Almost 12 years to the day (August 2, 2008) I wrote an article for the Huffington Post about the history behind Cubs fans singing Steve Goodman's song, "Go Cubs, Go" after every home game that they win.  (I re-posted the piece here on this site a few years ago.)  It's definitely not even close the prime Steve Goodman, and in fact was just written as a jingle of sort for WGN radio to lead into Cubs broadcasts.  But it's lived on to carry Steve Goodman's fame to a a generation that didn't know his work but then went back to discover it, having won Grammys for his biggest hit, "The City of New Orleans," and more, like the country hit, "You Never Call Me By My Name," which he co-wrote with his close friend John Prine, though Prine didn't want any credit for it.

A few weeks back, I got a Direct Message on Twitter from Jesse Dukes, a radio producer for the well-regarded WBEZ in Chicago, one of the first charter stations for National Public Radio.  He was working on a sort of documentary story about the history of "Go Cubs, Go," and had come across my article.  We set up a time for a phone interview, and later spoke for about 15 minutes or so.

None of the interview got included in the finished product, but that's fine because he also spoke to people who knew a lot more of the story than I did, notably author Clay Eals, who wrote the definitive 778-page biography on Steve Goodman (that I wrote about here after he contacted me about my original article) and the producer at WGN radio who actually came up with the idea for Goodman to write the song for the baseball broadcasts, .  And the finished show has now aired.  It was made for WBEZ's podcast, Curious City, and is called "The Man and the Music Behind the Baseball Ballad  'Go Cubs, Go.'"

(Very thoughtfully, Jesse Dukes does give me a totally unnecessary, but appreciated acknowledgement at the end of the broadcast.)
​
I thought that Dukes did a very nice job with his entertaining and substantive report -- which runs for an enjoyable 20 minutes..  And as far as I can tell from what I know, he got the story pretty close to right.  (I think WGN ended up using the song before the game, not just as a bumper between innings, as the piece says.)  I do feel that it starts a bit unfocused and rambling as he talks with the Curious City host, who seems not to know much on the subject.  (That's not a criticism of her, just a description.)  But a few minutes in, the story kicks in, and it's flies by from then on.  The conversation between the two ends up adding a personal quality to it all.

Here are a few additional, albeit lengthy thoughts about the broadcast before we get to the show itself:

When Clay Eals mentions Steve Goodman in high school, what got cut from the report is that one of his Class of 1965 classmates was...Hillary Clinton!  She's said that they weren't friends but she definitely knew who he was.

One thing I don't agree with Clay Eals about is his theory on why Steven Goodman didn't break out like John Prine.  It's not because he was too nice.  He was nice -- as the legendary story Eals tells shows -- but a tough guy, very determined, very driven especially knowing the leukemia life-sentence he was facing. He didn't have time to screw around and just "be nice."  (All of which does comes across very clearly in Eals' book.)  From what I know working in the entertainment industry, executives like things that are simple, easy to grasp so you can identify who someone is in one quick look.  They like stories that can be described in "Give it to me in one sentence."  They like someone who is a country singer -- or a folk singer -- or a rock musician.  But Steve Goodman was none of those, he was spread all over the place: he has songs that are folk, country, comedy, standard ballads, jazz and rock.  I just think record producers and radio stations didn't have any idea what to do with him and how to market him.

I thought it was very touching that host/producer Dukes got emotional at the end -- because it is an emotional story.  But the reason why I think the story of "Go Cubs, Go" is a "happy" ending story to Steve Goodman's life, different from what was discussed.  Most entertainers, and perhaps especially singers, get forgotten once their time on the charts, writing and performing passes.  And by all rights, as great as Steve Goodman was, he was really on the verge of being forgotten by the general public (though not remotely his fans).  But "Go Cubs, Go," not only kept him remembered, but I think also ended up bringing up new fans who wanted to look up who this guy was.  And that's a joyous ending.

Again, it's a very nice piece and well-worth listening to.  The song has a wonderful story behind it, not to mention a wonderful singer-songwriter, and it's told me.  Unfortunately, I can't embed it here, but you can get to it by clicking this link.

And for those who don't know the song, especially how it's sung with home fans at Wrigley Field after a win, here it is after Game 5 of the World Series in 2016 which the Cubs won, sending the Series back to Cleveland -- where the Cubs won the final two games to win their first World Series in 108 years.  Which is why the 41,000+ plus fans singing along with the recording of Steve Goodman are so delirious.

I've written on these pages often (like here) why Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo is probably my favorite baseball play in the game today.  Something for which him being named in 2017 as MLB's Robert Clemente Award recipient -- presented to the player who "best represents the game of baseball through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions, both on and off the field." -- is only just one of many explanations.

In yesterday's Opening Day game, here is Reason #87 why --

Though last night was the first game of the baseball season, today if Opening Day.  Huzzah!  The Chicago Cubs home opener is today, and ultimately that's joy enough.  And as a baseball bonus, we return you to Riccardo Muti, from 2012 when he threw out the first pitch at a Cubs game.

I find it adorable that Muti (who wore his personal "Muti" Cubs jersey in the video yesterday of him conducting "Take Me Out to the Ball Game")  seems to love the Cubs, particularly since he's from Italy and didn't grow up on baseball or perhaps ever played it at all.  But we know now that he's a lefty.  Not the same form on the mound (or front of the mound) as on the podium, but he did get it to the plate.

By the way, listen closely in the background as he walks to the mount.  The P.A. is playing Beethoven's 5th Symphony.

To help celebrate the first game of the baseball season, we'll start the year as we did last season -- with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Riccardo Muti (in a Cubs jersey) playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”  I think it was done in honor of the Cubs 2016 World Series, their first in 108 years, since the video was posted on November 6, 2016.  And the musicians are in street clothes, but many are wearing Cubs paraphernalia or blue.
 
It's a wonderful and fun arrangement, too, not trying to overwhelm such a small, charming song with orchestral bombast, but arranged with an almost old-timey feel.  And Muti seems to be having a good time with it all.

My kind of town...

From yesterday's press conference, here is Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot commenting on Trump's tweet that morning threatening violence by the government toward looters.

Long-time readers of these pages know well of my friend from childhood, the accomplished Nell Minow who I write about often here -- from her own many skills as a world expert on corporate governance (having testified before Congress and winning awards for it) and top-notch film critic as the Movie Mom (even having filled in for Roger Ebert on occasion) to her sister Martha, former dean of Harvard Law, who once recommended to her lawyer father that he hire the smartest student she'd ever taught, a young man named Barack Obama, to that very father Newton, who did hire young Mr. Obama, was his early mentor and had been the FCC Chairman under JFK, famously calling television a "vast wasteland."

All these same readers also know well about my high school and college friend, Rabbi Jack Moline, who I most notably wrote about here, and who not only serves as a corporate board member of Elisberg Industries (you can check that out above under "About Elisberg Industries") and is a well-regarded Chicago Cubs fan, but in his other side jobs was a rabbi in the Washington, D.C. area for many years at Agudas Achim Congregation, until he was made Executive Director of the National Democratic Jewish Council, and then in 2016 became President of the Interfaith Alliance.  Which I guess makes him Mr. President Rabbi Jack Moline.  (Fun fact: he also participated in the emoluments lawsuit against Trump's ownership of his hotel in Washington, the one that used to be a post office.)

It's one thing to write about these two fine folks, of course, but another to see and hear them.  And now you not only get to see and hear them -- but both together! 

During the pandemic, as part of his job leading the Interfaith Alliance, Jack has begun a streaming webseries called "Stay Home, Stay Focused," where he interviews various important figures across the country.  And the other day, his guest was...as he puts it...his old friend from high school, Nell Minow!

(I should note that their separate accomplishments aside, Jack and I did a weekly radio show together at New Trier East High School on WNTH-FM, about comedy. We also worked together on the school musical revue, Lagniappe, for which he was head writer.  In fact, when we later attended Northwestern University, we adapted a radio documentary we'd made in high school, "What Makes People Laugh?" for a class project in interpersonal communications -- at the end of which he hit me in the face with a pie, much to the shock and uproarious laughter of the class.  Not to be left out, Nell and I had a class together at Northwestern, as well, on radio production.  It built to a class project at the end where the students created a one-day fictitious radio station, for which the professor made Nell one of the two station managers.  Radio does appear to a be thread weaving things together...)

Actually, in some ways this a bonus trilogy.  That's because early on in the interview, Jack and Nell talk about her husband and childhood sweetheart David Apatoff, an accomplished attorney and an expert in the art of cartooning  with eight books on the subject -- and early in my life knew David even better than I did Jack and Nell, since he lived just down the block from me in Glencoe, Illinois. In fact, much to my huge surprise David still (correctly) remembers details from my birthday party when I turned eight.  Alas, he does not pop in and make an appearance in the video, though shows up by discussion.

(Someone else who appears by discussion in the video, as well, much to my even greater surprise is -- me.  Nether Jack nor Nell happened to mention this fact, so it came totally out of the blue as I was watching.  It actually relates to an article I originally wrote for the Huffington Post but reposted here on Elisberg Industries, which I linked to above in the very first line...before I even knew the piece was quoted in the conversation.)

And so there you have it -- Nell Minow and Jack Moline on video together!  Such things don't get a whole lot better.  You get to see them both.  The very entertaining conversation (that covers business, movies, high school and more) is only 20-minutes long, so it's not a big pull on your time, though listening to either person separately could easily fill up far longer. The two of them together, this barely touches the service and is almost unfair it doesn't last longer.  But then, you can always play it again and again...

O joy.  A happy addition to Elisberg Industries. No longer do you have to take my word for it -- now you can see on your own, in one sitting together, what wonderful, whip-smart, absolutely charming and compassionate people they are.

Among the many stories I remember Elinor talking about was how she was quarantined when she was around three years ago because she'd gotten the Spanish Flue in 2018.  Well, as it turns out, WGN television in Chicago found out about this and did an absolutely wonderful five-minute featurette about Elinor, centered around that story.  It's told very well by her great-grandaughter Kara.  I don't know Kara well, she's a fourth cousin and we've only met once or at most twice, but the video was sent to me by her very proud mom Janice Goldman, who I stay in touch with, and who was overjoyed at seeing her mother remembered this way, let alone by done so by her own daughter.  (Janice herself even makes a guest appearance in one photo.)

WGN did a really terrific job with the report.  There's a great twist to the story that I won't give away, but they handle it beautifully.  And they even got video footage in there of Elinor talking.  My favorite part, though, I have to admit was around the 2:20 mark when they show a lot of documents from Elinor's past and application to Northwestern University, all registered to "Elinor Elisberg."

Here it is --

As readers of these pages here know, I am a huge fan of the legendary children's program Kukla, Fran & Ollie, whose creator Burr Tillstrom did the show out of Chicago with his mad cast of other "Kuklapolitans," like Fletcher Rabbit, Beulah Witch, Madame Ophelia Oglepuss and many others, including my fave Cecil Bill, who spoke no known language, but whose "Ta toi toi toi's" were understood by the others there..  I've posted many videos of the program, as well as one of Tillstrom's brilliant "hand ballets" that he did for the TV series, That Was the Week That Was, about the temporary opening of the Berlin Wall for Christmas in 1963 -- which you can see here.
​

The article is wonderful and detailed.  I have only a few quibbles.   The piece mostly focuses on Burr Tillstrom through his years with Kukla, Fran & Ollie -- but he did a great deal more after the show went off the air in 1957 than the article suggests (although it does mention that the show returned to public TV in 1970).  In fact, Tillstrom kept performing a lot -- not just with Kukla and Ollie TV guest appearances and even as game show contestants, but on stage.  For instance, I wish it had mentioned that in 1978,  Tillstrom, Kukla and Ollie actually appeared on Broadway in the replacement cast of the musical revue Side by Side by Sondheim.  Further, around the same time (I'm not sure which came first), Madame Oglepuss (with Tillstrom performing, of course) remarkably was cast to play the role of the grandmother in an otherwise standard, human Chicago production of Stephen Sondheim's musical A Little Night Music -- and won the Jefferson Award (the city's version of the Tonys) as Best Supporting Actress!  Also, while I was glad the article included mention of the Berlin Wall "Hand Ballet," I also wish it had added that Tillstrom, in fact, won an Emmy Award for the performance -- and mentioned that Henson was posthumously inducted into the TV Academy Hall of Fame, soon after he passed away.  However, other than those quibbles, it's a wonderful article filled with great, little-known research on such a seminal person in TV history.  You can read it here.

By the way, I must note that Ms. Minow comes to her love and appreciation of Burr Tillstrom and Kukla, Fran & Ollie with a high pedigree -- her father Newton Minow (who later would become FCC Commissioner under President Kennedy, though is best known as a poker-playing buddy and patient of my father...) was Burr Tillstrom's attorney.  Moreover, when Nell was very little she would often get to visit the set, and one day a newspaper reporter was there to do a piece on Tillstrom and the show.  Seeing the little girl,he asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.  Her answer got in the paper -- "A Kuklapolitan."  (The story has a happy ending, because much later in life -- it is my firm belief and absolute insistence -- she got her wish.)
​

Also fun in the article is mention that "The show’s cultural cache was so great that Kukla and Ollie even appeared on the Ford Motor Company’s two-hour 50th anniversary show in 1953. Jerome Robbins choreographed this live dance number, over which the puppets narrate the history of the bathing suit."  (Among his great many credits, Robbins later directed and choreographed Fiddler On the Roof, West Side Story  and Gypsy.)

I'm not quite sure what the history of bathing suits had to do with the Ford Motor Company, except that I suppose a theme of the show was about the cultural history of the United States during the 50 years since Ford began.  But best of all is that a video of that musical number is embedded into the online version of article.  And therefore I have access to it and can embed it here.

​There was something else, though, which struck me about the video and bathing suit history ballet.  One of the earlier musicals that Jerome Robbins choreographed (though didn't direct) was the surprise hit High Button Shoes that starred Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray that opened in 1947 and ran for almost two years, 727 performances.  And one of the famous things about the show was what became known as the Bathing Beauty Ballet near the end of the show, that was a Keystone Cops-like chase scene at the beach.  I have to believe that Robbins' work on that number only six years earlier had to be a major reason he was hired for the TV job and which was an inspiration of his choreography for it.

I can't find any choreography of the High Button Shoes dance.to fully prove the point -- but happily I did find a trailer for the show when the Encores! organization did the show in New York only last year as part of their concert staging series -- complete with the original choreography of the Bathing Beauties Ballet that runs throughout.

But to return to the point that got us all here -- don't forget to check out the article about Burr Tillstrom.  Again, you can get to it here.

This is odd, but fascinating.  Most people probably won't watch it, but it's worth knowing about.

The Goodman Theatre in Chicago is one of the legendary regional theater companies in the United States, even winning a Tony Award for that.  Because of the coronavirus, they -- like other theaters -- have closed down for the time being.  But the Goodman announced something unexpected yesterday -- they said that would would stream one of the recent, acclaimed productions online.

The show is 2666, directed and co-written by their artistic director Robert Falls, who won a Tony Award in 1998 for directing a revival of Death of a Salesman.  This production is very long -- divided into five parts, running about six hours.  I assume was done over two nights.  This is how they describe the play --​

This epic stage adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s internationally acclaimed novel is now available online for free, unlimited streaming.

A soaring adaptation of Chilean-born author Roberto Bolaño’s masterpiece, 2666 begins with a group of hapless European academics hot on the trail of an elusive author—a search that leads them into the dark heart of a Mexican border city where the murders of hundreds of women remain unsolved. This story gives way to a surprising, panoramic portrait of the 20th century that spans more than 100 years and jumps from Spain to Mexico to Germany and beyond, illuminating the power of literature to reflect and transform the world. An unflinching look at the nature of evil, 2666 is an ambitious new work unlike any other theatrical experience.

We're in the Hot Stove period now between the end of the baseball season and the start of Spring Training, which is when the news pour in more than the stats.  But even for those whose eyes roll wearily at any time when  baseball is mentioned, this still this is notable.

The Chicago Cubs just hired Rachel Folden as a hitting coach for Rookie League. She's believed to be the first woman on a coaching staff in a MLB organization.

"She's going to be a star.  She's the first person I brought in for an interview," said Justin Stone, Cubs hitting director, adding "Rachel's been working alongside me for the last couple years, and there is nobody more confident.  You worry, or you take a second thought of, 'How are guys going to react to the first time they've ever been coached by a woman in their life?' Rachel's the perfect person to cross this barrier, because not only is she one of the most talented people in our industry, she's extremely confident. And, if somebody gives her crap, she'll get in the cage and probably outswing them."

​You can read more about it here.