Dempster to start opening day

Carlos Zambrano's streak of seven consecutive openers is over.

Ryan Dempster has been named the opening day starter for the Cubs.

9 million views

Not sure if this is being viewed by pro-Bieber or anti-Bieber forces, but it has more than nine million views. Justin Bieber shot and killed on CSI...

Adam Greenberg

Remember Adam Greenberg?

He's the Cubs player that faced exactly one pitch in the majors--and it hit him in the head.

He's never made it back to the big leagues since then, and it's beginning to look like he won't. Today is his 30th birthday.

Last season he played for the Bridgeport Bluefish in the Independent Atlantic League.

Presidents and Baseball

A very good history of Presidents of the United States and the national pastime, courtesy of the Hall of Very Good.

Their relationships to the Cubs are chronicled here by your good friends at Just One Bad Century.

Happy President's Day

To celebrate President's Day, please enjoy this encore presentation of my friend Dave Stern's dramatic reading of a poem he wrote as an eleven year old.

Honest Abe He Was Called

Happy President's Day.

Father Knows Nothing

This week's Father Knows Nothing column has been posted at NWI Parent. It tells the tale of my marriage proposal to Bridget twenty years ago.

You can read it here: "An Awkward Proposal."

Chicago Radio Spotlight: David Kaplan

This week I spoke with WGN Sports Night host David Kaplan. We talked about his tumultuous last few months, the return to the night-time airwaves at WGN, his new and old partners, and some of his favorite sports highlights.

You can read the entire interview here.

Coming this weekend

I spoke with WGN Radio's David Kaplan this week, and he'll be this weekend's Chicago Radio Spotlight interview. He has some great stories about sports figures we all know, and the behind the scenes stories of what went wrong during the previous WGN regime. I'll be posting that on Saturday.

As for Father Knows Nothing, I was inspired by this awkward proposal tale to tell my own. I don't think I've ever written about that before. I'll be posting it on Sunday.

Sammy's corked bat gets a CAT scan

The saga of Sammy's corked bat was bound to continue when Grant DePorter bought it, and sure enough he made headlines with it yesterday and today.

He has given the bat a CAT scan.

If you'd like to know the forensics of exactly how Sammy cheated, click on the link above.

A Suburban Dad

I forgot to post a piece I wrote for my friend Kim Strickland's "A City Mom" blog at ChicagoNow earlier this week. I go by "A Suburban Dad" on her blog, and contribute a column a week.

This week's column is called "The Unwritten Rules of Valentine's Day."

You should check out Kim's site, she's really very good.

An unforgettable proposal story

Miguel Cabrera gets busted for DUI

And he did it in spectacular fashion.

The Sun Times headline really says it all: "Miguel Cabrera pulls a Ron Burgundy"

Percy Sledge

Fascinating story from 45 years ago today, courtesy of Bob Dearborn's The Olde Disc Jockey's Almanac this morning...

February 17, 1966…In Sheffield, Alabama, Percy Sledge recorded "When A Man Loves A Woman." Before the recording session, the song had no title or lyrics. The session proceeded, the instrumental track was laid down, with the expectation that Sledge would eventually reveal the lyric sheet for the vocal takes. But when it came time to record the vocals, Sledge improvised the lyrics with minimal pre-planning using the melody as a guide for rhythm and phrasing. The performance was so convincing that everyone working on the session assumed he had the lyrics written down.

Pujols to the Cubs?

His deadline passed for the Cardinals to sign him, so naturally, the subject of Pujols coming to the Cubs was the talk of Cubs camp in Mesa.

I sincerely doubt it.

Although, if there's a GM out there that would willingly overpay waaaaaay beyond his actual market value, it's Jim Hendry.

The Cubs pick Moreland

Former Cubs player Keith Moreland was named as the replacement for Ron Santo by WGN Radio today.

That's a good hire.

How many candidates could say that their name is actually in the lyrics of a Cubs song?

For those of you wondering which song, it's "A Dying Cubs Fan Last Request" by Steve Goodman.




Listen for Moreland's name...

One Bad Apple

Exactly 40 years ago today, the number one song in the country was "One Bad Apple" by the Osmonds. It wasn't just a number one hit, it went platinum. It was HUGE.

I admit I liked the song when it came out, but cut me some slack--I was seven years old at the time.

I found this priceless time-capsule on YouTube. The Osmonds performing the song at the Ohio State Fair in 1972...

E-mails, we get e-mails...

"RP" writes regarding my post about Jeopardy's Man vs. Machine...

"I saw about half of yesterday's show on DVR before I had to leave...I'll watch the rest of that and today's episode tonight. Lots of "how we did it" filler. My biggest complaint to this point regards ringing in on an answer. The show alleges that Watson has to pop the buzzer like the human contestants. They also continuously show a graph of Watson's level of confidence on an answer as it is still being read aloud (Watson gets it as a text file). Above a certain confidence threshold, Watson will ring in. I don't think I saw any answer that Watson wanted to ring in on where the humans were actually able to beat him on the buzzer. I guess that changes later on the lower levels of the board where the answers are harder, but when I had to leave, it was a slaughter. Watson had several thousand dollars, and Jennings and Rutter each had about $200. They could never get in for an answer."

This link has some good information about the computer's strengths and weaknesses.

Machine Gun Jack McGurn

75 years ago today he was gunned down in a North Side bowling alley.

His gruesome story, and the other reason he's remembered around Valentine's Day, can be found at Just One Bad Century.

Don't remember Jack?

He was also the owner of the Green Mill Jazz Club.

Zambrano wants opening day start

Carlos Zambrano said he's going to let his stats do the talking for him this year, but his mouth did contribute one thing before his stats told him to shut up.

He said he wants to start his seventh consecutive opening day.

Let me just say this to Carlos: "Even if you had been our best pitcher the last few years, which you clearly haven't, you still stink on Opening Day."

Do Carlos' stats want to say anything? Yes: "Your record the past six Opening Days is 1-5. Last year you gave up 8 earned runs in 1 1/3 innings."

I think I'm going to enjoy hearing from Carlos' stats this year.

Zappa on MIami Vice

25 years ago today, Frank Zappa appeared on the television show "Miami Vice". He played a drug kingpin named "Mr. Frankie."

Uh oh. Dempster's making predictions again

Ryan Dempster has been looking over the hard working Cubs pitchers and catchers their first weekend together, and he's encouraged. How encouraged?

"I like our team, and I like our chances."

Father Knows Nothing

My latest Father Knows Nothing column has been posted. This week's is called "My very own Spudnik moment" and it's about the cruel murder of a potato.

You can read it here.

The Sweetest Words in the English Language

Bill Holub worked with me at the Loop (WLUP) in Chicago. He was in the news department there for 18 years, and every year whenever he would hear or read the words "Pitchers and Catchers Report," he would say with great enthusiasm..."Those are the sweetest words in the English language."

A few years ago I asked him to write a guest blog for me about that subject matter, and it's become a tradition ever since to re-run his piece on that special day. Today is the day for the Cubs. Pitchers and catchers are reporting to spring training in Mesa.


THE SWEETEST WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
By Bill Holub

“Pitchers and catchers report."

These are indeed the sweetest words in the English language. Friends have been hearing me recite this every year at this time. I once had an old poker playing friend who used to say the sweetest words have always been “I’ll play these”. This is the same friend who couldn’t win even when dealt a pat hand. That however is a story for another time and place, where an explanation of the relationship between the quantity of beer consumed, what the cards in your hand really look like and the amount of money you bet can be fully explored. It’s really something scientists should be looking at.

In the meantime, I apologize to all those who came here looking for a sentimental dialogue on romance. I’m sorry to say it but the sweetest words in the English language are not “I love you”. Now that I think of it, this may instead be a sentimental dialogue on romance and baseball.

It’s funny how the two always converge around Valentine’s Day. Spring fever is referred to as that time of year when things start to bloom as the weather changes and love is in the air. It is no coincidence that this is the same time the baseball season opens and brings hope to all of us diehard baseball romantics.

My love affair with baseball was re-ignited in 1987-88. There was only one place to catch baseball highlights from all over the major leagues back then. Once a week you could tune in to “This Week In Baseball” with good ol’ Mel Allen. During those two seasons I was hooked into witnessing two West Coast baseball Gods embodied in the forms of a young Mark Mcgwire and Jose Canseco. This is before anyone had ever heard of andro, anabolics and the other chemical cocktails that have since cast a pall over these two. Back then, I was treated week in and week out to mammoth sized home runs flying out of every ballpark in the country. The fact that these home runs were being hit by players wearing what my brother and I had always considered the coolest looking baseball uniforms in the world (the Oakland A’s green and gold) had me embracing the game I grew up on all over again.

By 1989 I was so hooked on this game I even started collecting baseball cards again, although as much as an investor as a fanboy. I also started another nasty habit that impacts my life to this day. That is when I started a fantasy baseball league with a bunch of guys at work. 1989 also happened to be a division winning season for my beloved Cubs, so I was in baseball heaven and haven’t looked back since.

THE NATIONAL PASTIME

I think we can honestly say that baseball is no longer the national pastime in this country. It has been supplanted by football. I can accept that. Although I would insist the true national pastime is gambling, which is the driving force that makes football the number one spectator sport in America. I suppose I could go off on a George Carlin type of rant here on the differences between football and baseball, but that’s not why I’m writing this piece.

I just want to point out there is one major difference between the two and that is commitment. I’m talking about the commitment between baseball fans and football fans. Football is a four month season requiring your undivided attention one day a week, or two if you’re both a college and pro fan. Baseball is a six month season requiring your undivided attention throughout with your favorite team(s) playing as many as five or more games a week.

Baseball is a commitment. I believe it carries as much of a commitment as love. They both require dedication and attention. They can both go awry despite the best laid plans. An early swan dive in the standings in May that ends a team’s season before it even had a chance can be just as painful as not having your phone calls returned after the second or third date. Meanwhile an October champagne shower celebrating a pennant or World Series championship is as sweet and memorable as a ‘yes’ to a question posed on one knee.

BASEBALL AND THE CINEMA

Once that warm baseball is back feeling starts sinking in every year, I like to get fully immersed by throwing myself into my favorite baseball movies before the games actually begin. This is my form of spring training.

You’ve got your “Bull Durham”, “Field Of Dreams”, “Major League” (only the first one, please), but there is one movie that hits me in the right spot. “City Slickers” is not a real baseball movie per se, but there’s one scene that remains among my all-time favorites. It’s where the three friends (Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby) are on the cattle drive and passing the time by discussing their favorite baseball memories. Billy Crystal remembers the first time his father took him to Yankee Stadium as a kid and how he had never seen grass that green before. Mickey Mantle even hit a home run that day. Daniel Stern recalls how growing up he and his father never saw eye to eye, but they could always talk about baseball with each other. “We always had baseball” he says.

As for me, one of my earliest baseball memories was getting to take the day off of school with my brother because my Dad got opening day tickets to Wrigley Field. I still remember wearing our warmest winter coats and knit hats, waiting to sit down while the Andy Frain usher brushed the snow off our seats. They don’t make Aprils in Chicago like that any more.

THE SWEETEST SOUND

There is a sound that accompanies the words “pitchers and catchers report." It is the sound of a ball popping into a mitt. The sound of a simple game of catch. It is more than the crack of a bat sound. The sound of a mitt popping brings the memories and feelings of a lifetime of baseball flooding your senses all at once. It happens every time, whether it’s major leaguers or just a game of catch with your dad or your kid. The week pitchers and catchers report there are no cracking bats, only popping mitts. The sweetest sound in the world.

“Pitchers and catchers report."

The sweetest words in the English language.

Chicago Radio Spotlight: Leslie Harris

My latest Chicago Radio Spotlight has been posted. This week I spoke with The River's Leslie Harris about her nearly twenty-plus year Chicago career.

You can read it here.

Coming this weekend

This weekend's Chicago Radio Spotlight interview will be with former WLS, The Blaze, Rock 103.5, and WCKG rock jock, and current evening personality at The River, Leslie Harris. I'll post that interview on Saturday.

Saturday is also the day that pitchers and catchers report for the Cubs in Mesa. Look for my annual Bill Holub guest blog about the special significance of that day.

This weekend's Father Knows Nothing will be about the meaningless and violent death of a potato. I'll be posting that on Sunday.

Have a great weekend!

Epiphany

My youngest son Sean was in a hurry this morning and rushing out of the house, but needed to make a pitstop first. He said: "Darnit, I just tightened this belt and closed the button. I don't have time."

I pointed to his zipper.

He looked up at me, and I could actually see the light bulb go on over his head.

"OH! That's what that's for!"

8 years. It took him 8 years.

The apple does not fall far from the tree.

Bang Bang

How old is Cher? On this day in 1966 (45 years ago!) she recorded the song that was her biggest solo hit of the 60s...

Classic Family Feud moment

Fox loves the Cubs

We may look at this year's Cubs team and think: "Oy."

Fox looks at them says: "Oh boy!"

The Cubs are slated for NINE national "Game of the Week" broadcasts this year. They'll play the Reds, the Giants, the Red Sox, the Yankees, the Cardinals, the Phillies, the White Sox, the Cardinals (again), and the Astros.

They may also be on ESPN up to four times this year.

Maybe they aren't going to be as crappy as I think.

Best Fails of Last year

There's a little something for everyone in this video. Thanks to "PH" for sending me the link...

Is right wing talk radio dying?

The Daily Beast thinks it might be, and they have some facts to back them up, but I'm personally not convinced.

SNL and college

Onlinecollege.org has put together their list of the top 10 SNL skits about college.

There are links to the videos too.

Some pretty good stuff, I must say.

Satchel Paige

40 years ago today Satchel Paige was inducted into Baseball's Hall of Fame. Some say he was the greatest pitcher of all-time, but there is precious little footage of him in his prime.

Here's a few seconds of his unusual delivery. Notice that at the very end of the clip, he's in Wrigley Field. He was on the first Negro team to play in Wrigley Field. It was an exhibition on May 6, 1941...

A Suburban Dad's Guest Blog: The Worst Part of Parenting

My first official guest blog at ChicagoNow for my friend Kim Strickland's "A City Mom" blog has been posted.

You can read it here.

Happy birthday to a great mustache

Steve Dillard is 60 years old today.

He wasn't a great player for the Cubs, but he had a Hall-of-Fame quality mustache.

Bueller and the Cubs

A Yahoo Sports blogger was very impressed with this Baseball Prosepctus report, figuring out precisely which Cubs game Ferris Bueller and his buddies attended during the film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

He boldly claims: "Larry appears to be the first person in the history of the Internet to publish such a finding."

Um, no.

JOBC did it two years ago.

Just saying.

And we probably weren't the first ones to do it either.

A City Mom

My good buddy Kim Strickland writes a blog called "A City Mom" for ChicagoNow.

Regular readers of this blog know the long history Kim and I share, so it won't be a big surprise when I tell you that she has asked me to guest blog on "A City Mom" occasionally as "A Suburban Dad." I could never say no to Kim.

She introduced me to her audience today.

Harry's statue is vandalized

Somebody sprayed graffiti on the Harry Caray statue outside of Wrigley Field.

Normally you'd start the investigation by checking out enemies of the Cubs, say a Sox fan or a Cardinals fan, but Sox fans and Cardinals fans also loved Harry.

What a bummer. This sort of thing doesn't speak well of our city.

Wayne's World Returns to SNL

At least for one bit. Dana Carvey hosted SNL this past weekend, and Wayne's World was the opening bit. It was a nice stroll down memory lane. (My boys LOVE Wayne's World)...

Father Knows Nothing

My latest "Father Knows Nothing" column has been posted. It's called "Snow Day" and it includes a few pictures from our recent snowmageddon.

You can read it here.

I posted a few more pictures here, if you're interested.

Ronald Reagan at 100

Today you'll be hearing lots of tributes to Ronald Reagan on his 100th birthday, but you probably won't be hearing about his one big character flaw (one that is shared by far too many of us).

He was a Cubs fan.

Chicago Radio Spotlight: Mitch Rosen

This week's Chicago Radio Spotlight interview has been posted. I spoke with the program director of the Score, Mitch Rosen.

Mitch talked about his start working for Eddie Schwartz, his time at the Loop, and of course his time at the Score.

You can read it here.

Diggin' Out

This is a pretty fair effort about our recent snowstorm by Ed Smaron. Enjoy...

Coming this weekend

This weekend's Chicago Radio Spotlight will be with WSCR's (The Score) Program director Mitch Rosen. I'll post it on Saturday.

This weekend's Father Knows Nothing will be about our comedy of errors dealing with the big snow. I'll post that on Sunday.

Have a great weekend, and as Frank Zappa used to say, "Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow."

The Who

From Bob Dearborn's The Olde Disc Jockey's Almanac this morning...

"February 4, 1966…The Who played their first show as headliners at the Astoria in Finsbury Park, England. The Fortunes and the Merseys were also on the bill."

If you went to see The Who 45 years ago, this is the kind of show you would have seen...

The Day the Music Died

On this day in 1959, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash in Iowa.

It was four years before I was born, but I have since met many of the people affected by this important day in history. Bobby Vee filled in for Buddy Holly at the gig he was flying to--and became a star. We had him him on Landecker's show and he told the story.

Bob Hale was the MC of that last Buddy Holly gig, and I interviewed him a few years ago for Chicago Radio Spotlight.

And Bob Dearborn became an expert on the song about that day ("American Pie") and became a nationwide sensation with his interpretation of the song. I worked with Bob at WJMK, and got to know him well enough to ask him to write a guest blog for me on the anniversary of Buddy's death. He was gracious enough to comply...

The Day the Music Died
By Bob Dearborn


Some dates – December 7, 1941; November 22, 1963; August 16, 1977; September 11, 2001 – remain as indelible in our minds as our memory of the shocking events that took place on those dates.

We have just marked the anniversary of another stunning tragedy, one not as big as those others but an important milestone for many people of my generation and, to be sure, for me personally: 52 years ago, three popular young music stars perished on what came to be called a dozen years later, “The Day The Music Died.”

In the very early hours of February 3, 1959, a small plane chartered after a concert in Clear Lake, Iowa, crashed shortly after takeoff leaving all four on board dead: the pilot, singer Ritchie Valens (‘La Bamba,’ ‘Donna’), J.P. Richardson who performed under the name, "The Big Bopper” (‘Chantilly Lace’), and Charles Hardin Holley, known by millions of his fans the world over as Buddy Holly.

I had seen death before, close up, although the earlier experience for me was more curious than catastrophic, more surreal than sad. Oh, I liked my grandparents, all right, but I was 10 and 11 years of age when they died and I hadn't developed enough yet intellectually or emotionally to really understand or feel an impact of their passing.

Of course, two years later, I was much more mature, and starting to realize all kinds of important things. What a revelation it was to discover that music could be about more than the beat, that movies and TV shows could be more than shoot ‘em ups and car chases, that the sudden loss and finality of death could be devastatingly sad.

The first time I was really moved by the passing of someone I cared about was when Buddy Holly died – somebody I “knew” only from his music, his hit records, his appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

I couldn't have guessed it at the time that his music would have a great influence on future generations of musicians and songwriters, including the young, not-yet-famous Beatles and Rolling Stones. I just knew I liked it. From “Peggy Sue” and “That'll Be The Day” through everything that followed, I was first a fan of his music.

He changed the style of rock ‘n’ roll music by altering the chorus and verse pattern of contemporary song composition. He popularized the four-man group configuration. Buddy was the one who advised Elvis to get a drummer (to join Scotty and Bill in Elvis’ backup band). He was the first rock ‘n’ roll singer to use violins, a whole string section, on his records (‘It Doesn't Matter Anymore’). For a man who enjoyed fame for only the last year and a half of his young life, he made the most of it. Leaving his fingerprints all over contemporary music, his influence has been felt and his popularity has sustained for almost 50 years.

It was more than the music for me, however. In an era of pretty-boy teenage idols ruling the music charts, here was this young Texan who was kinda … geeky. He wore horn-rimmed glasses on his face and his emotions on his sleeve for all to see and hear – from the youthful pedal-to-the-metal exuberance of songs like “Rave On” and “Oh, Boy!” to the playful intimacy of a song like “Heartbeat.”

This guy was not only different and good, he was the first rock ‘n’ roll star that I could relate to, since I was a gawky, sensitive, geeky kid with black, horn-rimmed glasses, too! Buddy Holly’s acclaim and success confirmed that it was okay to be and look that way, that I was okay. He was MY hero. And his death was a crushing blow.

Ritchie, the Bopper and Buddy were the first popular music/rock ‘n’ roll heroes to die suddenly, shockingly at a young age. Theirs are the first names on a list that we review with heartache for its scope and length: Eddie, Johnny and Jesse … Patsy, Gentleman Jim … Sam, Otis and Frankie … Janis, Jim, Jimi, Ronnie and Duane … Jim, Rick, Karen, John, Harry … Marvin and Stevie Ray. Elvis. John.

Each time the bell has tolled, we've been stunned to learn of the loss of another hero, another artist who touched us with their music, a person we never met but who was so much a part of our lives that we viewed them as friends. And, too, with each passage, we've felt the loss of yet another important touchstone of our youth.

For me that all started with Buddy Holly. I was changed by his presence while he was alive, profoundly moved by his untimely death, always transformed by his music. And touched yet again by all of that in late 1971 when I first heard Don McLean’s brilliant composition, “American Pie.” Masterpiece is not a big enough word to describe that recording.

The song’s story begins with Buddy Holly’s death … as felt and told by one of his great fans, Don McLean. The clever metaphors of American Pie’s lyrics, then as now, leave many people confused, unable to understand what the song is about. Don and I are the same age, we lived through the same music era with similar reactions to all the changes that occurred, and we were, first and foremost, big Buddy Holly fans. I knew immediately what Don was saying in that song.

Where did all this lead? I invite you to click on the link below that'll take you to a Web site that Jeff Roteman created in tribute to my analysis of American Pie. I hope you enjoy “the rest of the story” at this site, that it helps you appreciate what a wonderful piece of work American Pie is, that it makes you want to know more about Buddy Holly and his music, and that you find the experience a fitting observation for the anniversary of “The Day The Music Died.”





Bob's Full "American Pie" analysis can be found right here.

Bob's excellent The Olde Disc Jockey's Almanac can be found here.

Lou is back in baseball

He just signed a deal to be a special advisor to the San Francisco Giants.

This is a bit of a surprise to me. I thought for sure he would end up with the Yankees or the Rays.

Shoveling is finally done

I'm drinking now. After six hours of shoveling I require a painkiller.

Shoveling all day

We couldn't even open our doors this morning. It took twenty minutes just to dig out a path for the dog to take her morning constitutional, but at least we didn't lose power.

This will be an all-day job.

See you tomorrow.

The Eagles

35 years ago today the best selling album of all-time was released, The Eagles Greatest Hits (1971-1975). I'm sure even The Eagles didn't anticipate that their Greatest Hits album would be that huge.

This is a live version of one of my favorites from the album...



Jackson Browne wrote this for his first album, but he didn't know how to finish the song. He gave it to his friend Glenn Frey, who needed songs for his new band - the Eagles. Frey finished the song and the Eagles used it as the first song on their first album.

Take it back, Zach

The newest Milwaukee Brewer, pitching ace Zach Greinke, was in Milwaukee this week for the Brewers fan fest.

A fan threw him one of the easiest questions of all time: "Which team will win the Super Bowl?"

Zach replied: "The Steelers."

Needless to say, he was booed. Could be a long year in Milwaukee, Zach. Every Brewers fan loves the Packers even more than they love the Brewers.

E-mails, we get e-mails...

Shoveling advice from "RP," responding to my earlier post...

"You're skewing too early. The boys won't have much to do this afternoon, and the biggest job will be tomorrow morning. Then the snow will taper off quickly. The boys should be able to help tomorrow, since school will be called off.

According to Tom Skilling, the storm arrives 3-4pm. The worst won't be until overnight, when it will snow 2-3 inches per hour. O'Hare will have 19 inches on the ground by 6am, according to the average model, and 22 inches total by 6pm tomorrow night."

Snowmageddon

We're expecting up to two feet of snow in Chicago today.

I went to the grocery store yesterday and it felt like one of the Mad Max movies--the aisles were so jam-packed with people hording supplies that I literally had to bypass a few of the aisles because the traffic wouldn't allow another shopping cart.

Sorry kids, no chips this week.

So, my fellow Chicagoans. How are you planning on handling this? You can't wait for it all to fall before shoveling. I'm thinking of trying to pull it off in three shifts. The first one will be later this morning.

Then, when the boys come home they get second shift.

And then the third and nastiest shift (most of the snow is coming tonight) will fall to your humble basement blogger (just before bedtime.)

Somewhere along the way I've got to help my mom too.

Back surgery will be scheduled for next week.

The Tide is High

The #1 song in the country exactly 30 years ago today...

Joke for a Monday morning

It's slightly off-color, but I found it pretty darn funny. Thanks to "MS" for contributing it...




A widowed Jewish lady, still in good shape, was sunbathing on a deserted beach in Boca Raton, Florida . She looked up and noticed that a man her age, also in good shape, had walked up, placed his blanket on the sand near hers and began reading a book. Smiling, she attempted to strike up a conversation with him. "How are you today?"

"Fine, thank you," he responded, and turned back to his book.

"I love the beach. Do you come here often?" she asked.

"First time since my wife passed away 2 years ago," he replied and turned back to his book.

"I'm sorry to hear that. My husband passed away three years ago and it is very lonely, she countered. "Do you live around here?" She asked.

"Yes, I live over in Coral Springs " he answered, and again he resumed reading.

Trying to find a topic of common interest, she persisted, "Do you like pussy cats?"

With that, the man dropped his book, came over to her blanket, tore off her swimsuit and gave her the most passionate lovemaking of her life.

When the cloud of sand began to settle, she gasped and asked the man, "How did you know that was what I wanted?"

The man replied. "How did you know my name was Katz?"

Ernie turns 80

Today is the 80th birthday of my all-time favorite Cub: Ernie Banks.

This weekend they had an 80th birthday party for him, and he took a bit of a fall.

Not to worry, he's doing just fine.

Father Knows Nothing

The latest Father Knows Nothing column has been posted at NWI Parent. This week's is called "Mom, Sean is hanging."

You can read it here.

Chicago Radio Spotlight: Patty Martin

Patty Martin is the program director of one of Chicago's most successful radio stations, The Drive (WDRV).

She is also this week's Chicago Radio Spotlight.

Coming this weekend

I'll be posting a new Chicago Radio Spotlight on Saturday. This week I interviewed WDRV (The Drive) program director Patty Martin.

A new Father Knows Nothing will be posted on Sunday. This week's column is the explanation to this Johnny Kaempfer quote: "Mom, Sean is hanging."

Getting the old band back together

First the Cubs brought back Reed Johnson, then they brought back Todd Wellemeyer, then they brought back former first round draft choice Luis Montanez, and now, ladies and gentlemen, we bring you...

Augie Ojeda.*

The Diamondbacks released him, so the Cubs snatched him up.

The Cubs also signed Braden Looper, who didn't even pitch in the majors last season. In 2009 he pitched for Milwaukee and clocked in with a 5.22 ERA.

This is clearly the "throw as much crap as you can against the wall and see what sticks" approach that has always served the Cubs so well.


*I mock, but I always did like Augie. Doesn't it seem like he killed the Cubs when he was playing in Arizona, or is it just me?

Laverne & Shirley

On this day in 1976, the very first episode of Laverne & Shirley aired. I don't think I've ever seen an episode of the show--I lived in Germany when it came out, and this is one show that simply didn't translate to the German audience.

I did, however, hear this song on Armed Forces Radio. Imagine how weird it must have sounded to someone that had no idea what the show was about...

Knock Three Times

This song was #1 in the country exactly 40 years ago this week. I admit it's a guilty pleasure and beg your understanding that I wasn't even 8 years old when it came out.

By the way, this is pre-mustache Tony Orlando. And check out that shirt! When are those coming back?

Cubs license plates

You can now order special "Cubs" license plates in Illinois. Ernie Banks and Tom Ricketts made the announcement yesterday with Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White.

Ernie has "14" so you can't have that one. Mr. Ricketts has "TOM" so you can't have that one.

Let the mad rush begin for "1908".

It's only $163 for a vanity plate.