This summer, Joe Maddon’s famous clubhouse speech- “Try Not To Suck_ became a rallying cry for the Cubs and their fans. T shirts and signs everywhere. This past Friday, Manager Joe was wearing a new black shirt. It said WE DID NOT SUCK, and they did not! They won the World Series in seven games, and they did it in a crazy, edge of your seats kind of way- extra innings in the seventh game.
One of the great sports stories of all time was Kyle Schwarber- catcher and outrfielder, who had a devastating injury in a collision with Dexter Fowler in the outfield in the third game of the season. He was told he would be back sometime in 2017, but that didn’t work for him. He rehabbed his leg all season, cheere3d the team on from the dugout, and the day before the World Series started, after testing out his body for two days in Arizona, the Cubs flew him to Cleveland in a private plane to become their designated hitter in the World Series. He went 7 for 17 for a .412 average in the series, and gave all of Chicago a story that wasn’t to believed unless you saw it with your own two eyes. The only question left is Who is going to play him in the movie of his life?
There was another great story that has unfolded over the last few years. I got in this business to work with and meet some of my favorite musicians. I met Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, and the Rolling Stones. One kind of obscure guy that I used to see perform around Chicago was Steve Good, a diminutive singer songwriter with a very large talent. In 1984, he wrote a song about his beloved sports team, called Go Cubs, Go. He passed away from Leukemia in September of 1984, never seeing the Cubs win a Championship. In 2007, the team started playing his song over the PA system after every home win (there weren’t many of them). The crowd would sing along, and Steve, up in heaven must have been really happy.
This year, the song had 1.19 million on demand streams through October 27th. So one of the unlikely by products of the World Series win was a hit record for one of the nicest guys to ever pick up a guitar!
One more note:
Someone posted this on my Facebook page this week-
http://petapixel.com/2016/11/03/chicago-tribune-sun-times-covers-world-series/
It shows the covers of the Sun Times (A really lousy wraparound picture) and the Tribune (a great celebration shot). The article goes on to explain that this is what you get when you fire your whole photography staff and pickup a photo from a wire service to illustrate the most important sports story of the last 100 years in Chicago!
Way to go, Chicago Sun Times.