Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Crossing town, leaving town, and coming to town

How about the new header digs? I found an awesome artist to collaborate with me on some new designs for the newsletter, and god damn does it look better already. If you head over to Twitter and follow us at @stillgottaChi, you’ll also be able to see the new logo… or you can read until the end. But still, you should still follow on Twitter.

And always read to the end.

I’ve said the t-shirts are coming, and now you know that I’ve been investing to make that happen. I’ll be most likely selling shirts and decals off the bat, but for those of you who have been supporting since Day One — recommending the newsletter to others, instructing them to get it out of their goddamn promotions tabs, commenting and retweeting — you’ll be rewarded for your incredible loyalty. It’ll be one way to pay you back for the massive hand you’ve played in making the writing of this newsletter a rewarding experience.

For those of you who subscribe and would like to get a free shirt when they drop, start spreading the word. If you can prove to me you’ve sent it around and gotten the word out to at least ten people, I’ll reward you for your efforts.

And for everyone else, no worries! We’ll have extra merch for you. I’ve got some great ideas and am excited as hell to release more in the near future.

Anyways, again, and as always, thanks for supporting and reading. It means the world. SGCTC!

Let’s keep it up:

I’ve got a lot to get to, so I’m going to split this newsletter into two — one today and then one on Monday or Tuesday. Sorry for the late newsletter this week, but my life has taken quite a turn since the day you last heard for me. It’ll be hard, but I’ll touch on it briefly — and incompletely — now, and then we’ll get back to Chicago sports. Because it wouldn’t feel right not to.

---

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam

One of the most important people in my life passed away on December 1st, the last day I wrote to you all.

His death was sudden, unexpected, and more heartbreaking than I can adequately describe, so I won’t try to.

He was a best friend of my Dad’s, and along the way, he became that to me as well. He was the kind of man I called my Uncle without a second guess, not because he was blood related, but because he filled my life in such a way that he could only be categorized as close family, and damn near immediate.

You may know my Dad in real life, or may know him from his over-the-top, and sometimes verifiably insane, comments on this newsletter. His relationship with Michael — who passed away last week — taught me how to love my own friends.

When you see a friend like that, they taught me, you don’t just nod your head upwards, sit down, and crack a beer. You bear hug, no matter how long it’s been, and no matter how long it will be until the next time you see them.

It’s the kind of hug that required a few hard pats on the back just to bring it to an end.

You hang out until the wee hours of the morning, even if you’ve got something going on the next day, with those friends. We’ll all be able to have nights when we get to bed early. But we won’t always have a chance to watch football, sing Irish songs, and laugh enough at each other that the soreness in our abdomen almost rivals the pounding headache the next day.

And when you left — even if you had graced the rest of the bar visitors or party goers with the ol’ Irish goodbye — you found each other for another bear hug, and a “love you,” and not one followed by “man,” to make it feel less vulnerable or real. Because it was as real as it could be.

Someone that is special enough to treat your sons as if they’re their own is hard to come by. That’s what Michael taught me. And he taught me a lot else along the way.

He’d watch Iowa — my alma mater — on Saturdays, just to shoot me a text when the game was over. He’d text and ask for my thoughts on Chicago sports news so he could pass it off as his own to his friends — I loved that.

He’d take genuine interest in anything that I was doing, even though I may have felt it wasn’t worth anyone else’s interest but mine.

He read every newsletter, even if it didn’t apply to something he cared about.

If I needed him, he was there, no questions asked.

When people pass, even in the news, we get their blurbs — they loved their family, they liked golf, and they meant a lot to the people in the community. No blurb is strong enough for Michael, no matter how beautifully said or written it is.

But the best way I can describe him is that when he invited you out, you dropped everything you were doing and met him out. When he wanted to take a shot of whiskey, you obliged, no matter how much your stomach urged you not to. And when he said he loved you, he meant it, and it filled you with a sense of gratitude knowing that he was in your life, and you were a part of his.

I didn’t know whether to write about this or not. When I decided to do it, I didn’t know whether I should include his interaction with the newsletter. Who cares if he read this or not? It seemed unimportant. But he was one of the people I was writing for.

Every time I write here, I think of someone who might enjoy each word, each sentence, and each paragraph. ‘Michael would like this,’ I’d think, chuckling and fully aware that no one else may. But his enjoyment was worth it.

It won’t be easy moving on from this, not for anyone that knew him. And everyone that knew him understands the feeling when I say the world seems so incomplete without him.

The last time I saw him was just a couple of weeks ago. A few of us watched football all day on his deck, enjoying each other’s company on one of those unseasonably warm Chicago November days.

I posted up next to him, taking digs at others around us hoping to provoke one of his unforgettable laughs. I’ll miss that laugh dearly, and I play it back in my head every day so I’ll never forget it.

He handed me a “Chicago Irish” sweatshirt as the sun went down that day, and it’s still in my room. He said I could keep it. The metaphor is too obvious not to mention: he was the ultimate shirt-off-his-own-back guy.

His father was from Ireland, and as a first-generation American, he was often referred to in a derogatory fashion as a “narrowback.” He explained that it meant that his back was less broad and his hands less worn because of the life that his immigrant parents had provided for him. As he told my friends and I about the term, it brought him to tears.

He did not consider it derogatory, in fact, he thought it was an honor. He benefitted from the work of his parents, and he also benefited from using my father’s college resume to get his first job — one he almost forgot to take the first and last name off of before handing it in.

I say this, because, ironically enough, I feel as though him and my father’s impact on me has made me a narrowback — perhaps even a narrowerback. Their impact on me has made my life greater and easier, and that’s why it’s been so hard to try to say goodbye.

I haven’t told anyone this, not even my family. But it does bring my quasi-eulogy full circle.

When I left his deck that night, he walked me out, as if he knew it was the last time. When we got to the door, I turned to him — as if I knew too — and said love you. He said love you back and closed the door.

And that’s the last time I ever spoke to him.

I’ll hate forever that it will be, but to his credit, it ended with the right parting words.

Love you Michael.

---

Len Crosses Town

The Cubs longtime TV play-by-play announcer, Len Kasper, is leaving the team to join the White Sox as the lead play-by-play man on radio.

Kasper was with the Chicago Cubs for 15 years, which is most of my lifetime. Truth be told, I don’t remember what a Cubs game on television sounds like without him.

I had readied myself for a disappointing Cubs offseason. I wasn’t sure I’d be saying goodbye to Kyle Schwarber, one of my all-time favorite Cubs, despite his recent struggles. But I wasn’t floored. I knew there was a good chance Jon Lester would be gone, another one of my favorite Cubs.

But Len Kasper? Man, this is a tough one to swallow. When I first heard the news, my chest got tight, as if I was on the verge of a panic attack. He’s leaving the Cubs for the White Sox radio booth? I just couldn’t believe it.

Then I realized that this one will sting harder than any of the other Cubs leaving. Lester pitched once every five days. Kyle Schwarber came up three or four times per game. But Len Kasper has been with my for every game, every inning, and every pitch for as long as I can remember.

When a broadcaster is with a team for that long, you grow a closer relationship with him virtually than you do with almost any other player. Hundreds of ballplayers have donned a Cubs uniform since 2005. Only one has held the mic every game and been welcomed into my home.

I had the opportunity to meet Kasper a couple of years back. I asked him if he had grown fond of the team, despite the unwritten rule that broadcasters, like Hawk Harrelson, are supposed to remain mostly detached from the team. Kasper had no real affiliation with the team before 2005, and grew up in Milwaukee. So I genuinely wondered how he’d answer — and how diplomatic his response would be.

But he told me straight up, ‘Yes. Yes I have grown fond of everything Cubs related. It’s pretty hard not to.’ It was the answer I wanted, because I considered him such a major part of my Cubs fandom, whether it took until his departure to notice or not.

And when someone is with the team every day for 15 years, they become the writer of its history in some ways, and thus an encyclopedia of sorts. They’re more in touch with the ebbs and flows of each season than even the fans are.

When someone hits a walk off, it reminds them of other ones. When the team is slumping in September, they can feel the fans’ frustration from their homes all the way to Wrigley Field, or across the country.

Think about it: Every single one of your favorite regular season Cubs moments over the last decade and a half has been narrated by Len. Every single walk off was capped off with “…GONE! CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN!” and sometimes they came with a slight voice crack.

I loved Len with Bob Brenly, and when Jim Deshaies stepped in — I couldn’t stand him at first. But J.D.’s dryness became charming and his baseball intellect became almost Steve Stone-like. I think J.D. has Len to thank for his growth as a broadcaster.

Over time, I ended up really, really enjoying that pairing.

It’s always a shame that we don’t get to bring our favorite hometown team’s broadcaster with us on the playoff runs. Joe Buck’s signature calls take over for Len’s, which is fine by me, but it sucks that the guys that rode the rail with us to get there — going through the emotional ups and downs on the way — don’t get to enjoy the moment, doing what they do best.

Hey, at least Pat Hughes got to stamp his voice in history when Kris Bryant threw over to first base in 2016.

Len has said this was his call, which I’m sure it was. He’s also said that his dream was to do radio, which is considered a step down from television. This is no offense to White Sox fans at all, but objectively, the Cubs play-by-play broadcasting job is considered one of the greatest television jobs probably in all of sports. He left to take over on a lesser medium in a lesser market.

He doesn’t have to move, which helps. But there’s no way, in my mind, Marquee Sports Network and all of its bullshit didn’t play into the decision.

For God’s sake, after wearing dri-fit polos with WGN, Comcast or NBC logos for the last decade, these idiots forced Len and J.D. into suits in the summer heat.

I mean, there’s absolutely no benefit to this. For the two of them, it’s a major inconvenience, whether they say so or not.

And as a viewer, I actually hate it. When I’m sitting watching a Cubs game late at night waiting for the bullpen to blow it, I want the broadcasters to at least feel at ease. I don’t want their foreheads filling up with beads of sweat in exchange for some pseudo attempt at professionalism.

I don’t know what turning on the TV to two men in suits feels like, but it most definitely doesn’t feel like a baseball game in June.

And Marquee is run by a bunch of people I don’t trust. The Cubs launched this project as if it was for the fans, and not just to line their pockets even more and do away with a tradition on WGN that played a large part in growing the fanbase they were now looking to pay advantage of.

But hey, it was for more money, so they could put in on the field. Right? Alas, the Cubs just made it clear that they were unwilling to pay Kyle Schwarber a handful of millys for financial reasons, despite him being a productive player still, a fan favorite, and someone who would benefit from the National League eventually using a DH permanently.

Marquee has offered nothing other than bad sports betting shows, obscure ACC football games, and a lesser Cubs in-game experience.

Sure, it could be just that Len wants to do radio before it’s too late. He’s 50 years old, after all. It could also be that the Cubs are on the way down and the Sox are on the way up. But I’m highly skeptical over the notion that this had nothing to do with the Cubs. If I ran Marquee, and Len came to me to tell me he was considering leaving, I’d do everything in my power to persuade him to stay.

It doesn’t seem as if the Cubs did so — and that’s a slap in the face to every Cubs fan in Chicago.

They took away Wrigleyville as we knew it, and we said nothing. They took away the Cubs on WGN, and we said … well we did say something. But I never thought they’d take away Len Kasper, the one redeeming quality of the Marquee Sports Network.

There are two tales to this story, though. While the Cubs have tripped all over their own feet trying to build up what they figured would be a media juggernaut, the Sox stuck with NBC, built out a great coverage team, and now have rounded out one of the best hometown broadcasting crews in all of baseball.

It’s already well known how superb the Sox TV broadcast is between Jason Benetti, one of the best play-by-play men in any sport in the country, and Steve Stone, who is for my money the best color analyst in baseball.

The Sox had the legendary Ed Farmer, but he fell off as his health did in his later years. Ed Farmer and Darrin Jackson, the sox current radio color analyst, were borderline unlistenable near the end. Andy Masur took over for Farmer this last year, and at least from what I heard, it didn’t get much better.

With Kasper, who did plenty of radio in his spare time during his time with the Cubs, that radio team gets an immediate, massive bump.

Sox fans now have one of the top teams in all of baseball and arguably the best broadcasting team in the entire sport. They’ve grown their audience on television almost three times over during the last two years, invested in the right talent (minus their axing of Leila Rahimi, but that was NBC’s national team’s fault), and now Sox fans will finally be rewarded for their loyal fandom that yielded virtually no return over the last decade.

The only reason I watched Sox games prior to last year was to listen to Benetti and Stone. Now, when I’m in the car — and when other Sox fans are — I’ll have a reason to listen to a Sox ball game.

Congratulations to Sox fans — genuinely, I’m happy for you. You deserve it.

---

Transaction Season

The Cubs let go of Kyle Schwarber as well as former 1st round pick Albert Almora. They also non-tendered José Martínez and Ryan Tepera.

The Sox traded the promising pitcher prospect Dane Dunning for Lance Lynn, who finished a spot ahead of Lucas Giolito in Cy Young voting in 2020 and signed Adam Eaton to shore up their outfield.

If you needed any other indication, these teams are headed opposite ways.

The Dunning-for-Lynn move sparked some infighting among White Sox fans last week, and reasonably so. Lynn has been good of late, and finished 2020 with a 6-3 record and a 3.32 ERA. He’s also 33 years old.

Dunning, on the other hand, was one of the prospects Sox fans watched from afar the last few years, eagerly awaiting his arrival to the big leagues.

Until he underwent Tommy John surgery in 2019, he had quietly progressed nicely through the Sox’ minor league system. He arrived briefly in the big leagues in 2020, and fans were excited to seem him in a larger role as the team ascended.

But that’s what happens when your team is finally ready to win. It’s tough, and every Cubs fan knows the feeling. Sometimes it’s giving up Gleyber Torres for Aroldis Chapman to win a World Series and sometimes it’s giving up Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease for Jose Quintana for a chance to win another.

Each one stings and confuses you. But it’s the reality of the situation — White Sox fans, you’ve made it. Instead of worrying about giving up prospects, you can finally worry about wins and losses — and just wins and losses.

Now, it may not work out. Dunning was tied to the Sox for years moving forward, and Lynn has just one year left on his deal with no assurance that he’ll stick around — or be as good as he’s been the last couple of years. Before two top-6 Cy Young finishes in 2019 and 2020, he had less glamorous years.

But barring an injury, he’ll undoubtedly make the White Sox better this year. As a White Sox fan friend of mine said after the Lynn and Eaton deals, the Sox are better than they were the week prior — bottom line.

Can the ways in which they got better be frustrating? Of course they can. But in the end, it’s a blessing that instead of selling Chris Sale and Adam Eaton, you’re buying Lynn and Eaton back.

Now, for Eaton, who once called Adam LaRoche’s adolescent son — Drake LaRoche — a clubhouse “leader” when Adam was told his son couldn’t be chilling in the goddamn locker room every single day of his life, despite having his own locker.

Eaton had an atrocious 2019, but so did like, half of the league, over a shortened, COVID-19-striken season.

In 2018 and 2019, he was as advertised, a slightly above average ballplayer, winning a World Series along the way.

He will likely be a better option than anyone the Sox had in the right field last year, and he comes at a modest price of 1 year, $7 million.

The issue Sox fans had with this one was that he is not a slam dunk. He’s not a George Springer or even a Marcell Ozuna. If the money is going to be spent, as the Sox have said, after not spending it for years, when will it be?

A $7 million deal for a reunion is certainly not that, and it doesn’t bring the Sox that much closer to a World Series. Even when the Sox are the best team in the city, they’re as frustrating as the worst one — Daaaa Bears. Well, maybe not that bad.

The better gripe with the deal is the same one that I have. Adam Eaton is a prick. He infamously almost went to blows with former White Sox teammate Todd Frazier.

My friends and I met Todd Frazier when one of my buddies had just beaten Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (not a big deal) and I can assure you, he is the coolest dude on the planet. Truly, our 15-minute conversation with him made me confused as to how anyone could ever not get along with this man.

Eaton is notorious for his spats with other players. Just like La Russa felt like an unnecessary addition from a culture standpoint to a good thing, Eaton feels the same way.

He got off to a hot start, calling into ESPN 1000’s Carmen and Jurko, giving them literally 3 minutes and 5 seconds, then laughing off a question over whether La Russa could connect with younger players and subsequently hanging up the phone.

To be fair, the actual clip sounds better than the headline “Adam Eaton hung up on Carmen and Jurko,” but the fact that he gave them an uninteresting three minutes, and then hung up after abruptly saying “I gave you your two minutes,” is bad enough.

The question is completely reasonable, and even if you don’t find it so, it’s pretty easy to answer. Sorry we interrupted your workout Adam (his excuse for why the interview needed to be short).

However, he did leave us with this line from the interview:

“My love for Chicago has always been there… Chicago was always there for me”

Alright, this guy isn’t so bad!

Still Gotta Come Through Chicago, Adam!

---

Next newsletter will cover the Bears/Lions game and the Bears/Texans game. I just rewatched the Bears/Lions game, and all I can say is, I don’t know why I do these things to myself.

We’ll also cover Schwarber’s departure in a deeper fashion and get you filled in on everything happening in the United Center with the Bulls.

Thanks for reading, as always! And thanks for indulging in my non-sports-related life. I appreciate you all. Big things coming.

Oh, and, LET’S GO!