(Pioneers in square eye wear: Harry Caray and Jack Brickhouse,
the Cubs’ two big winners in 60 years of WGN baseball)
“It was the perfect storm,” Vorwald said. “The rise of the superstation, the team winning [the division] in 1984 and then Harry becoming this icon changed everything. Harry totally took it to the next step about this idea of wanting to be at Wrigley Field. The bases would be loaded, the fans are yelling and Harry would say, ‘Don’t you wish you were here?’ ”
Of course, the bases were usually loaded with Reds and Dodgers in my childhood, but that’s beside the point. While I personally feel CSTB has fallen far short of its goal to be the leading Cubs blog on the Internet, my thanks to Gerard for sending along this item by Ed Sherman of the Chicago Tribune. I give Cubs owner Phillip K. Wrigley credit for two plusses in my childhood, every Cub game free on WGN and, of course, the Doublemint Twins.
For all that’s said about Bill Veeck and crazy marketing, Wrigley managed one simple idea “ giving every game away free “ into a moneymaking machine that never fielded a pennant winner much less a World Series Champ, yet remains one of the iconic brands in baseball today. How much money has George Steinbrenner blown to do the same? There’s a reason Chicago built statues of Caray and Brickhouse, and no Cub player.
Straying from the Cubs but keeping with the Chicago theme there was this bit from teddy greenstein’s sports media column.
“Have you noticed the “Comment on this story at suntimes.com” tag at the bottom of Sun-Times pieces? You won’t find it at the end of Jay Mariotti’s columns.
Earlier this week, the tough-guy columnist asked management to remove reader comments from its Web site. So if you want to rip Mariotti for ripping Jim Hendry in his Thursday column, you’re out of luck. Kind of. A few readers slammed Mariotti at the bottom of a Greg Couch column Thursday.”
so if CSTB can’t be the leading Cubs blog on the internet perhaps it can become the home to those wishing to bitch about that tubby eye-linered freak at the Sun-Times.