It will come as no shock to people that I love the Chicago Cubs. And I particularly love the radio team, headed by Pat Hughes. In fact, when I watch Cubs games with my MLB.TV subscription, I use their "overlay" feature that syncs up the radio broadcast to the TV picture, rather than the TV play-by-play. It's not that I have anything against the TV team, they're pretty good. But I love listening to Pat Hughes, teamed up with analyst Ron Coomer. Pat Hughes is just warm and knowledgeable and funny and observant and wonderfully entertaining, just a really terrific broadcaster. And as I noted here a few months back, he was just elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving their Ford C. Frick Award. And the induction ceremony was over the weekend. By the way, Pat is wonderful partnered with Ron Coomer, but when he was previously teamed with another Ron, former Cub great Ron Santo (who was posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame), the two were special -- in fact "unique" might be a better word. As an announcer, Ron Santo bordered on the good side of incompetent but was SO human (he once apologized for being late after an inning break because "I was in the bathroom" and another time brought the family's cleaning woman to the booth), SO funny (intentionally and otherwise), had such an other-worldly phenomenal rapport with Pat Hughes (who clearly protected his broadcasting limitations...) and loved the Cubs SO much that when the two did a broadcast, people in Chicago didn't say they were going to listen to the Cubs game, but rather "The Pat and Ron Show" (something Pat Hughes referenced in his induction speech). In fact, the station's email address for the radio broadcast was "@patandronshow.com".) Anyway, I can't let the day go without embedding Pat Hughes' acceptance speech. It's only 15 minutes, tells some good stories and some funny ones, and much of it is spent praising other people, rather than talking about his career -- which is just so Pat. If this isn't something everyone here wants to listen to, I understand. But hopefully you'll give it a couple of minutes, just to hear how warm and personable he is.
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Even if you don't watch much (or any) hockey, I think you’ll still enjoy this. The NHL draft was last week, held in Nashville. The Chicago Blackhawks surprisingly won the lottery and got the first pick. This was a huge deal (and caused some controversies that the draft was “rigged”, as such conspiracy theories often do for pro sports drafts) because this year there was a “once in a generation” player, spoken of in the same terms as Wayne Gretzky, named Conner Bedard, sure to be the first pick. The morning before the draft, the Chicago Blackhawks General Manager – Kyle Davidson – who was there for the event, took a walk down the street in Nashville with another team official, just to get away and relax. A reporter for the hockey website, Penalty Box Radio, had come to Nashville and was interviewing people on the street about the draft. They stopped Kyle Davidson – who is a young guy, only 34 – who wasn't dressed like a General Manager, but was instead just wearing a t-shirt and a backwards baseball cap, and the interviewer had no idea who he was. So, Davidson decided to play along. And he’s hilarious. In fact, most of the attention from the video is not on the reporter not knowing who he was talking to, but how wonderfully Davidson self-effacingly handles it all. He later explained that at first when asked to be interviewed, he said, no, and walked on. But then realized that they didn’t know who he was, so it might be fun, and he went back. The only thing it helps to know is for one question when he's asked if he can name any hockey players. He pretends to stumble through, at first, and names two Really Famous former greats. And then, slowly, the rest of the players he names are all on the Chicago Blackhawks. Know, too, that he leaves out some players on the current team, which he later said he did on purpose. My favorite moment, though, is how he handles the very last "honest question." Not shockingly, this went viral. First, because it got picked up in Chicago – where they’re now selling “Kyle from Chicago” sweatshirts. And then the NHL sent out the video. And eventually the website itself did a big mea culpa and had fun with it, recognizing that they were getting a ton of promotion. This is a short interview later with Kyle Davidson talking about how it came about and his thinking when it was going on. On Saturday and Sunday, two of the biggest historic rivals in baseball -- the Chicago Cubs and hateful St. Louis Cardinals -- will be playing against each other in...London. This video is a fun, wide-eyed look at the event from the perspective of a Londoner. Musician-author-BBC sports commentator Felix White visited Wrigley Field to find out more about baseball, going behind the scenes at the ballpark, into the broadcast booth, on the field, to a neighborhood bar, and he even got a couple of players to play cricket. Although his report is mostly done from the perspective of Chicago...well, okay, never mind, that's okay. O joy! Big congrats to Northwestern women for winning the lacrosse national championship over Boston College, 18-6. It's their 8th title in 18 years under coach Kelly Amonte Hiller. The team was led by the nation's leading scorer Izzy Scane (one of my favorite sports names) with 4 goals -- and 99 for the season! That's her below on the right side, #27. Northwestern doesn't get to celebrate too many national championships -- except for women's lacrosse. So, it's a cause of major Wildcat celebration. And just because she deserves it, here's a nice 2-minute video on the "Scane Train" from when Northwestern beat Denver the day before to make it into the finals. (They'd been down 4-2 and then went on an amazing 13-1 run.) And yes, that's her pounding the ground after scoring yet another goal and then being knocked down. 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 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 thereof) 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. I assume that most people watched the big sports event on Sunday, and sat in pure enjoyment at the amazing, exciting, fingernail-tight game. And most notably above all, celebrated as I did the utterly remarkable victory when the beloved Northwestern basketball team beat national #1 Purdue -- the first time ever in the school's history that they beat a current #1 basketball opponent. Clearly, this got swamped by the other sports news of the day -- in fact, I'm almost shocked that anyone would even schedule a sports event the same day as the Super Bowl (though at least it was earlier in the day and didn't overlap) -- but it was still really big news. Not just because it was the beloved Northwestern, but any time a #1 teams loses to a big underdog, it's big news. After two dismal seasons in a row, Northwestern has had a pretty good year -- their record is 18-7 and actually have a chance to get selected to the post-season tournament for only the second time ever -- so, it wasn't an otherworldly win. Just an unexpected huge one. And glad it got played in Evanston, so the students were able to go crazy throughout the game. And most especially at the end. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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