Musings, observations, and written works from the publisher of Eckhartz Press, the media critic for the Illinois Entertainer, co-host of Minutia Men, Minutia Men Celebrity Interview and Free Kicks, and the author of "The Loop Files", "Back in the D.D.R", "EveryCubEver", "The Living Wills", "$everance," "Father Knows Nothing," "The Radio Producer's Handbook," "Records Truly Is My Middle Name", and "Gruen Weiss Vor".
~Rogers Hornsby 1897–1963 (Cubs 1929-1932) It’s hard to imagine that one of the greatest players in history was not popular in Chicago–but Hornsby clearly was not. Hornsby had one great season for the Cubs, their World Series year of 1929, and he became the manager at the very end of the following year. Despite managing a notoriously rowdy team, he ruled with an iron fist. He didn’t just ban drinking (which, of course, was illegal at the time), he banned reading, movies, soda pop, smoking, and eating in the club house. He was so hated by his players that when the 1932 team won the pennant (after he was fired), the players voted to give him zero cents of a playoff share, even though he had been with the team for 4 months. Their hatred of him went much deeper than his strict rules. He was in deep debt to many of the players on the team. The Commissioner of Baseball, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, became so alarmed by the reports he was getting about Hornsby, that he sent letters warning the team and the players about him. He also sent one to the NL President demanding any and all information he had about Hornsby’s gambling. Hornsby was defiant about it until the very end: “Gambling’s legal,” he would say. He never bet on baseball, only the horses. Probably influenced by Hornsby’s star power, Landis chose not to punish him. But his letters to the club led to an internal Cubs investigation. Team owner William Wrigley and team president William Veeck discovered that Hornsby had borrowed $11,000 from his own players. That’s when they fired him and replaced him with Charlie Grimm. Grimm led the 1932 team to the World Series. Hornsby never experienced the playoffs again. Later in life he was hired by Wrigley’s son Phillip to become the team’s first minor league batting instructor. The same prickly personality and inability to understand why people couldn’t naturally hit as well as he did, however, made him as lousy at that job as he was as a manager. As a player Rogers Hornsby had very few peers. His lifetime batting average is .358. He hit .400 three different times. He narrowly missed it a fourth time (.397). He won two MVP awards, two triple crowns, and seven batting titles. And he did all that while gambling away nearly every dime he earned.
~Hack Wilson 1900–1948 (Cubs 1926-1931) Hack is still remembered for his record 1930 season when he drove in 191 runs, but during his Cubs days he was known for more than just slugging the baseball. He was known as a notorious hell raiser. Wilson had several run-ins with the law, his teammates, opposing players, and even fans. He was arrested for violating the Prohibition Act in 1926, but he was just getting started. Hack and his drinking buddy/teammate Pat Malone got into a fistfight in a hotel because they thought somebody was laughing at them. In 1928, he was fined after charging into the stands to fight with a heckler. Gabby Hartnett and Joe Kelly had to physically remove him off the fan–and thousands of fans swarmed the field. Hack once charged into the opposing dugout to punch a Reds pitcher…after Hack hit the ball. He was tagged out in the dugout. That same night he punched another Reds pitcher in the team train. A famous story, which may or may not be a legend, involved Cubs manager Joe McCarthy and Hack. To show Hack the dangers of drinking, Joe took a worm and dropped it in a glass of whiskey. The worm quickly died. “Now what does that prove?” asked Joe. Wilson thought about it for a while and replied, “It proves that if you drink whiskey, you won’t get worms!” Through it all, Hack was the most feared hitter in the National League. Hack still holds Cubs career records for best on-base percentage (.492), slugging percentage (.590) and OPS (1.002). He led the league in homers four years in a row, in walks and RBI twice, and led the Cubs to the World Series in 1929. For many years he held the single season home run record (56), and he still has the single season RBI record (191). But in 1931, things started to go south. Hack and player/manager Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby didn’t get along and were constantly at odds. It got so bad, that the Cubs traded Hack to the Dodgers for Burleigh Grimes. Hack had one more good year with the Dodgers, but the end was near. He retired after the 1934 season. Near the end of his Wilson’s life he appeared on a network radio show where he spoke about the effects of “Demon Rum.” This was just a few months before his death on November 23, 1948. He was only 48. His body was unclaimed for three days before National League president Ford Frick paid for the funeral. The veterans committee named Hack to Baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1979.
Eckhartz Press was founded in Chicago in 2011 by Rick Kaempfer and his long time collaborator and friend David Stern. The name “Eckhartz” is a tribute to the men that gave them their creative genes; Kaempfer’s father Eckhard, and Stern’s father Fritz. Eckhartz Press is a boutique Chicago publishing company dedicated to serving the brave new 21st century publishing world; the laughing “E” logo a constant reminder that life is too short – don’t ever lose your sense of humor.
This conversation will be held on May 2nd at 4:00 pm Central Time. This event is free and open to the public.
Posted on the Studio Walls blog at Eckhartz Press...
Eckhartz Press co-publisher Rick Kaempfer is a former radio producer and host who still writes about the media regularly as the media columnist for Illinois Entertainer. This is his 30th year as a media writer, so throughout the year we are featuring excerpts from the more than 200 current and former Chicago radio and television stars he has interviewed, including many people who are celebrating birthdays this month.Here are ten examples…
Eddie Volkman’s birthday is April 1st. He has been on the air in Chicago for decades, including many high-profile years with Jobo Coburn on B-96. Rick first interviewed Ed in 2008, and the subject of his famous father (weatherman Harry Volkman) obviously came up…
Eddie Volkman and Rick Kaempfer
By the time I was born my father had already been on television for several years. In fact, both of my older brothers’ births were announced on my dad’s weather segment. It was so normal to us that my brother, Jerry actually asked a kindergarten classmate, “What channel is your dad on?” High school was a little tougher. As an athlete, opposing teams would yell things like “Are you puttin’ on the High Pressure Defense?”. I’d shut ’em up by “raining” 3-pointers! You have to remember, in the 70’s & 80’s–pre-cable days–the channel 2 or channel 9 news had higher ratings than “American Idol” or other hit shows these days. The recognition factor was pretty high.
Chet Coppock’s birthday is April 30th. Chet is the father of sports-talk radio in Chicago, and entertained Chicago radio and television audiences for forty years. Sadly Chet passed away in 2019. Rick interviewed Chet many times over the years, and even teamed up with him to publish the Eckhartz Press book Your Dime, My Dance Floor. In his 2014 interview for Illinois Entertainer, Chet exhibited some of his famous bravado while praising the competing sports talk radio station The Score…
What I admired the most about the Score in those early days was they knew they couldn’t compete with me as far as getting the big guests, so they invited everyone who was ticked off to vent on the air. They said, we are your open forum to express your anger. Where they did catch lightning in a bottle was hiring their midday show. I am number one as a solo act – I am Hulk Hogan, Mickey Mantle, George Halas and Joe DiMaggio as a solo act. But as a team – [Mike] North and [Dan] Jiggetts are bar none the greatest tag-team ever. They understood how do that kind of show, and ran with it.
Melissa Forman’s birthday is April 7th. Rick has interviewed Melissa three times over the years, twice while she was doing mornings at WLIT-FM (2007 and 2021), with one interview during television career sandwiched in-between (2016). In that most recent interview Melissa talked about the joy she feels doing the station’s Christmas format, particularly the wishes the station grants…
These Christmas wishes are so meaningful to me. I’m so appreciative that I’m allowed to do this. I really mean it. We’re all going through this time together. When things seem hard or difficult, I keep telling myself that I’m so blessed to be able to grant wishes to people. I mean, who gets to do that? The people are so joyous, so grateful, and it’s so meaningful to them. You can’t help but get emotional. It makes me feel so good; it’s like I’m the one that gets a gift. We had wish, upon wish, upon wish for other people. A husband to a wife. A teacher to her students. A mother-in-law to her son-in-law. The expression of love from one person to another is so incredible. How many times have you wished you could do that for a special person in your life? Even my own family got into it this year. We’re all quarantined together, so I played these wishes back to my family at dinner sometimes. It just made us all feel good.
Jim Johnson’s birthday is April 2nd. Jim was a newsman at WLS Radio for nearly 50 years. He worked with the likes of Steve & Garry, Roe & Garry, Roe & Roeper, and many more. Rick interviewed Jim in 2010, and asked him about his earliest days at the legendary radio station…
1968 was a life changing year for me. Not only had I just started as a newswriter-editor at WLS…but some of the biggest stories of my career happened soon after I arrived. Martin Luther King was assassinated (followed by the west side riots in Chicago.) Bobby Kennedy was shot. The Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago and the anti-war protests and riots broke out. Although I was a rookie reporter, the new news director at WLS, Bob Benson, decided I should become a street reporter and cover these events. Little did I know that these stories in my first year were some of the biggest stories ever. I was only 23. In addition to filing reports for WLS, the ABC network began using my reports on a regular basis. I was used as a fill in network anchor on ABC network newscasts. I covered the clash between anti war protesters and the police at the corner of Balbo and Michigan. It was pretty “heady” stuff for someone my age.
Sherman Kaplan’s birthday is April 25th. Sherman was a reporter and anchor at WBBM NewsRadio for four decades. Rick interviewed Sherman in 2010 about some of the stories he covered for the news station…
Most of these stories I covered in the studio, but many of them happened during my show. The crash of the Illinois Central Railroad on the south side. The Nixon resignation. The explosion of the Challenger. I’ll never forget that day. We carried the launch live at 10:30. At that time we had a business report from Len Walter at 20 and 40, and as I threw it to Len, I had my eye on the television monitor and saw something that didn’t look quite right. I mentioned it to my producer in the talkback, and when we came back from Len, I started to describe what I was seeing, before the network was on it. They cut to it shortly thereafter. There have been so many other memorable days as well. Daley’s death. Harold Washington’s death. Of course, 9-11.
Bob Stroud’s birthday is April 13th. He has been a fixture on the FM dial in Chicago for 40 years, at places like the Loop, WCKG, and his home for the last two decades, The Drive. Rick has interviewed Bob several times. One of those interviews took place in 2007, and Rick asked Stroud about his 1980 arrival in Chicago…
Oh, it was. I was working in Sarasota Florida before that, and Bob Coburn was the PD at WMET. He flew me up to Chicago for an interview. I told my boss in Florida about it, and he gave me the worst advice of my radio career. He said, “Now, Bob, this is the big city—you better clean yourself up. Get a haircut. Buy some nice clothes.” So I did. When I landed in Chicago I was met at the airport by a guy with shoulder-length hair, wearing a satin radio jacket and jeans. I thought “Oh great.” When I got to WMET, everybody looked at me like, “Who’s the geek?” I knew right away that this was a badass station. It had an attitude that was totally catchy. The general manager of the radio station, Harvey Pearlman, was walking up and down the hallways holding an empty bottle of vodka, screaming “TAKE NO PRISONERS!”
Robert Murphy’s birthday is April 10th. Murphy had a few long and successful stints on Chicago’s radio dial, most famously at Q-101 in the 1980s. Rick interviewed Murph in 2008 about that time period, which is widely remembered for his television ads wearing a straight jacket…
Well, “embrace” may be too strong a word, but I am very aware of the commercials positive influence on my career. My initial objection was that it seemed kind of a lowbrow concept (“That Murphy’s Cray-zee!) but most of the commercials were exceptionally well executed. Though it is inarguable that the straitjacket helped to bring me recognition and thereby bolster my ratings when I first started, I wanted to move on after a while. But No! If there was a smidgen of a drop in the ratings, management whipped that bad boy out again, and I was back on TV, running through Chicago with my arms restrained and my feet bare.
Dan Sorkin’s birthday was April 6. Unfortunately, Dan passed away a few years ago (2016). He was the morning man at WCFL in the late 50s/early 60s, and was incredibly influential in the career of a little known comedian in Chicago at the time, Bob Newhart. Rick interviewed Dan in 2010, and asked him about that relationship…
Playhouse 90 writer Jim Gallagher and I were friends. Jim and Bob had put together and were selling to radio stations a 5 minute taped comedy “man on the street show” for $5 a show. It cost them $7 a show to produce. The more successful the sale, the more money they lost. I loved the comedy routines and asked Jim to Bring Bob to the WCFL studios for a live interview. He did. Bob performed several of his routines on air. When Warner Bros. President Jim Conkling came to Chicago I performed Bob’s routines for him and suggested a contract. Jim Conkling contracted and had Bob booked into the Tides Hotel in Dallas and recorded live, “The Button Down Mind Of Bob Newhart”. He got a recording deal and a television show, and I became his staff announcer. Every Friday after finishing my WCFL Morning Show I would cab to the roof of the Merchandise Mart where a helicopter took me to O’Hare Field in time to Catch a Continental Non-Stop to Burbank where I had a Honda Motorcycle stashed at the air freight office. I strapped my bag to the Honda and drove to the NBC Burbank sound stage where I arrived in time to announce the Bob Newhart TV Show. It was a wonderful year!
Kathy Voltmer’s birthday is April 27th. The veteran news anchor has worked at several radio stations in Chicago including WXRT, WLUP, and a long stint at the Drive (WDRV). Rick has interviewed Kathy several times, including one of his first interviews for Chicago Radio Spotlight in 2007. He asked her to talk about the worst thing she’s experienced in the business…
Years ago (long before I worked at the Drive), I was asked to lie about the weather forecast because the station was sponsoring a big outdoor promotion and rain was expected!!!! When I didn’t do it I was screamed at and accused of trying to single handedly bring down the entire promotion! By telling the truth about the weather. It’s hilarious in retrospect.
Bernie Tafoya’s birthday is April 1st. Bernie has been a reporter for WBBM News Radio 780 for more than 30 years. Rick interviewed Bernie in 2009, and asked him about his years on the streets of Chicago, covering the news…
I started this shift in August of 2000, and it used to be a cops and robbers beat, but very early on my news director decided to use me in a different way. She knew I had sources in all sorts of other areas, like in education or the church, and she let me cultivate those sources and use them. Plus, the main spokespeople of the various different agencies all knew me. I was very happy to be given that role, because the old cops and robbers stuff wouldn’t have interested me nearly as much.
I have seen a few things that stick with you. The Amtrack crash, the Brown’s Chicken murder. Believe it or not, though, I still have faith in people. People ask me if I’m ever afraid going into so-called bad neighborhoods, and I’m really not. Most people in most neighborhoods are good people. So-called bad neighborhoods are not to be feared. There are only a few bad eggs.
~Dolph Camilli 1907–1997 (Cubs 1933-1934) After Cubs owner William Wrigley and team president Bill Veeck Sr. died, the club was handed to an inexperienced fish wholesaler named William Walker. He traded Dolph to the Phillies for Don Hurst. Camilli went on to hit over 200 home runs, made two All-Star teams, and led the 1941 Brooklyn Dodgers to the World Series. He won the MVP that year too. Cubs fans might have been forgiven if they found themselves rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1941 World Series. Seven ex-Cubs led that Brooklyn team to the National League pennant. Dolph Camilli played first base. Billy Herman played second. Augie Galan was an outfielder. Kirby Higbe won 22 games. Hugh Casey won 14 games. Larry French pitched valuable innings out of the bullpen, and Babe Phelps was a backup catcher. (Photo: Helmar Baseball Art Card Company)
~Bob Smith 1895–1987 (Cubs 1931-1932) One of three Bob Smiths to play for the Cubs, this one has the distinction of being the first. He had a very unusual career. After coming up with Boston as a shortstop, Smith was moved to pitcher in his third big league season. Smith then pitched in the big leagues for thirteen seasons, and posted double-digit wins six years in a row. His last time doing it was for the 1931 Cubs. In that tumultuous year (when star player Hack Wilson and his manager Rogers Hornsby were at war all season), Bob won 15 games. The following year he was moved to the bullpen, and pitched for the Cubs in that capacity in the 1932 World Series. The team traded him in 1933 as part of the package used to acquire slugger Babe Herman.
Dave and I chatted with Kevin Matthews about his crazy radio days in Chicago when we worked together at AM 1000 in the 80s/90s. Included as a bonus, an old interview I conducted of Jim Shortz on Kevin's show in 1992 as Rick the German Boy. https://t.co/4SlyUAu1nV
~Bill Faul 1940–2002 (Cubs 1965-1966) Some players are known as characters. Some are known as eccentrics. Still others seem to have come from another planet. Bill Faul was one of those guys…and he wasn’t even a lefty…or a Californian. Faul pitched for the Cubs in 1965 and 1966. It’s safe to say that he had a quirk or two. He claimed that he could hypnotize himself before games. He had been a Karate instructor in the Air Force, and his hands and feet were both considered registered weapons. He talked to his arm. He allegedly swallowed live toads (to get “extra hop” on his fastball), and ripped the heads off parakeets with his teeth. He once held a guy off a fourth floor balcony by his shoes. Faul also insisted on wearing #13. But as wild and unpredictable as Faul was, he was cool as a cucumber on the field. He had to be awakened in the clubhouse only thirty minutes before his first major league start. Faul shook out the cobwebs, grabbed the ball, warmed up, and pitched a three-hitter. Faul always seemed to be in the middle of the excitement. He was one of only a handful of pitchers to be involved in fielding a triple play, and one of only two major league pitchers in history to have three triple plays in one season while he was on the mound. Unfortunately for Faul, the league figured him out in 1966. When his ERA climbed over five, he was sent down to the minors and never returned to the Cubs. He kicked around the minor leagues for a few seasons before turning up for a cup of coffee with the Giants in 1970. Bill Faul died in 2002, at the age of 62. (Photo: Topps 1965 Baseball Card)
First presidential candidate I ever voted for. I got to know his daughter Eleanor (also deceased) a bit during my radio career. She was a fun one. They just seemed like good people. RIP.
Congrats to Eckhartz Press author Ken Korber for his involvement with this project with Little Steven. This is from Bruce Springsteen's Backstreets website yesterday...
LITTLE STEVEN'S ROCKIN' ROLL ADVENTURE Stevie in a new children's book, and in classrooms virtually "I'm going on tour," says Steven Van Zandt, "traveling the only way we can right now — on Zoom." Van Zandt has just launched Little Steven's Virtual Classroom Tour, with plans to make an online visit to at least one public-school classroom per week for the remainder of this school year.
"The tours we did with the Disciples of Soul these last few years before the quarantine," says Stevie, "brought me face to face with the teachers we invited to the show every night. In the final week before COVID-19 shut down the U.S., I visited a TeachRock Partner School in Fullerton, CA, and seeing our curriculum come to life in the hands of teachers and students felt like the culmination of my life's work. I miss that interaction. So I've started visiting classrooms virtually every week. I get to see how our skilled teachers are using TeachRock to keep kids focused and engaged in such a crazy time. And I also get to help out where I can, answering questions from the students. I'll be visiting K-12 classrooms each week from now through the end of the school year."
Check out this video to see the kinds of questions that Little Steven can expect from students as he visits them online.
The Virtual Classroom Tour comes on the heels of Little Steven's appearance in the children's book Grace's Rockin' Roll Adventure, written by Ken Korber with illustrations by Jaime Buckley.
Stevie is depicted in interactions with characters from the children's-book series The Musical Adventures of Grace, which connects music with early elementary reading, science, and math. Copies of the book can be purchased with an $8 discount directly through TeachRock, which also will benefit from each direct purchase.
This picture was taken at Dave's wedding 29 years ago. I was his best man. Dave always responds with "You were at best, an OK man." Looking forward to the event. Click on the link below to sign up. https://t.co/VqVMuW5gJ5
News of a new Super League is going over like a Lead Zeppelin, to paraphrase Pete Townshend. The domestic leagues (including the Premier League) are threatening banning the clubs involved, and FIFA is threatening banning their players from playing in the European and World Cups. From the Times of London...
The new Super League — including England’s ‘big six’ clubs — has written to Uefa and Fifa warning that it has already filed motions in courts to prevent the footballing authorities imposing bans. The letter states it has secured £3.5billion in funding from a financial institution and that it will take legal action to protect its right to form a breakaway league.As revealed by The Times, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City joined six other teams including Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus in joining the Super League.
After the #SuperLeague statement, this is the UEFA position: "Every club and player participating in the Super League could be banned from all UEFA and FIFA competitions, European or International level". 🚨 #UEFA
Today the Biden admin went further than Mueller, the Senate Intel Comm and everyone else who has looked at Russia, claiming that Russian intel had "sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy” from the Trump campaign. w/@MarkMazzettiNYThttps://t.co/165rt14UFS
Could we eradicate Covid-19? @ScottGottliebMD says "we're not going to see that here" as a large number of adults are resisting vaccination and most schools might not mandate the shots. "If we want to eradicate it, we need to make different decisions." https://t.co/5RHuM5E212pic.twitter.com/oMie8Bl2Tx
~King Cole 1886–1916 (Cubs 1909-1912) His real name was Leonard Leslie Cole. He started his baseball career as a pitcher with the Cubs in 1909. By 1910, he was the ace of the staff. He led the National League that season with a record of 20-4 and helped win a National League Pennant for the Cubs. His 20-4 record is the best winning percentage (.866) for a Cubs pitcher in the twentieth century. He was immortalized as “King” Cole by Ring Lardner, who no doubt, got it from the children’s nursery rhyme ‘Old King Cole.’ King Cole didn’t stay with the Cubs very long. He won 18 games for them in 1911, and was traded (along with fan favorite Solly Hofman) to the Pirates for Tommy Leach early in the 1912 season. He later landed in the American League, where Cole gave up Babe Ruth’s first ever hit in the majors (a double on October 2, 1914). But this King Cole would not live to be a merry old soul. In 1915, he contracted a disease that knocked him out of baseball. Some sources say it was malaria, others say tuberculosis, and still others speculate it was syphilis, but whatever the disease, it took Cole’s life. He died on January 6th, 1916, a few months shy of his 30th birthday.
Today would have been former Chicago mayor Harold Washington’s 99th birthday. One of our authors, Roger Badesch (The Unplanned Life), had the priviledge of working for the mayor in his press office. The Unplanned Life features an entire chapter of stories from his days in the mayor’s press office, but these two are among our favorites. We present them to you free today, in honor of Harold…
In 1984, the Chicago Cubs finished first in their division. 1984 would be the first appearance in post-season play for the Cubs since 1945. It was a baseball season to celebrate.
In anticipation of the Cubs clinching their division, I sent a memo on September 12th to Grayson Mitchell suggesting we should get ahead of the game, so to speak, and be ready to have the mayor congratulate the team.
Grayson replied to my memo with a sticky note: “Great idea! Let’s work in conjunction with Special Events. Also, let’s have Mayor present at clinching game—on phone, the dugout/locker room. Let’s talk!”
The Cubs clinched the division in Pittsburgh on Monday night, September 24th. The next morning I was in the City Hall press room handing out the press release—as enthusiastically reported by Harry Golden Jr. in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“City Hall today bloomed with Cubs regalia, proclaimed its joy, and planned a massive welcome for the victors. Mayor Washington was first with effusive words of praise and aldermen wound up for speeches in a regular City Council session.
Roger Badesch, a Washington press aide, bustled about with copies of mayoral statements while sporting a Cubs cap…
‘For many long years, the cry from the North Side of Chicago has been “Wait until next year,”’ the mayor said. ‘I am overjoyed to join the millions of Cubs fans around the world in saying, “Next year is now.”’…”
Unfortunately, the Cubs didn’t celebrate their World Series championship until 2016.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. MAYOR
For Christmas of 1984, the mayor’s staff got him a stereo component system and presented it to him at the staff Christmas party. But it was up to me to make sure he was really surprised by the gift.
I connected the amplifier, AM/FM receiver, and speakers and hid them under the boxes in which they arrived. I tuned the receiver to a music station and had it playing when he came into the room.
As a ruse, I placed a small portable cassette – AM/FM player nearby, and we pretended the music was coming from that small device. The mayor’s photographers snapped pictures of him dancing to the music before the big unveiling. After the party, I boxed up the stereo system, and it was brought to the mayor’s apartment.
A few days later I drove over to the mayor’s apartment to connect and install the stereo system. It was about 7:00 p.m. when I walked into the Hampton House and was greeted by one of the mayor’s security staff, who directed me to the elevator.
As I got off the elevator another security detail officer (all of the mayor’s security detail were Chicago police officers in suits) greeted me and directed me to the mayor’s apartment. The first thing I saw as I entered was the living room directly ahead of me.
There were several men sitting on a couch and a couple of easy chairs around a low glass table. On the table were boxes of food from a national fast food chain. I knew from talk among staff and news reports that several of the men talking with the mayor were part of his “kitchen cabinet.”
I also noticed against the front window an artificial silver Christmas tree. Shining onto the tree was a rotating multi-colored light. As I entered the room, the men at the table got up and left.
To my left was a room with a La-Z-Boy-style, thickly upholstered easy chair in the middle of the room. Surrounding the chair—bookcases on all four walls, from floor to ceiling, completely filled with books.
To my right a doorway to what I imagined would be the bedroom and restroom. Just past that was the open kitchen with breakfast countertop facing out to the dining room set. The kitchen was spotless.
As I started to unpack the stereo system, the mayor excused himself and went to the room with the easy chair and shelves of books. It was quiet in the apartment with the exception of the low rumble of the electronic “whirring” of the color wheel in front of the silver Christmas tree.
It took me about an hour to put the system together in its cabinet. When I finished, I walked over to where the mayor was sitting in his library and said I was done and was ready to show him how it worked.
He sat on one of the dining table chairs as I knelt on the floor showing him how to switch between the turntable, AM, FM, and cassette inputs. My thinking at the time was that, like the kitchen, the sound system would get very little use. After the demonstration he thanked me, we wished each other a happy holiday, and I left, walking past the same security detail as before, making my way out of the building and back to my car.
Right-wing conservatives are here to convince you that murder is an appropriate response to property damage, but property damage isn't an appropriate response to murder.
Congratulations to all my friends over at the Drive. From Robert Feder's column this morning...
WDRV 97.1-FM, the Hubbard Radio classic rock station, was named winner of a 2021 Crystal Radio Award from the National Association of Broadcasters. The Drive was the only Chicago station among the 10 recipients honored Tuesday at the online NAB Show Premiere. The awards recognize stations for “outstanding year-round commitment to community service.” Winners were chosen from among 50 finalists by a panel of judges from the broadcast industry, community service organizations and public relations firms.
The youngster played his final high school game last night. It was a bittersweet moment. He still has one more season playing for his club (Green White), and then that's probably it for soccer. I was his coach the first eight years he played. I've probably seen him play 500 games. I think I'll miss it even more than he will...
~Claude Hendrix 1889–1944 (Cubs 1916-1920) Claude Hendrix may be one of the most important figures in early Wrigley Field history. He started the very first game played in the ballpark (as a member of the Chi Feds), and the very first game the Cubs played there. On the other hand, his career ended with a gigantic asterisk. Team president Bill Veeck got a telegram before a game in August of 1920, saying that there had been an unusual amount of betting against the Cubs. The starting pitcher that day, Claude Hendrix, reportedly bet $5000 himself. The Cubs didn’t let him start the game. Grover Cleveland Alexander started instead (and was offered a $500 bonus if he won the game)—but the Cubs still lost 3-0. Though he had no proof it was true, Veeck ruled that the spitballer Hendrix couldn’t play for the Cubs the rest of the season. (History fails to note that Hendrix was running out of gas at the time anyway). Veeck also reported the incident to Judge Kennesaw Landis. In Judge Landis’ autobiography, he admitted that he quietly banned Hendrix for life. No public announcements were made. While Hendrix suffered greatly for his role in this case, he didn’t suffer as badly as the team across town. The investigation into this game didn’t turn up anything against Hendrix, but it did turn up a much bigger scandal: The Chicago White Sox had fixed the 1919 World Series. The Sox were acquitted in court, but banned for life by baseball anyway. Unlike Hendrix, they will forever be branded as the most notorious cheaters in baseball history.
It knocked me out pretty good this weekend, but I finally got my second vaccine shot (Moderna). Pretty soon, I'll be back to some sort of reality (knock on wood)
