A “Cubsessions” tribute to Lin Brehmer
Chicago lost a radio icon this weekend, WXRT’s Lin Brehmer. During the creation of our book “Cubsessions” authors Becky Sarwate and Randy Richardson knew that the book about Cub fans wouldn’t be complete without talking to the famous Cub fan radio morning man. Today in honor of Lin’s passing, we are posting that chapter as a free excerpt….
4. Lin Brehmer
For Lin Brehmer, it has always been about baseball.
“I grew up at a time in America where you ate breakfast, which was sadly something like Corn Flakes, and then you walked out of the house with your glove and maybe a bat that had been dropped on concrete playgrounds so much that the part of the bat at the end that is supposed to hold your grip has already disappeared and chipped away,” Brehmer said in a telephone interview. “And then you found your friends and you played baseball for the next ten hours. By baseball, I mean baseball, stickball, fast pitch, stoop ball, punch ball, softball, baseball with a tennis ball – anything that involved a ball and catching and throwing and hitting. I did that everyday every summer for as long as I was a kid.”
In some sense, the legendary rock DJ for Chicago’s WXRT, has never really grown up. He certainly has gotten older but he maintains that heart of a kid. And baseball – along with music – keeps that heart pumping.
These days, it’s the Cubs. But back when he was a kid growing up in New York, it was more about the Yankees. But then, it was more about the sport of baseball than about any individual team. And the Cubs were a big part of his life, so much so that he and his playground friends became the founding members of the Cleo James Fan Club, a small but passionate following for an obscure outfielder who played for the Cubs between 1970 and 1973, compiling a career .228 batting average with five home runs and 27 RBI. Hanging from Brehmer’s office door is a placard commemorating his title as “Founding Member and President for Life of the Cleo James Fan Club” on which it reads of James: “He won some, he lost some, but he suited up for them all.”
Brehmer, who began working professionally in radio in 1977 as a disc jockey in Albany, New York, at WQBK-FM, where he earned the nickname, “The Reverend of Rock and Roll,” credits his passion for baseball for playing a big role in his being hired to work for WXRT as music director beginning in October 1984. At the time, Norm Winer was program director and a die-hard Cub fan.
“For our interview, we ate Chicago pizza, drank beer and watched a Cubs-Mets game,” Brehmer recalled. “One of the reasons I think I got this job – one of the reasons I’m in Chicago – is that I could talk about baseball with him every step of the way. If I didn’t have a fundamental grounding in the history of baseball, there’s no way I’d be sitting here at WXRT talking to you today.”
Winer sealed the deal with Brehmer, who had been simultaneously offered a job at an alternative rock station in Long Island, New York, by promising to take him to see the Cubs play in the World Series, if they made it that far. “I was already anticipating moving to Chicago and immediately going to see the Cubs play in the World Series…well, we all know how that worked out. It worked out badly.”
The Cubs, after winning the first two games of the National League Championship Series against the San Diego Padres, lost three straight games in San Diego. The dream of the Cubs playing in their first World Series since 1945 had died. “That Sunday, I arrived in the rain,” Brehmer said. “It was bad for all kinds of reasons. The next year, there I was standing in line for Opening Day tickets. And by 1989, I was a season ticket holder and have been ever since.”
That was the start of his love affair with the Chicago Cubs. “The whole game of baseball has deepened its importance in my emotional life so much over the years, that when I fell for the Chicago Cubs I fell hard,” Brehmer said. “The Chicago Cubs are the centerpiece of my spring and summer, and from the time I fell in love with the Chicago Cubs, I’ve put a giant ‘X’ on my desk calendar through the month of October in the hopes that that month is not available for anything else.
“The Cubs are the source of so much joy and so much pain. They’ve really been one of the most important parts of my adult life and of my family’s life. If the Cubs are on TV, my wife [Sara Farr] and my son [Wilson], if he’s around, we’re watching it. I can’t turn away and I can’t turn away an opportunity to go to a game when I have a clearing in my schedule. As I say to my closest friends, who understand, ‘With regards to the Chicago Cubs, I kind of have a problem.’ Love is not rational. You can’t say, ‘Oh, you’re in love, this makes sense.’ Very little about love makes sense in the traditional sense.”
At the outset of the 2016 baseball season, Brehmer, in his Lin’s Bin radio commentary, dared to broach the question: What if?
He wrote: “The prophets have warned us that when the Cubs win, the world will not be able to stem the tide of global doom. As any extreme mountain climber can tell you, the danger is not in reaching the summit of Everest, the danger is coming down. Do we really want the Cubs to win the World Series?”
In Nostradumus-like fashion, he may have predicted what was to come. Because he answered his question this way: “Allow us the shortness of breath that comes from reaching the greatest height. And if we end the season with the Cubs in 7, I promise we will breathe again because we will no longer be holding our breath.”
The roller-coaster ride that was the 2016 postseason “nearly destroyed” him in an emotional sense. When it came down to Game 7 of the World Series, Brehmer was at a watch party with his wife and his son and his closest friends, including Winer and his other XRT colleagues, Wendy Rice and Marty Lennartz – his “Chicago Cubs family.” As Brehmer emphasized, “There were no casual fans there.”
When Rajai Davis belted that game-tying two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth, Brehmer said, “There was a darkness that settled over the room.” As Brehmer explained: “We were all together in the failures of 2007 and 2008 and 1998 and 1989. They were of course very much present in the summer of ’84 and ’69. All that accumulated horror came to rest over us like a cloud. Some people walked downstairs to be alone in rooms. Some people just sat there with their heads in their hands. I didn’t know if any of us were going to be able to pull out of that feeling. Then it started to rain.”
Brehmer had to be on the air first thing the next morning. Expecting a long rain delay, “I stood up and I said, ‘I love you all, but I’ve got to go home.’”
He drove home alone, leaving his family behind. And so, sitting alone in the same room where he’d watched Cubs games for the last quarter century, he watched the Cubs come back after the rain delay to pull it out and win their first championship since 1908. “When they won, I leaped up, arms in the air, shouting like I was in a crowded bar,” he said, “then I looked around me and I realized, ‘Who are you doing that for? You’re all by yourself.’”
After all the inevitable celebratory phone calls and texts, Brehmer took a moment of private celebration. “I thought to myself, ‘I should have a big tumbler of my best bourbon on the rocks or maybe tequila.’ I’m going back and forth and I thought, ‘No, no, no, no – that’s all wrong. You feel like an 8-year-old right now. What you need is a root beer float.’ So I watched the post-game sitting in my comfy chair with a big smile on my face spooning a root beer float into my mouth.”
True to his promise, he breathed again.
