There was a time when all that mattered to a 13-year-old boy was watching the Chicago Cubs play baseball on television.
Although he couldn’t have even found Illinois with a yet-to-be invented GPS navigational device, he scheduled each of his lonely summer days, after moving to a new town, around WGN’s home-game coverage.
The kid grew up playing several sports with his father and siblings, but they were all suddenly too busy to bother.
Anyone who has spent a summer in the oven of Phoenix or Las Vegas understands that you don’t just go outside during the day. Television programming in the afternoon was primarily soap operas and infomercials.
Before there were professional teams in the desert, the MLB Season Packages on satellite, or 64 ESPN channels, there was WGN.
Even though there were much closer professional baseball teams; Padres, Angels, and Dodgers broadcasts were only available on AM radio at night. Sports websites and text-message updates from ESPN mobile were just a degenerate gambler’s science-fiction dream.
I don’t know which marketing genius inside the Wrigley Gum Network decided to broadcast a local Chicago station with regional professional sports coverage to every basic cable system of the barely inhabited desert southwest, but it worked.
Andre Dawson dingers (as we used to say) over the ivy had this boy jumping off the couch, arms in the air, mimicking the umpire’s round trip signal. Dunston-to-Sandberg-to-Grace double plays inspired a few holes in his bedroom wall when he attempted to “turn two” to an imaginary first baseman.
It even had him learning baseball history and sports writing through comparisons to Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance double plays.
He bought a goofy, red, white, and blue baseball cap with a cartoon bear on it at the mall and wore it everywhere, except to church on Sunday.
He gave each weeks’ allowance to the Fleer, Donruss, Upper Deck, and Tops Corporations. But to him, all the cards were “commons” unless the player was wearing a Cubs uniform.
Sports fandom knows of no more faithful a soldier than a junior-high boy.
Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card?
He’d trade it for a Greg Maddux or Vance Law just to complete a team set.
It was good times for Chicago Cubs fans. Players like “wild thing” Mitch Williams, who once took a line drive off his temple, made headlines and racked up wins. Jerome Walton won Rookie of the Year by stealing bases and pushing up the Jerome-O-Meter.
What he hadn’t heard about, or more probably ignored, was the reputation Chicago had of being “lovable losers” or a silly superstitious curse. There was hope that each game and postseason would be the one where they finally lived up to their potential.
He eventually made some friends when school started, and the next five summers were spent skateboarding and swimming at the lake instead of listening to Harry Carey slobber through the seventh-inning stretch.
As years went on and as the Baby Bears baseball team continuously stumbled each September and October, so did their self-declared biggest fan’s interest.
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