June 29, 2010—
What a time it was. A good time. In 1907 the Chicago Cubs were in the midst of a dynasty. They won 107 games, lost 45 and beat Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers to win the World Series. The Cubs pitching staff was led by Orval Overall and Three Finger Brown and a guy named Wildfire Schilte patrolled right field like Smokey the Bear. Chicago was in a renaissance.
The Cubs were second in the National League in attendance (422,550) and a couple miles east of their beloved West Side Grounds (Wrigley Field wasn’t built) Chicago author Hamlin Garland founded the Attic Club atop Symphony Center (formerly Orchestra Hall).
In 1909 the non-profit [...]
June 27, 2010—
You can’t outrace your heart.
I went to Portland, Oregon to write some stories for my newspaper. I thought it was good timing. I flew jets and props. I took Amtrak’s scenic Cascades between Portland and Seattle. I kayaked six miles of the Willamette River in Portand.
I walked from the Ace Hotel, a former 28 room flophouse in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle down 1st Street to Safeco Field to watch my Cubs. It is one of my favorite walks in America because I pass lush flower stands, 1950s neon and the Pike Place newspaper stand filled with periodicals of places I’ve never seen and where she went.
I read Willy Vlautin’s “Lean [...]
May 28, 2010—
Maybe this is how my reporting career began.
I was 10 years old when I first sat in the smoky, stinky balcony of Chicago Stadium. On March 12, 1966 my Dad took me to my first Chicago Blackhawks game. In the third period the Blackhawks Bobby Hull fired a wicked slap shot past New York Rangers goalie Cesare Maniago to become the first player in the National Hockey League to score more than 50 goals in a season.
Apparently I was excited by all the beer and confetti.
I still get excited by beer and confetti.
Everyone in Chicago is talking about bandwagon jumping as the Blackhawks play in the Stanley Cup for the first time [...]
May 24, 2010-
It took too long to take my first bike ride to Humboldt Park this spring.
Humboldt Park is a rambling 3 1/2 square mile area on the near northwest side of Chicago regarded as the cultural capital of the Puerto Rican midwest. On Sunday the park was filled with people despite the bandwagon jumpers who watching the Chicago Blackhawks hockey game. [Quick—who is Lou Angotti?] The sound of salsa music filled the air and fathers played soccer with their sons. I could smell the richly grilled steak and onions of the jibarito sandwich.
I live on the border of Humboldt Park and Ukranian Village, my favorite bridge in [...]
May 19, 2010
I got up at 7 a.m. last Sunday after spending all of Saturday night listening to Nashville icon Pat McLaughlin sing roadhouse soul at FitzGerald’s in Berwyn, Ill.
My mission was to eat a Cudighi Yooper sandwich at Fifth Third Field, home of the Midwest League’s West Michigan Whitecaps just north of Grand Rapids.
The Yooper—not to be confused with major league hurler Brandon Looper—is a spicy coarsley ground sausage patty smothered in white cheddar cheese, roasted onions, Marinara sauce, green and red peppers and served on a sesame seed bun. ($5.75).
The Cudighi (pronounced could-a-key) Yooper was chosen by fans [...]
10:30 p.m. May 4
We had Mary Frances Veeck—who turns a glorious 90 years old this fall—and her daughter Marya on our little weekly radio show this afternoon:
http://www.talkzone.com/shows/199/fancave.html
They talked about their life with late Baseball Hall of Famer Bill Veeck and his underreated appreciation of art. I nudged Mary Frances about the story she told me in 1986 where she and Bill would send off a bottle of Champagne to a celebrating couple.
”We had a history of that,” she said in a 1986 interview at Bill’s beloved Miller’s Pub in Chicago’s Loop. “We were married about six months and we went to a [...]
April 22, 2010
I’m never sure if Marya Veeck asks me to participate in her art shows because I’m a friend or if she actually thinks I’m a decent artist.
I have sold all three pieces I’ve exhibited in her warm August House Studio, 2113 W. Roscoe in Chicago. Bring a treat for Beasley, her docile, wide eyed beagle that watches over the artwork.
Veeck is an accomplished artist. We’ve connected not only for our love of baseball and irreverence (her father was Baseball Hall of Famer Bill, her brother is baseball’s marketing maverick Mike) but for our appreciation of the outdoors.
Early in her career I was drawn to the oil paintings and [...]
Aroldis Chapman: I can’t face the future.
April 18, 2010
Like a pie in the sky, last weekend I launched my baseball season by driving 460 miles round trip from Chicago to Toledo, Ohio to watch the professional debut of Cuban pitcher Ardolis Chapman.
During the off season the Cincinnati Reds snuck up on all the big shooters and signed the left-hander to a six-year $30 million deal. He was assigned to the Class AAA Louisville Bats who visited Toledo.
I’m a huge fan of the passion behind Cuban baseball—I visited the island in the late 1980s to watch games in Havana—and I wanted to see what Chapman was all about. I knew he [...]
Integrity is doing the right thing when no one else is watching.
I saw this unattributed line on my accountant’s wall last Saturday.
One stop shopping for road trip advice….
San Francisco, CA, USA Sorrento, Italy Amsterdam, The Netherlands Toronto, Ontario, Canada Key West, FL, USA Big Sur, CA, USA Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago Memphis, TN, USA Acapulco, Mexico Havana, Cuba Miami, FL, USA Create your own travel map or travel blog Great vacation rentals at TripAdvisorMe, with natty tie and brother Doug, circa 1967.
Monday, April 5, 2010
The north wing of Edward Hospital in Naperville featues a cul-de-sac a bit smaller than the loop-de-loop I grew up on a couple miles away. On Easter Sunday I visited my Mom in the hospital. Basking in the sun of a promised summer, two families wheeled out new borns in spiffy carriages tied up with congratulatory balloons. A proud father smiled and said ‘Good morning.’ My Mom, 88, was having her blood clots dissolved.Such is the circle of life.My Mom is a strong minded coal miner’s daughter from downstate Taylorville, Illinois. My Dad, which you may have read in previous blogs, came up through the [...]
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The future of newspapering depends on thinking outside the box.One dream I can’t shake is to have Sun-Times news boxes hand painted in a folk art motif by young Chicago students. I first saw this on the sleepy streets of Fairbanks, Alaska during the summer of 2005 when I attended the Midnight Sun Baseball Game (that starts at midnight on June 21; Summer Solstice). The boxes were quirky, colorful and drew attention. The boxes depicted cartoon figures and regional landmarks.
When I returned from that trip I mentioned this to my friends at the Hideout music club who said they would be willing to coordinate students and host an art [...]
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The save is a big part of being a brother.I didn’t understand this on August 21, 1975. My brother Doug and I were in the left field bleachers at Wrigley Field. Doug was 13 years old. I had just turned 20.The Cubs were playing the Dodgers and we were keeping score—-just as we sometimes did into our adult lives. Andy Messersmith was the starting pitcher for Los Angeles and Rick “Big Daddy” Reuschel (one of my all time favorite Cubs) took the mound for Chicago. It was a meaningless game. The Cubs were in 5th place with a 58-68 record. Only 8,377 fans were in attendance.
I’m looking at my scorecard now. Rick Monday went 2 for 4 and [...]
Sunday, February 7, 2010
WHITING, Ind.—-Surely there is no place like this place.While the name of the Purple Steer restaurant suggests a 1968 acid trip from Haight-Ashbury, the 24-hour diner is in fact at the working class corner of Indianapolis Boulevard and Calumet Avenue in Whiting. On the west corner the Purple Steer faces the Robertsdale Inn, a ramshackle tropical drink roadhouse. The north side looks out over Oasis Discount Liquors.This is Caribbean escapism for the Calumet Region, one of the grittiest sections of America.On the clearest of days the skies can be gray.The countryside is dotted with “Tank Farms,” a series of mundane white septic [...]
Friday, January 22, 2010
The Chicken Buses of Guatemala are tripped out-pimped up-lowdown moving pieces of folk art.I love them.The buses are retired coach and school buses. Most of the ones I rode out of Antigua were built by the Blue Bird Corporation in Fort Valley, Ga. The Blue Bird emblem was still entrenched like a sheriff’s badge near the front door of the Chicken Buses I rode. The school bus company started in 1927 as the Blue Bird Body Company in Richmond, Ind. under Christian principles. An original sign from company founders reading “God is our Refuge & Strength” still hangs the corporate headquarters in Georgia.
Perhaps the Chicken Buses [...]
Friday, January 8, 2010
A bunch of palm trees are not as interesting as one palm tree.A singular palm tree became my respite during a New Year’s Eve vacation to Guatemala. I was with Adriana and her sister. I have never traveled with two women—at least in the physical sense. They are younger than me. At times it seemed I was in a reality show.
I was in La Barrona, (pop. 900), where no one spoke conversational English. I recalled a few phrases from high school before I flunked out of Spanish II. On our first day at La Baronna (sandbar), Adriana and I came upon a large sandbar with the slope of a crescent moon. Adriana was in La Barrona a few years ago when [...]
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
During the holiday season it is better to swing from the vines than sit in a tree.
This is why I was amped up over a monkey serving tray I found last week in an antique store in Lincoln, Ill. during a detour on a road trip to St. Louis. I thought of two things: how the green and brown motif would make a great accessory for my home tiki bar (see PHOTO gallery). I also thought of my friend Bob and a New Year’s Day we spent at Sunset Junque on the Blue Star Highway near South Haven, Mich. That’s when I scored a four-foot long bamboo monkey with a baby monkey in tow. Bob and his companion Cleo loved it.I may have loved the monkey serving [...]
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
During the holiday season it is better to swing from the vines than sit in a tree.
This is why I was amped up over a monkey serving tray I found last week in an antique store in Lincoln, Ill. during a detour on a road trip to St. Louis. I thought of two things: how the green and brown motif would make a great accessory for my home tiki bar (see PHOTO gallery). I also thought of my friend Bob and a New Year’s Day we spent at Sunset Junque on the Blue Star Highway near South Haven, Mich. That’s when I scored a four-foot long bamboo monkey with a baby monkey in tow. Bob and his companion Cleo loved it.I may have loved the monkey serving tray [...]
Friday, November 27, 2009
I picked up this picture on Thanksgiving Eve at the Carriagetown Antique Center near downtown Flint, Mich.I don’t have any family in Flint, although I have come to appreciate the gritty city as an Orphan of Americana.
I have looked at this picture every night. I paid $10 and it already is worth $100 of deep thought.Who are these guys? I can tell they are from the Flint Athletic Club 1939-40. The small print on the Flint-Stone explains they were in the Buick “78” League. They’re clearly not 78 years old although I presume they all worked at the Buick factory in Flint.
I’ve had fun imagining their [...]
Friday, November 20, 2009
Making Ukranian Village brighter.
Now that the sun has emerged in Chicago my Obama Chia Pet is finally sprouting some hair.I first saw the Obama Chia several months ago at a downtown CVS. I figured I’d get it at some later date but then there was a big hullabaloo about the meaningless planters being politically incorrect. They were pulled off the shelves along with a George Washington Chia Pet, an innocent bystander.
I was hellbent on getting an Obama Chia Pet.I perused the Internet but it was more fun to try and find one in person. The clerks at north side drug stores were pretty testy. One woman even suggested it was [...]
