This is a huge deal for theater-lovers.

Starting tonight and running through this Sunday, October 25, the Goodman Theatre of Chicago is going to stream its 1999 Tony-winning production of “Death of a Salesman” with Brian Dennehy.  

The production won four Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor in a Play (Dennehy), Best Featured Actress in a Play (Elizabeth Franz), and Best Direction of a Play (Robert Falls, the artistic director of the Goodman.).
 
It begins streaming at 7 PM CDT tonight and will end at midnight CDT on Sunday.  This is being done as a benefit for the Actors Fund

You can stream it here on the Goodman Theatre's website.  Or if for some reasons that's not working, over on Playbill.com.

For some reason, Dennehy loved performing in Chicago, which he did a lot.  Periodically at the Goodman, often at Steppenwolf.  Apparently, he was pushing to do a production of this play in the city for years.  It did so well there and was so acclaimed that they took it to Broadway.

Here are a couple of minutes from the production with Dennehy and Franz.  It gives a good sense why he received the Best Actor award.  It's a low-key scene, but done with such realism and heart. 

And as a bonus, this is the Tony Awards when Dennehy won.  It's quite nice, and often very funny.

His time with the Bears was odd.  In what has to have been the greatest draft in NFL history, the Chicago Bears had two first-round selections in 1965 -- and they picked Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus, not only another Hall of Famer but considered by many the greatest linebacker in the league, but if not, at least of the five best.  The college award for best linebacker of the year is called the Butkus Award, that's how great he was.  What made it all odd, though, was that the team was absolutely awful -- yet with Sayers on offense and Butkus on defense, even as a little kid I knew enough not to miss a game or a down whether the Bears had the ball or not.  They were both too special to watch.

I remember another player on that team, too -- Brian Piccolo.  If you've never seen the TV movie (the 1971 original with a young James Caan and a young Billy Dee Williams, since they tried remaking it a few years ago), it's highly-worth checking out, just a wonderful film, and it gives a good sense of who Sayers and Piccolo were.  Here's just a hint of that.
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​But all that aside, I have a special affection to Gale Sayers for a particular reason.

Through the first 50 years of the Chicago Bears existence, they played in Wrigley Field, after the Cubs season was over.  Though I'm a big Bears fan, have seen countless Bears games over the years on TV, and been to years and years of college games at the beloved Northwestern (where my dad had season tickets for 49 years) and UCLA, I've only been to one Chicago Bears game in person in my life.  But that one game, which was played at Wrigley Field, was not just the only time I saw the Bears play live, but it was my first professional football game ever, -- and boy, it was a doozy.  It was the game when Gale Sayers as a rookie scored six touchdowns to tie the National Football League record, which still stands.  December 12, 1965. 

​The day was pouring rain and the field was muddy, but while most everyone else was sliding all over the place, Sayers was seemingly unfazed, running free through the San Francisco 49ers defense, or what positioned itself as a defense.  The Bears won 61-20.  What isn't generally remembered is that although Sayers scored six touchdown, the team actually took him out of the game after three quarters when he had five touchdowns.  Perhaps it was because they were so far ahead, perhaps it was because of the muddy field they didn't want to risk injury.  Probably both.  In fact, they only put him in the fourth quarter, for just one single play.  A punt return.  And he ran it back for a touchdown!  His sixth, which tied the record.  Through the mud, with the opposing San Francisco 49ers slipping all over the place.  (Also notable about that rainy day is that it was also the game where the 49ers kicker, Tommy Davis, who at that point had the longest streak of kick extra points...missed.  Which is why, you'll note, that they ended up with just 20 points, not 21.

This is an affectionate video of Gale Sayers sitting down with a sports reporter and going through film of his six touchdowns.  Sayers was always a modest man (the title of his "as told to" autobiography is I Am Third), though an honest one.  And in this video you'll hear him repeatedly say, "They couldn't touch me.  They couldn't touch me."  That isn't bragging.  As you watch this video, what you'll see is that...they couldn't touch him.

For what it's worth, our seats were in the upper deck, sort of in the area of the end zone to the right, though we were a little further away, to the left.  Yes, it was up high, but we had a great view of the field and everything that took place that glorious, albeit dreary day.

I was going to end things there, on real life -- but I decided to go back to reel life, and the movie Brian's Song.  In 1969, Gale Sayers were given the George S. Halas Courage Award (named, as it happens, for Sayers' coach).  He won the award for coming back from his devastating knee injury -- a rehab he credited to being made possible by his roommate Brian Piccolo.  But though Sayers got the Courage Award, what those in the room didn't really know was the serious condition his dear friend was in, and he gave a famously moving speech, which was memorialized in the film.  But though it got edited a bit for the movie, this was basically what Sayers said in his acceptance --

And I decided to go back to the movie because I found an excerpt of the actual speech.  And as you can see, it really was Sayers.

"...He has the heart of a giant and that rare form of courage that allows him to kid himself  and his opponent --cancer. He has the mental attitude that makes me proud to have a friend who spells out the word 'courage' twenty-four hours a day, every day of his life. You flatter me by giving me this award, but I tell you that I accept it for Brian Piccolo. It is mine tonight, it is Brian Piccolo's tomorrow... I love Brian Piccolo, and I'd like all of you to love him too. Tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him."

That's Gale Sayers.  And that's only just a part of while he'll be missed.  And remembered.

A couple of days ago, I got an email from my cousin Diana Leviton Gondek who lives back in Naperville, a western suburb of Chicago.  I've mentioned here several times that Diana is an accomplished artist, most notably for the three fiberglass "horses" she made to honor fallen police that were displayed around the city, including outside Mayor Rahm Emmanuel's office, as well as being commissioned to do the artiwork for the 50th anniversary of the Special Olympics, which got its start in Chicago.  My own mentions aside, my favorite piece about Diana was when eShe magazine published in New Delhi, India, did a story which referred to Diana as "Famed America artist," which I told her likely came as a surprise to the estate of Jackson Pollock.  However, it did allow me to make up business cards to refer to myself as "Cousin of Famed America Artist."

The point being that it didn't come as a surprise when she offhandedly noted that "The local paper did a nice little article about me and a show I was just in."

“The local paper did a nice little article about me…”
 
When I read that, my first reaction was, ‘Oh, how nice, the Napervile Gazette wrote a little feature on her."  Even closer than eShe magazine.  Then I clicked on the link and it was the freaking Chicago Tribune!!
 
Okay, yes, fairness, it is the “local paper.”  But still.  That’s carrying modesty much too far…
 
The article is extremely good, centered on a pandemic-focused art show in Chicago called "In the Same Boat - Or Are We?"  But it singles out Diana and her work, in particular a mixed-media work of oil, colored pencil, acrylic and photography, called "Beach."

Yes, I'm utterly biased, but being as objective as I can be, it's wonderful  And just because I'm biased doesn't mean I'm wrong.  And given that it's mixed-media, I can only imagine the added layers of texture when one sees the work in person. 

(I hope you appreciate that I used one of the few "painting" words I actually know, "texture," and hopefully did so properly.)

Okay, "Naperville artist" doesn't have the same panache as "Famed American Artist," but then the Chicago Tribune is merely the "local paper," after all, so I can understand their civic pride emphasizing one of their native daughters.

(Why the reporter's credit says "Naperville Sun," I'm not sure. Perhaps the Chicago Tribune has a complementary relationship with the paper, or for all I know they may even own it, and that's who the writer works for.  But this was most definitely published in the Chicago Tribune.)

If you'd like to read the full article -- in the Chicago Tribune ​-- you can find it here.  Lots more good material in it, about the interesting-sounding show, as well as the featured artist.  Plus, when you're done, you can click over to the Sports section and read about the Cubs.  But Diana comes first.

A couple friends of mine back in Chicago -- Evanston, actually, home of the beloved Northwestern -- started an interesting online project during the pandemic. Writers Steve and Sharon Fiffer came up with the idea to solicit stories about objects that were important to the person, which the individual kept or wishes they still had, and then they post those stories a few times a week, along with providing a forum for discussion.

Steve asked me to write something for the site, called Storied Stuff, and I sent him two articles.  He posted the first one today, which you can read here.  It's about baseball cards, though not the general idea of collecting them, but rather deals with two very special cards that I still have to this day which stand out in baseball history for a particular reason.  It's a story about an event that half a century later is still galling to Cubs fans, but no doubt gives the inveterate Chris Dunn great pleasure -- what is considered the worst trade in the history of baseball, known in baseball lore as "Brock-for-Broglio."  And I have cards for the players involved from before the trade,  This is that tale.

A week ago, I posted a piece here about a radio documentary from WBEZ in Chicago about the history behind the song "Go Cubs, Go" by Steve Goodman, which he wrote in 1984 for WGN radio to play before baseball broadcasts, but which got resurrected by the team 13 years ago and fans have been singing it at Wrigley Field after every Cubs win since then, when the team flies its big blue-and-white "W" flag.  This is a sort of companion to that.  But even if you don't like baseball, stick with it.

I think the new video here stands on its own, but it helps to have it in perspective.  It's not essential -- you can skip this and jump right to the second video below -- but having a full sense of the world at the time will make it much more fun and meaningful.

That "world at the time" is baseball, when in 2016 the Chicago Cubs won their first World Series in 108 years.  And this 3-1/2 minute gorgeous video does a really great job in re-creating that time.  And while, yes, it's about baseball at heart, there's almost no sports in it.  Mainly, it's wonderful home footage that people around the city took of themselves at home anticipating the moment when, hopefully, the Cubs would win -- and when hearts collapsed en masse as it looked like everything would fall apart.  Watching their intense roller-coaster emotions -- from young fans to people who look like they might have lived through that entire 108 year drought -- is real-life, gripping human reactions at their most fascinating.  So, while not necessary in order to enjoy the second video, it's awfully enjoyable on its own, being about people even more than sports.

And this is the point of it all.

The video above is about everything that happened that night on November 2, 2016.  The video below comes from the next night.

At the time of that Cubs World Series win, the musical Hamilton was playing in Chicago. Though the city was in mass celebration, the show must go on.  And, of course, it did.

​This is the curtain call.

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.)
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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.