Initiative and plans to pitch it for 2024. It includes a new memorial design (a gaming table, with a Gygax statue), an annual festival, historic markers and a push to educate the town on Gygax. He’s talked to the mayor and city council and said his “models give a $3 million impact annually,” partly in the form of hotel bookings and restaurant traffic. He’s launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise more for a memorial; the fund’s most recent IRS filings suggest it’s raised about $200,000 in a decade.

Luke Gygax is skeptical of that memorial fund but added: He and the fund’s stewards want the same thing, to remind Lake Geneva that a piece of its local history still resonates around the world. He’s sick of boat tours that point out the home of the Wrigleys but never his father’s lakefront home. “There’s people out there who never water ski. They stayed home in dark rooms and played a game with friends for hours. They weren’t sailing on that lake. Now they have money. Someday I hope the city of Lake Geneva realizes this.”

[email protected]

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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What to know about prescription drugs promising weight loss

• April 27, 2023

By JONEL ALECCIA | AP Health Writer

Obesity is a major and growing problem around the world, but especially in the U.S., where more than 40% of adults and about 20% of children now meet the criteria for what doctors say has become an intractable chronic disease.

Rates of the disease have soared in recent decades, spurred by the complex interaction of genes that make people more likely to store food as fat, a food system that provides easy and cheap access to processed treats explicitly designed to be overconsumed, and social settings that limit access to healthy options and exercise for many people.

Obesity is linked to scores of health problems that can lead to disability or even death, including high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer and joint problems.

Researchers have long looked for medications that can help people lose weight, mostly with disappointing and, in some cases, dangerous results. In recent years, however, drugs designed to help people with type 2 diabetes control their blood sugar levels have had the added effect of paring pounds.

Ozempic, a Novo Nordisk drug approved to treat diabetes in 2017, skyrocketed in use after celebrities and ordinary people on TikTok reported that their doctors prescribed it “off label” for weight loss. Wegovy, a higher dose version of the same medication, called semaglutide, was approved for weight loss for adults in 2021 and for children aged 12 and older late last year.

Now, a new drug made by Eli Lilly and Co., called tirzepatide, is poised to become the most potent obesity drug on the market, promising users losses of more than 30 to 50 pounds over time. Already approved under the brand name Mounjaro to treat type 2 diabetes, tirzepatide is being considered for fast-track approval as a weight-loss drug based on the results of key trials, with the latest announced on Thursday.

The new study found that patients with diabetes — who find it notoriously difficult to lose weight — could shed about 16% of their body weight, or more than 34 pounds using tirzepatide. An earlier study found that people without diabetes lost up to 22% of their body weight, or more than 50 pounds on the highest dose of the drug.

Tirzepatide and other medications spur weight loss by targeting the metabolic conditions that lead to extra pounds. Here’s what to know about these new prescription drugs that promise weight loss.

WHAT ARE THESE NEW WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS?

The drugs that have drawn the most attention have been a class of medications that activate a hormone known as GLP-1. They include Ozempic and Wegovy, which are two versions of the same medication, semaglutide.

Tirzepatide targets GLP-1, but also affects a second hormone, called GIP, which developers say contributes to its increased effectiveness. Mounjaro was approved to treat diabetes in May 2022.

The drugs are delivered through once-weekly injections. Users are advised to follow a healthful, reduced-calorie diet and to exercise regularly while using the drugs.

HOW DO OZEMPIC, WEGOVY AND MOUNJARO WORK?

The drugs work by mimicking the actions of hormones, found primarily in the gut, that kick in after people eat. The hormones help regulate blood sugar by triggering the pancreas to release insulin, another hormone, and slowing the release of sugar from the liver. People who are overweight or have obesity can become insulin-resistant, which means the body doesn’t respond to insulin properly.

The obesity drugs lower blood sugar and slow down digestion, so people feel full longer. They also affect signals in the brain linked to feelings of fullness and satisfaction, tamping down appetite, food-related thoughts and cravings.

Because people feel full longer, they eat less and lose weight.

HOW EFFECTIVE ARE THE DRUGS?

In a trial, adults who took Wegovy saw a weight loss of nearly 35 pounds, or about 15% of their body weight. Adolescents lost about 16% of their body weight.

The latest study of tirzepatide studied the drug in more than 900 patients with diabetes who were overweight or had obesity over nearly 17 months. It showed weight loss of up to 16% of body weight, more than 34 pounds, when using the highest dose of the drug. Patients who received placebo, or dummy injections, lost about 3% of their body weight, or 7 pounds.

An earlier trial of tirzepatide showed weight loss of between about 15% and about 22% of body weight, or about 35 pounds to about 52 pounds, depending on the dose.

The drugs appear effective for chronic weight management over many months. In addition to weight loss, they also reduce health problems associated with obesity, such as high blood sugar and markers of heart and metabolic disease.

However, it appears that if people taking the drugs stop, they regain the weight they lost — and the health problems that came with it.

WHY NOT JUST DIET AND EXERCISE?

In a typical weight-loss program where participants rely only on diet and exercise, research shows only about a third of people will lose 5% or more of their body weight, said Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Many people find it difficult to lose weight because of the body’s biological reactions to eating less, he said. There are several hormones that respond to reduced calorie intake by ramping up hunger to maintain body mass.

WHAT ARE THE SIDE EFFECTS OF THE DRUGS?

The most common side effects are short-lived gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea and stomach pain. Other possible effects include serious issues such as inflammation of the pancreas, kidney, gallbladder and eye problems. People with a history of certain thyroid cancers or a rare, genetic endocrine disorder should avoid the drugs, because it is not clear if tirzepatide causes thyroid problems, including cancer.

HOW MUCH DO THESE DRUGS COST?

The new anti-obesity medications are expensive. Wegovy costs about $1,300 a month and Mounjaro starts at about $1,000 a month. People with private insurance may be able to receive the drugs with only a small co-payment. However, many insurers don’t pay for the medications or they have restrictions regarding coverage. Medicare doesn’t cover most weight-loss drugs. Medicaid and the military insurer Tricare may cover them in some cases with prior approval.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Brittney Griner gets emotional discussing Russian detainment

• April 27, 2023

By JOHN MARSHALL (AP Sports Writer)

PHOENIX (AP) — Brittney Griner got emotional quickly.

Speaking to reporters for the first time since a nearly 10-month detainment in Russia on drug-related charges, the WNBA star had to take a moment to compose herself after being asked about her resiliency through the ordeal.

“I’m no stranger to hard times,” Griner said Thursday from the lobby of the Footprint Center, home of the Phoenix Mercury and the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. “Just digging deep. You’re going to be faced with adversities in life. This was a pretty big one. I just relied on my hard work to get through it.”

Griner’s first news conference drew more than 100 people, including Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, members of the Mercury organization and her wife, Cherelle.

Griner was arrested in February 2022 at a Moscow airport after Russian authorities said a search of her luggage revealed vape cartridges containing cannabis oil. She later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison.

After nearly 10 months of strained negotiations between Washington and Moscow, Griner was exchanged in the United Arab Emirates for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout on Dec. 8.

Griner kept a low profile following her return to the U.S. while adjusting to life back at home, outside of appearances at the Super Bowl, the PGA Tour’s Phoenix Open and an MLK Day event in Phoenix.

Brittney Griner speaks on her resiliency in her first press conference upon her return to the court

“Put your head down and just keep going and moving forward” – @brittneygriner pic.twitter.com/b72ePflcSo

— WNBA (@WNBA) April 27, 2023

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