By Michael Miner

Unlike many other of sport’s hallowed prizes, the BAT–which every schoolboy can tell you stands for Baseball Acumen Test–was established as a hostile act. The point being made 18 years ago was that the mavens of the press box who are paid to prognosticate in print each spring have no more idea than the squirrels in the attic how teams will actually do. But the BAT is now a mature award dripping with prestige, and tentative conclusions can be drawn. The first is that some baseball writers some of the time might have a clue as to what they’re talking about. The second is that overall the Sun-Times’s brain trust has more of a clue than the Tribune’s.

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Impressively self-aware in victory, van Dyck observed that what counts is not simply winning his fourth BAT in dramatic fashion but unseating Ginnetti. “You know it was kind of like the Cubs,” he said. “It took them an extra game too.” The harder the victory, the sweeter the taste. “I had to let her feel good for a couple of years,” said van Dyck, who won his last BAT in 1996. “Somebody from the office called a little while ago saying Toni was sitting there working on her [’99] picks. And I said, that’s not fair to work on them. You’re supposed to get a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and sit down and say, ‘Oh yeah, I guess I’d better pick somebody.’”

Van Dyck didn’t really mean this. Fact is, he and Ginnetti both picked the Cubs a year ago to win the NL Central. The Cubs didn’t, but they hung on for the wild card. Nobody else saw the Cubs making the playoffs any which way.

Ellen Warren and Teresa Wiltz have rejuvenated Inc. since taking it over in February. That said, I don’t read Inc. religiously enough to identify its fetishes. Someone who does pointed out the following:

I decided to take my own measure of Inc.’s compulsion. An on-line search of recent columns revealed that the tipster didn’t know the half of it. There were also these columns:

Sometimes a writer’s addiction to a trope is completely subconscious. The writer has no idea how deep the rut is. But this had the earmarks of a motif run amok. Warren confirmed my suspicions. “Teresa thinks I came up with it. I think she did,” she told me. “It’s just something we have fun with.”