The Last Straw: Cubs Leaving WGN

Corny as he was, Jack Brickhouse
endeared the Cubs to us

Word today is that the megabucks Ricketts family has decided to sever the Cubs' 65 year relationship with WGN.

It's their business and they certainly have a right to squeeze as much cash out of it as possible, but for me it's the last straw.

I have to admit that I'm one of those fossils who lamented the introduction of lights to the venerable old ball park on Clark and Addison. But I was resilient enough to adapt to that.

But the skyrocketing cost of bleacher admission from -- in my memory -- $3.50 to $25.00+ -- the smoking ban in the ballpark -- the skyrocketing cost of beer and other amenities, the injection of garish commercial signage into the Friendly Confines and the steady procession of eminently unpleasant, totally unlovable and utterly forgettable rent-a-player hired hands on the field have combined to persuade me to call it quits.

This really is no small matter coming from one who for many years was glued to Channel 9's televised play by play coverage, WGN radio's audio reportage and who hung on the Cubs' every up and down -- which, of course with the Cubs were mostly downs.

It was Jack Brickhouse on TV with his corny HEY, HEYs and Lou Boudreau on the radio with his veritable hefty bag full of verbal baseball arcana that originally drew me to the Cubs.

And the likes of Steve Stone, Harry Caray and yes -- even the often unlistenable Ron Santo kept me in the fold.

But the steady drip, drip Chinese water torture erosion of tradition really culminates in the jettisoning of the WGN tie.

Last summer I had my first entirely Cubs-free summer since college days, when distance and various hedonistic pursuits overcame Cubs affection.

Didn't listen to or watch a single Cubs game. Stopped by Wrigley Field only once and that was to join a few guys for a smoke outside the bleacher entrance (the new unofficial Wrigley smoking area.)

Now, with the Ricketts' cold calculation to end free WGN broadcasts, Cubs-free summers will be a permanent condition with me.

Just think of the beach side reading I'll get done.

Happy Birthday "Sweet Swingin'" Billy Williams

Billy Williams

Billy Williams, the sweet swinging hall of fame left fielder for the Chicago Cubs turned 73 today.

Happy birthday, Billy!

WGN read off a list of notable Chicagoans with birthdays today and omitted him, while mentioning the lackluster Dusty Baker who had only a brief stint as manager here.

So typical. Billy Williams was the one Chicago superstar who, like a baseball Rodney Dangerfield, never seemed to get any respect.

He was overshadowed most of his career by the home run hitting Ernie Banks and the more flamboyant Ron Santo. And of course, being a Cub, he never enjoyed the national spotlight of a World Series.

Williams' Statue
Outside Wrigley Field

But all the while he quietly and uncomplainingly amassed a record of accomplishment that is among the greatest in baseball history.

The "Iron Man" of his era, he amassed a long-standing NL record (since surpassed by Steve Garvey) of 1,117 consecutive games.

Rookie of the year in '61, over his fifteen year career he hit 426 round trippers and drove in 1,475 runs with a lifetime .290 batting average.

And always having a better than average glove, he memorably saved no-hitters for Cubs pitchers Kenny Holtzman and Milt Pappas with spectacular diving outfield catches.

He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987.

I'm glad the Cubs finally got around to retiring his number #26 and erecting a statue to him outside Wrigley Field.

All of us little leaguers from the boomer generation have nothing but great respect for his abilities and fond memories of the great moments he gave us in Cubs' lore.

And now, he's finally gotten the respect he deserves.

Happy Birthday, Billy Williams!

Ron Santo's Impeccable Timing: Snaring Line Drives and Beating the Obama Tax Hike

Ron Santo took his final victory lap around Wrigley Field yesterday. This time he was in a Hearse which was bedecked with flags representing his #10 pinstriped Chicago Cubs uniform. Thousands lined the streets along Clark and Sheffield, snapping digital photos and silently paying their respects to this Chicago baseball legend.

Having finally succumbed to a diabetes-induced frailty, the old Cubs 3rd baseman passed away on December 2nd.

A nine time All Star and five time Golden Glove 3rd baseman he ranked sixth in National League history in putouts (1,930.)

A fair percentage of those were certainly the 3rd baseman's trademark leap into the air to snag a hot line drive pulled down the 3rd base line.

Anyone who has ever played the "hot corner" knows that it is one of the most difficult feats in all of baseball. The fielder has to set keenly eyeing the batter with knees slightly bent, ready to leap up and snare a ball driven at perhaps 50mph, with only seconds notice.


It requires impeccable timing. Ron Santo, in his prime, certainly had it.

And he displayed that same impeccable timing by deciding to check out a mere 29 days before the inheritance rate would soar from 0% to 35%, at Obama's urging under the compromise tax bill to which Republicans are strangely acquiescing.

That means Ron Santo's family will get to keep the fruits of his many years of labor.

Santo missed the era of mega-bucks baseball salaries by a few years. But toward the end, he did okay salary-wise. He always showed an entrepreneurial streak as well. In the mid 60s, he cut a deal with P.K. Wrigley that gave him the franchise on the sale at Wrigley of "Ron Santo pizzas. They were little 6 inch pies which came in a box with Ronnie's picture and facsimile autograph and were hawked by vendors in the stands, just like hot dogs and peanuts.


After his retirement, he opened a string of family friendly restaurants in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. He also pulled down a pretty good salary from WGN as a radio broadcaster from 1990 to the end of last season.

So he had a nice little estate to hand down to his wife and kids.

And just with his almost intuitive ability to hone in and snare a sharp line drive, his timing was impeccable on this as well.

Ronnie Santo beat the taxman.

Chicago Sucks -- The Blog

I don't know how she found the Chicago Lampoon, or how I found her.

But there is a very cool, stay-at-home, mom in the Northern suburbs of Chicago, who has a very cool and funny blog page called, "Why I Think Chicago Sucks."

Here is the link:http://darcsfalcon.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/why-i-think-chicago-sucks/

She is a 40-something girl, with a good hard- working husband and more than a few kids.

She is originally from California and is only stuck in this god-forsaken frozen wasteland, due to her husband's job necessities.

She, like I, has had the good fortune to have lived in nicer climes and nicer places on the planet.

So we both agree -- Chicago sucks.

She is an obviously very nurturing and supportive mom -- since, as she gets various remarks from post-collegiate kids who are just fed up with Chicago --with everything from its crappy weather to its crappy Democrat machine politics to its onerous parking restrictions -- she patiently and supportively agrees and solaces them.

I am a native Chicagoan. Yet,unlike most of the mindless Chicago boosters, I have had the good fortune to have escaped this icy berg, for more than a decade.

I am a Cub Fan and a Bud Man.

One of my ancestors was a Hall of Fame Baseball pitcher for the Chicago White Sox.

My first date in my life was to the Art Institute of Chicago with a really pretty and cool girl from Alvernia High School for Girls on the NW side of the city.

But while appreciating some of what this city has to offer -- I totally agree with Vanessa (aka DarcNess) when she recommends that:

Chicago Sucks!!

University of Wisconsin Badgers Are The New Cubs -- Loveable Losers

Two little Chicago vignettes about the University of Wisconsin Badgers.

Yesterday, while at the outdoor cafe of the Dominicks/Starbucks at Ridge and Pratt, I saw a yuppiesque fellow in a Mustang ragtop which sported Illinois plates, "ON WI 1."

Obviously, despite his transplantation to Chicago, he was still a die-hard UW Badgers fan, (On Wi, being an abbreviation of the opening words to the University of Wisconsin fight song, "On Wisconsin.")

Later on Saturday, I ran into a recent UW grad in Wrigleyville, who gave me a plastic Bucky Badger beer mug and who expressed great optimism over the Badgers Big 10 opener against Michigan State which was about to commence in several hours.

I told him, that as UW alum, (I did my undergraduate work there) I was a veteran of many more Badger seasons than he. Consequently, I was a bit less sanguine about the Badger's prospects for the coming season.

"The Badgers are always overranked," I said. "Just watch, they'll squeak out 5 or 6 Big 10 wins, creep up in the national rankings and then fall to pieces against some pissant team, like Northwestern or Illinois," I said.

Besides, I have been a Cub fan all my life. I am accustomed to high hopes culminating in massive betrayal.

Well, I hate to say, I told him so, but a mere 4 hours later, the vaunted UW Badgers, ranked # 11 in the nation, were blown away by #24 ranked Michigan State 34-24.

We Cub fans know about great expectations resulting in dashed hopes.

It's something that the cheesehead kids are slowly beginning to fathom in Brett Bielema's 4th season of ambivalent teeter tawter leadership.

Let's face it.

The University of Wisconsin Badgers are the Chicago Cubs of the Big 10.

Oh, well.

ON WI.

(And if the season proceeds any further like this, it will definitely be a a case of Wisconsin Big-10 ennui.)

Church of Rome Changes Back Liturgy: A Day Late and a Dollar Short

The Vatican announced a few days ago that it will toss out some of the godawful cutesy verbiage that it adopted in 1964 when it tossed out the traditional, centuries-old Tridentine Rite Latin Mass.

For instance, the Tridentine "Dominus Vobiscum" response: "Et cum spiritu tuo," became: "The Lord be with you." response: "And with you too."

Now it will revert to the more precise English translation "The Lord be with you." response: "And with your Spirit."

But it will still be in English.

And a bunch of other changes will be adopted when the Romans get around to implementing them in 2011. For one, the Priest will no longer be permitted to run around hugging everybody at the part of the newish Mass where they do such things.

This is, no doubt, a great relief to Catholic communicants with young boys.

Also they seem to be clamping down on the use of such trendy innovations as altar girls and "extraordinary ministers of communion," whereby just about any Bozo can play priest and distribute communion.

Hopefully, for Catholics with any sense of aesthetics, this will mean an end to guitar Masses and that absurd "Kumbayah," song. (Do they still belt out that musical atrocity?)


All of this is very nice, but frankly it is way too little, way too late, for those of us, who, as little children were imbued with traditional Catholicism only to have it casually tossed aside like so much meaningless flotsam and jetsam.

About the time the Church of Rome was adopting its disasterous, institutionally suicidal changes, Jack Brickhouse was the TV and radio announcer for the Chicago Cubs.

The Cubs really stunk back then. And when they would be down something like 9 to 2 in the bottom of the ninth, occasionally they would show a little glimmer of life.

Their woeful shortstop, Andre Rodgers might somehow draw a walk and their fat catcher, Dick Bertell, might get hit by a pitch and Ron Santo would then come up and belt a 3 run homer. The next three Cubs would whiff harmlessly and the Cubs would end up losing 9 to 5.

And the ever optimistic, Brickhouse would bellow, "OH Boy! A day late and a dollar short!!

My sentiments precisely at the Roman Catholic Church's latest attempts at damage control.

It's not my fight anymore.

And Tom Lehrer's "Vatican Rag" satire of the 1964 Second Vatican Council's idiotic iconoclasm makes me laugh today.

Cubs Tickets Priciest in MLB

It's opening day at Wrigley Field. And despite the Cubs 101 year World Series Championship drought, it will now cost you more to see this year's motley assemblage in blue perform than any other team in major league baseball.

According to the Wilmette-based Team Marketing Report, the Cubs have now overtaken the Boston Red Sox with an average ticket price of $52.56. That means "a day of fun at the old ball park" as Jack Brickhouse used to blurt, will now cost a family of four $329.74, when you add in parking and all of the other associated costs.

The Cubs were second in the majors with a 10.1% price increase for 2010.

Thank you, Ricketts family.

But as the Cubs limp into Wrigley today with a 2-3 record, hitters that can't hit in the clutch and a bullpen creakier than the boards on the deck of the Mayflower, they will be sold out this afternoon.

You see, the Cubs now are chic.

But it wasn't always that way.

Back in the mid-60s, the old owner, P.K Wrigley, couldn't give away Cubs tickets.

On a bone-chilling opening day in '67 or '68, one of my avid Cub fan childhood friends ditched grammar school to attend along with about 1,014 other stalwarts (or lunatics depending on your perspective.)

P.K. was so grateful that he gave them each a certificate for free admission to another game. I wonder what the 2nd place prize winners got -- 2 tickets?

Back in 1964, the year the Cubs traded away future Hall of Famer Lou Brock for a sore-armed pitcher, Ernie Broglio, to save money ladies used to get in for free every Wednesday.

I'm sure that P.K.'s marketing geniuses thought this would turn Wrigley Field into a chick magnet. In reality it gave suburban mothers an excuse to pack the station wagon with the neighborhood kids and bring them to a game. The moms would get in for free and the kids would set them back a quarter a piece.

My mom did that with me and my neighborhood baseball card trading pals on several occasions.

According to an old scorecard that I have (I was lucky enough to get it autographed by future Hall of Famer, Juan Marichal) that year an Oscar Mayer hot dog cost 30 cents and a Budweiser bottle 40 cents.

Bleacher admission was 50 cents.

That was, of course, before the great liberal Democrat, Lyndon Baines Johnson, inflated the US currency to pay for his wildly successful wars: his war in Vietnam and domestic war on poverty.

In 1981, Cubs Manager, Lee Elia went into his famous on-tape, career ending, obscenity-laden rant when he said that most of the city of Chicago worked for a living and the rest came out to Wrigley to boo his ballclub.

Despite a nation-leading 11.9% unemployment rate you won't see the unemployed represented at Wrigley today.

It's just too bloody expensive.

Devoted Cub Fans Keep Pledge

In 1953 a loyal Pittsburgh Pirates fan from Dubois, PA, vowed that he would not shave until the Pirates won a pennant.

True to his word, he let his whiskers grow, unabated, until the Pirates finally clinched the NL crown in 1960.

The Cubs finished 35 games behind the Pirates that year with a meager 60-94 record.

Figuring that some of the Pirates good luck might rub off, a group of North Siders vowed back then that they too would refuse to shave until their beloved Cubbies won the NL flag.

With the unseasonably warm weather this April 1st, the loyal group (pictured above) gathered today outside the Museum of Science and Industry downtown to discuss the Cubs prospects for 2010.

Memo to Dick Durbin: Santo Knew How to Handle Bunning

With U.S. Senator and Hall of Fame Hurler, Jim Bunning today tieing up Illinois Senator Dick Durbin in parliamentary knots on the Senate floor, we can take solace in the knowlege that at least one Chicagoan knew how to handle the Kentuckian:

Cubs Beat Bunning on Santo's 3 Run Blast

June 23, 1969

Ron Santo’s 3-run blast powered the Cubs over Jim Bunning and the Pirates at Wrigley. Bill Hands went the distance to improve his record to 7-6.

Cubs 3, Pirates 2. W: Hands (7-6) L: Bunning (6-5)

WLS's Mancow for Cotto = Cubs' Brock for Broglio

A few hours ago WLS 890 AM announced that it would replace super shock-jock, Mancow Muller, with former Moody Bible divinity student and traffic news reader, Cisco Cotto in its 9 to 11 am morning slot.

WLS station manager, Michael Damsky told the Chicago Sun-Times that the move was designed to give the station a more consistent conservative talk sound.

In that he certainly succeeded as the diminutive Bible thumper, Cotto is certainly more consistently dull.

To be sure, WLS thoroughly misused the flamboyant talents of Mancow by pairing him with the wearisome, middle-aged former WBBM-AM newsreader, Pat Cassidy. In fact the odd couple of the Chicago airwaves almost came to actual on-air blows on several occasions during their stormy year and a half together.

Cotto is the darling of the religious right-to-life mavens of the Illinois Review and certainly will provide a predictably conservative lead-in to Rush Limbaugh at 11 am. But Mancow may have provided the most incisive and witty libertarian-conservative critique of the Chicago Way ever to have been heard here. He once almost had leftist Congressperson, Jan Schakowsky in tears.

And with the exception of WGN's Garry Meier and WCPT's Jake Hartford (both of whom also were cut loose by the dour WLS), Mancow was the only genuine funny AM presence in Chicago.

The CST's media critic, Lewis Lazare, wrote that the sacking of Mancow was an attempt by WLS to shore up its flagging ratings among 25 to 54 year old adult listeners.

Oh, yea, this is going to work.

Just as it did for Cubs' General Manager, John Holland who in 1964 set out to shore up the Cubs shaky starting rotation by trading a young left fielder by the name of Lou Brock for an ailing right handed starter by the name of Ernie Broglio.

That season, Brock (whose talents were underutilized by the Cubs, much as Mancow's by WLS) sparked the Cardinals to a World Championship with 20+ steals and a .315 batting average.

That same year, Broglio posted a 4-7 record with a 4.04 ERA for the Cubs who finished a dismal 8th place in the then 10 team NL. He was out of baseball in a year and a half.

Brock, of course, went on to have a stellar career and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 1985.

I trust that Bruce DuMont has Mancow's niche ready at the Radio Hall of Fame at the Museum of Broadcast Communications on North La Salle St., because the nationally syndicated superjock will almost certainly end up there.

And Cisco Cotto can be hired to dust off Mancow's plaque and conduct tours.

A Cubs-Free Summer: CUBS--Completely Useless by September

It just occured to me.

I have had a Cubs-free summer.

This is no small matter for me. I first became a Cubs fan (and do understand that the term fan derives from fanatic) when I was a little first grader in 1963.

In that year, my father, who was a descendent of a Chicago Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher, gave me a 1963 major league baseball almanac.

I was first exposed to the Cubs that year. It became a life-long infatuation. And a life-long sickness.

That year I also bought my first Topps pack of baseball cards.

They were 5 cents at the time and you got 5 baseball cards and along with the cards you got one stick of rather sickly (usually stale) bubble gum.

My first Cubs card was of the Cubs catcher in 1963 -- the immortal Sammy Taylor (I am being satiric here) -- who had a lifetime .223 batting average.

For the benefit of you girls out there -- that really stinks!

But Sammy Taylor was a really good looking Southern guy and he had this really cool, tough looking, way of tilting his catcher's mitt while posing, with an Elvis-styled leer for the baseball card photograph.

So of course, when I went into the McNally Park Little League in Skokie that year (it was the only genuinely religiously integrated entity in a Village that was 60% Christian and 40% Jewish), I became a cather and tilted my cather's mitt in a rather cool, Sammy Taylor-styled way for the team photo.

I hit around .500 that year which was far better than Sammy was ever able to accomplish.

But, of course he had to contend with the 100 mph. heat from Don Drysdale and Bob Gibson and the biting sliders from Sandy Koufax.

I just had to put up with the 30 mph lobs from the likes of Ronnie Kleinschmidt, Craig Kloss and Richie Rubin.

So going Cubs-free for an entire summer is no small matter for me.

I did not attend a single game at Wrigley or on the road, did not listen to or watch a single broadcast after June 1st and did not so much as glance at a box score. This is the first time that I have done that since my college years when sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, a certain geographic distance and a heavy academic load precluded the pursuit of my long-time Cubs obsession.

And what did I really miss?

Carlos Zambrano snapping bats over his knee like an overpaid baby? Ron Santo crapping up the airwaves with his incessant moaning and groaning? Any number of crybaby failed relief pitchers lashing into the fans for rightfully booing them? $40 bleacher seats? $6 cups of warm Old Style?Another one of the highest paid teams in Chicago athletic history, which here in September has no hope whatsoever of even attaining a wild card berth?

I think I can live with the absence of that.

And the slight grey fringe that was appearing at my temples has been arrested, if not entirely reversed, due to the absence of all of the customary Cubs-induced angst.

The Chicago CUBS: Completely Useless By September.

TV -- Good Riddance

Yesterday was the deadline for upgrading my old analog Sony TV to digital.

I didn't do it. I don't intend to.



At least not for now.



A few weeks ago I dropped my supposedly waterproof Sony Sports Walkman in a lake and it stopped working.

So instead of being bombarded with radio talk noise and incessant commercial pronunciementos, I actually was able to take my morning bike ride in relative silence. Heard birds chirping. Heard carp splashing in the river.

Even had a few stray thoughts that were not prompted by some fellow barking into my radio ear buds.

It reminded me that during my junior and senior years of undergrad, I never watched TV and seldom listened to the radio --and they were my most productive and thoughtful (and peaceful)years in school.

Customarily, of late I would listen to the Walkman at night -- Cubs games or Milt Rosenberg or the Savage Nation.

But while the Walkman was drying out and thoroughly afunctional, I actually read a book a night.

I read "The Guns of Navarone," written in 1957 by Alister Maclean.

I saw the movie as a very young boy, in a theatre with my father and sister. It was the top-selling movie of 1961, so we probably saw in in 1962 when it was making the rounds at the 50 cent 2nd tier theatres.

The reason I got this book from a used book exchange, was that I have discovered that the book that begot a film is usually vastly superior to the usually tawdry and overblown interpretation that Hollywood wrings from it.



That was true with this.



Alister Maclean was a no-nonsense Scotsman and he kept sex entirely out of his war novels as a matter of principle. He thought it needlessly distracted from the plot and character development. So there were no women at all in the written version of "The Guns of Navarone."

Hollywood, of course, replaced the male Greek partisan helpers with 2 hot Mediterranean babes, Irene Pappas and the very hot Gia Scala (who regrettably succumbed to drink and killed herself at age 38.)

It has been so long since I saw the film that I can't say definitively that the book was vastly better (all my pre-pubescent recollection offers is Gia Scala's beautifully sculpted and deliciously tanned body) but the book was a genuine page turner.

Another example of a book's superiority to the subsequent film is another 60s era war epic, "Von Ryan's Express." It was written by a WWII vet, David Westheimer in 1964 and became a hit movie the next year.

I had seen the film many times, but found a copy of the book at a used book store and eagerly devoured it. It was superb and far superior to the Hollywood adaptation.

For one thing, the POW camp leader, Col. Joseph Ryan, was a full-bored Irish American but was called Von Ryan by his troops, because of his strict disciplinary standards. Hollywood cast that quintessential Irishman, Frank Sinatra, in the role.

Moreover, in the book, the ending is happy as the POW escapees' train makes it safely to Switzerland.

In the film, Frank is gunned down while running and straining to catch hold of the caboose.

I don't recall if Hollywood injected sex into the film, but I have a feeling that they must have at some point.

One last example of book superiority to film is "The Firm," one of John Grisham's better earlier works. The book was hardly a masterpiece, but was gripping pulp fiction. Had I not read the book, I don't think I would have had a clue as to what Tom Cruise, Jean Tripplehorn and Gene Hackman were up to in the film version -- in and of itself, the film was veritably incomprehensible.

So, I'm going to forgo TV (what a novel idea -- how did our grandparents ever manage to survive?!) read more for a while. I'm not going to really miss "Two and a half men," and "Seinfeld" re-runs all that much.

And I may actually get a little more time for some quiet thought not prompted by mass media noise.

And if I really must find out what the erratic North Side Baseball team is up to, my Walkman has finally dried out and is functional again.

A Welcome Respite From Ron Santo

It has been relatively easy to listen to the Cubs' radio broadcasts for the last few games.

Ron Santo has not been in the broadcast booth.

Since his leg amputation and subsequently more fragile medical condition, Santo has declined to go on longer road trips with the Cubs. Sitting in for him as Pat Hughes' color commentator on these occasions is former Cubs relief pitcher Dave Barrisch.

Barrisch, to be sure, is not destined for the Broadcasting Hall of Fame, but he is a veritable Vin Scully or Mel Allen, compared to Santo.

Santo is simply annoying.

He is supposed to be supplementing Hughes' play-by-play accounts with interesting observations and keen insights into the play on the field.

Instead he talks about the tepid temperature of his soup. Or the antics of his wife's poodle. Or he bellows like the drunken fan sitting in the seat behind you at Wrigley Field and who gets so carried away with the excitement of it all that he ends up showering you with his beer.

What is worse, is that in his wild, drunken-fan-like bloviating, his voice often blots out the play-by-play account so you don't have a clue as to what is going on in the game. That, I believe, defeats the very purpose of sports broadcasting.

I remember a few seasons back, while cycling on the North Shore, I was listening to the Cubs game on my Walkman.

Mark Grace was on second and takes off on a hit and run. The hit fell in for a bloop single and Grace begins rounding third heading for home -- apparently running thru the third base coach's stop sign. Hughes is trying to relate these rather exciting events and as Grace is headed for home, Santo bellows out, "WHAT'S GOING ON??!!!"

I was actually p.o.-ed, because I wanted to know precisely that, but this boorish fan, named Santo, was bellowing to 32 states with 50,000 watts of power so that no one in that earshot could find out "what's going on."

Had I been watching the Cubs on TV, I would have known.

Two non-Chicago native, Cub fans have asked me why Ron Santo is a broadcaster. They, being more objective than those of us who grew up with Santo batting 5th, backing up Sweet Swingin' Billy and Ernie, just can't fathom why he is allowed on the airwaves.

The fact that he remains on the air, apparently popular, year after year, makes me sometimes want to agree with those misanthropic, mullet wearing, Sox fans who say that Cub fans have the collective IQ of a snail darter.

Don't get me wrong. I respect Ron Santo as a brilliant 3rd baseman and an integral part of Cub lore of the very colorful 60s era. Once at a Glenview bar, I met Ron Santo's son, Jeff, the movie producer, and I found him to be one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet. He was actually flattered when I told him that as a kid, I had his father's baseball card and really respected his dad's achievements on the field. Santo's son seemed a great guy.

I'm sure Ronnie is too. And I think he would be a great guy to sit down and have a beer with as well.

But please, elect him to the Baseball Hall of Fame under the old-timers provisions. Or give him a statue on Clark St. outside Wrigley. Anything he wants.

But please, get him off the airwaves so I can listen to the Cubs and actually find out "WHAT'S GOING ON??!!!"

Frigid Wrigley Field -- Filthy Chicago Weather

It was 35 degrees with a bellowing northeasterly wind at game time for the Cubs home opener yesterday. MLB attendance reports suggested that all 40,077 seats were sold out, but in reality it seemed only about half that number were masochistic enough to actually sit thru the entire ordeal.

Certain days become hallmarks in ones mind against which to measure certain developments and for me the weather on opening day has always been one of those. It makes me appreciate how entirely filthy Chicago's weather usually is.

I had the good fortune to escape Chicago for a bit more than a decade. Living in one of the balmy states of the Old Confederacy, I would still monitor the Cubs via the WGN superstation and recall one wonderful opening day in 1992 when I was basking in the Virginia warmth, wearing my shorts and a knit polo shirt. Yesterday, on opening day in Chicago, I was wearing my down parka, scarf, gloves and 180 earmuffs.

One of my childhood friends aspired to become a sportswriter in the footsteps of his uncle, a storied sports columnist for the Chicago Daily News. So he was more fanatic than most of us in following the Cubs and was crazy enough to take the El down to Wrigley on a wintry opening day in the late 60s.

It actually snowed that day and only about 85 people actually showed up for the game -- this being the era when the skinflint, P.K. Wrigley fielded real dogs year after year.

Apparently, P.K. , who Royko used to say "threw nickels around as if they were sewer covers," was in an unusually magnanimous mood that day, because he had the Andy Frain ushers hand out vouchers for free tickets to the next game to the 85 or so stalwarts.

P.K. Wrigley was so cheap that for a couple of seasons, he would actually send the ushers to collect foul balls caught by fans, so that the Cubs could reuse them. The fan would then get a certificate attesting to the fact that he had caught or otherwise captured a foul ball at Wrigley field.

Mike Murphy on the sportstation WSCR once quipped to a caller that P. K. Wrigley was so cheap that he filled the resin bags on the mound with kitty litter to save money -- to which the caller retorted, "USED kitty litter."

Anyway Chicago weather really stinks and one of the only celebrities I ever heard speak truthfully about it was John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, who spent a year or two here with the Second City troupe in the '60s.

While plugging a movie during a recent WGN radio interview, he was asked what he thought of Chicago.

He said, "I suppose it's a nice enough place, but your weather is just so awfully filthy."

I always liked John Cleese.