A story I couldn’t make up

A high school classmate of mine passed away suddenly over the weekend, and the shock of hearing this news made we want to do something. But the question is what, exactly? My first instinct, in good times and in bad, is to look for a story to share. But the story I want to share

Stuck in the Middle with Bruce

The Super Bowl, in earlier days, was as much about consumerism as it was about football. With the largest TV audience of the year watching, the network airing the game could charge millions of dollars for a 30-second spot. And the companies who were paying these top-dollar rates spared no expense to put the WOW

FU Coronavirus (Part 2)

I’ve been thinking about the Michael Jordan Era in Chicago a lot lately. It technically started when the Bulls drafted him out of college in 1984, but for many years it didn’t happen because, well, the team just wasn’t any good. But the team slowly got better over time, and the hated Bad Boys of

The political lesson of Super Bowl 47

Seven years feels like a long time ago, in some ways. For example, my newly 21 year-old daughter was still in elementary school early in 2013. So much has come and gone in her life (and in all our lives) that it’s sometimes hard to remember what happened, much less learn any lessons from those

Why I’m taking a knee today

If you wanted to be somebody at my high school (which no longer exists, by the way) you had to be on the football team. There were other sports teams and activities, but the attention that was given to the football team made many of my classmates put in the time and effort that were

Go Cats!

Northwestern didn’t belong in the Big Ten when I was on campus in the late 1980s, at least not in the two sports that most people pay attention to. That didn’t change how I felt about the school, but it was hard to routinely be embarrassed by all of the other schools in the Big

The Cubs Win, at last

It was the darkest moment of the Cubs’ 2016 championship run. The Cubs had lost to Korey Kluber for the second time in Game 4, and found themselves in a three games to one hole. Elimination seemed to be staring them in the face in Sunday’s early hours, and I wanted to do my part

A November2Remember is one win away

This is what we’ve waited for, Cubs fans! One game to determine a World Series title.  One more win takes us all to where we want to be. So let’s get it, already! GO CUBS!

The Cubs’ 2016 Graveyard

Some people, in my neighborhood and in other places, turn their front lawns into faux graveyards at this time of year. So with Halloween upon us and the Cubs still playing meaningful baseball, here’s a look at some of the fake styrofoam tombstones that the Cubs could plant at Wrigley Field this year: The Cardinals’

Looking forward to some Mighty Cubs Blasts

I recently happened upon Evangeline, a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I’m not very much of a poetry guy, but I found an old book at an estate sale with some poems inside, and decided to start paging through them. I even spent a quarter on the book, so I may as well see

It’s gonna be a World Series weekend in Chicago

One of my favorite old school Sammy Hagar songs–and I have quite a few of them–is Rock and Roll Weekend. Not only does Sammy name-check Chicago (and Cleveland) toward the end of the song, but he paints an image of the best part of the week, being filled up with the best music there is.

My letter of thanks to Jack Brickhouse

Dear Jack, Today was the kind of day that makes cemeteries interesting. As I drove through Rosehill on the far north side of Chicago, I watched the dried leaves blowing across my path on the way to the mausoleum where you are interred. This is generally not baseball weather here in Chicago, but you never

The Cubs’ World Series trail led through California

One year ago, I wrote a piece for WrigleyvilleNation pointing out that the Cubs were beating teams from the old National League East in the postseason, and I liked that idea. Teams from the NL West had been nothing but trouble for the Cubs, and I thought maybe the Eastern route would pay off in

Arrivederci, San Francisco

The Cubs don’t come from behind to win games in the postseason, and they sure don’t do it in the 9th inning. They either lose the game altogether, or they get out to an early lead and somehow hang on to win. But late game heroics has never been their calling card, at least not

For the Cubs, nothing’s been accomplished yet

On this day off between the end of the regular season–where the Cardinals played all 162 games–and the postseason–where the Cardinals will watch it on TV like the rest of us–a few thoughts are in order. That dig at the Cardinals sounds a bit petty, but the truth is I’m glad the teams will not

Josh Wilker says it all for me

  I remember watching Yaz’s last regular-season at-bat. The Red Sox were bad that year, most of the superstars from my childhood gone. There weren’t going to be any postseason at-bats. I watched the game alone in a TV room at a boarding school that I’d be expelled from the following year. I’d started attending

Inside the Ricketts Square

My daughter, who’s in 8th grade in a Chicago public school, took biology a year ago. She was exposed to genetics and the Punnett Square, which brought back lots of old memories, and not necessarily fond ones, as I tried once again to understand alleles and dominant and recessive traits. However, I apparently remember enough of genetics

Something never seen before

As the Cubs’ season to remember keeps rolling along–and the team continues racking up victories like only a few living Cubs fans have ever seen–I’ve become more focused on the W flag. I have also written a piece about its history and significance for the Gamehedge blog. But I essentially see the flag as a

Telling a story about the Cubs

The Chicago Cubs have been a major recurring theme of this blog, going all the way back to the first thing I posted in this space. It’s shaped who I am, in some way, and I won’t ever back away from that. After taking a hiatus of almost a year from writing for WrigleyvilleNation.com, today

August and the stretch run

As the calendar turns to August, thoughts of summer start to wane. It still is summer, of course, but as the days start getting shorter the inevitability of returning to those other, non-summery seasons starts creeping in. Summer is my favorite time of the year, and I’d have a hard time relating very well to

Cubs look to buck the trend

The Crosstown classic begins tonight, and continues through until Thursday. The teams appear to be on different arcs, with the Cubs playoff-bound and the White Sox thinking about who they can trade away at the deadline coming up. But none of that matters when the two teams take the field tonight at U.S. Cellular Field.

Trying to understand

The picture above dates to 1998, and it shows a much younger, much thinner version of me during my teaching days on the south side of Chicago. This was taken in the days before cameraphones, or even before digital photography, with an old school camera. They were fun because you wound up with a print

The year that still haunts me

2003 should have positive associations for me. It was the year that my younger daughter was born, and if there’s one thing in life I enjoy more than anything else, it’s being a dad. She’s going to become a teenager this summer, and looking at her now is a daily reminder that 2003–in human terms–was

Jose can you see it?

Jose Cardenal played in many cities over the course of his big league career, and I’d be surprised if he had a special affinity for any one of them. But he was a Cub when I started following the team in the mid-1970s, and for that reason he’ll always be a Cub to me. He

Going for the sweep

The Cubs don’t really need to win today against the Pirates at Wrigley Field. They’ve already won the series, and have a commanding 11 and a half game lead in the division on Father’s Day. But a lifetime of waiting for this has also made this Cubs fan greedy. Today we’ll find out if the