O'Donnell: WGN-TV staff says farewell to Cubs games at Wrigley with class and style
GRACE.
Tone.
Dignity.
Staff at WGN-TV had it all last Saturday as the station bid adieu to Cubs games at Wrigley Field after a 72-season association.
A link that once seemed as inviolate as the Daleys of Bridgeport and the Cook County Democratic Party will end as the ballclub launches its own Marquee Sport Network early next year.
Station chief Paul Rennie, executive sports producer Bob Vorwald and associates never lost focus of the game - a dial-numbing 9-8 loss to St. Louis.
But their special elements - capped by a seventh-inning stretch video beginning with Harry Caray and extending through many clip-throughs of WGN staff and memories - were simply outstanding.
Videographer Joe Pausback, with 36 years on the crew, threw out the first pitch.
Rennie and Vorwald received a special scoreboard tile of the number "9" with the lyrics to Steve Goodman's "Go, Cubs, Go" on the back from Cubs owner Tom Ricketts and president of business ops Crane Kenney.
At a dinner last week, the Cubs organization gave WGN baseball staffers smaller versions of the commemorative tile.
That list would include such veterans as cameramen Jim Tianis, Frank Leone and Mike Aiello (audio), Scott Jones and Steve Casey (tape), Mike Clay (camera) and Mark Stencel (graphics).
Some will likely move on to work with Marquee.
Some won't.
(Many tech workers in the Cubs TV scheme are daily hire independent contractors.)
To longer-termed viewers, it was a reminder that so much of what is America is a business.
Same as it ever was.
And yet it was difficult not to flash back on visions of things like Ken Hubbs on "The Tenth Inning" (sponsored by United Airlines) or Jack Brickhouse's euphoric call of Ernie Banks's 500th home run, or the September eve in 1984 when Harry Caray detailed a division-clinching Rick Sutcliffe victory at Pittsburgh that proved to Cubs fans indeed, a postseason still existed.
Benchmarks that could take a fantasist from Topps trading cards to the threshold of AARP.
But time passes on.
And the ivy that was green turns to brown.
THE ILLINOIS RACING BOARD reverted to type Tuesday and OK'd 68 racing dates next year for Churchill Downs Inc. and its Arlington Park.
Without fast and overwhelming pro-activity from Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the CDI big-footing - declining to increase purses at AP by the elimination of recapture and the addition of video and table gaming - was not going to be stopped.
Said one trainer: "They will starve us out. The purses will be awful and so will the racing."
Still, the theatricality of it all - which began when supremely adroit commissioner Tom McCauley schooled yammering AP ace Tony Petrillo at the original dates hearing on Sept. 17 - was fleetingly three-star.
CDI took no chances as this week's OT session.
Corporate counsel Brad Blackwell came up from Louisville to sit next to Petrillo, making sure that such difficult words as "plethora" came close to being correctly pronounced.
AP chairman emeritus Dick Duchossois - who will turn 98 Oct. 7 - loomed prominently.
Four Arlington employees plus a lobbyist also sat strategically, their role to be mannequins personifying the "human" impact if CDI/Arlington was to be denied dates.
All that was missing was a small cadre of skinny child actors holding orange UNICEF-style collection cartons with AP horse heads on the sides.
Bottom line, CDI is the new "Cable Guy" of Illinois gaming.
And if the residents of the state want to continue forwarding a "dumb tax" to the wily masters of Louisville, who's to stop 'em?
STREET-BEATIN': Sudden news of the impending resignation of a high elected officer in the U.S. government during an MLB playoff telecast isn't without precedent. NBC News broke into Game 4 of the Reds-Mets NLCS in October 1973 with a report that Vice President Spiro Agnew would be leaving office the following day after extensive plea negotiations with federal prosecutors. (Pete Rose won the game with a home run in the 12th; Agnew was golfing with Frank Sinatra and Jilly Rizzo out in Rancho Mirage within months.) … Booger McFarland touched redemption during the Bears-Washington Monday nighter with an enlightening explanation of exactly why superstar Washington left tackle Trent Williams continues his holdout. Sure, guaranteed money is a part of it, but Williams remains outraged at the team's medical staff - and by inference, owner Dan Snyder and President Bruce Allen - over alleged inconclusive treatment of a precancerous growth on his head last spring. (His own doctors later removed it.) … Notre Dame might have lost a tremendous football game at krazy-kennel Georgia Saturday night but it was a most notable coming-out party on CBS for Irish tight end Cole Kmet. The 6-5½, 250-pound St. Viator grad (Class of '17) had nine catches for 108 yards and could only leave Bears fans dreaming about what added dimension he would bring to a Matt Nagy offense (No. 10 ND hosts No. 18 Virginia Saturday, NBC-5, 2:30 p.m.). … The Big Ten might be facing another annoying CFP shutout if Ohio State and Wisconsin split their regular-season match in Columbus Oct. 26 and the conference championship game six weeks later. Fleet QB Jack Coan and the Badgers - Chicago's adopted Big Ten team - are an untouchable -24 over visiting Northwestern Saturday (ABC, 11 a.m.). … Andy Masur (Bradley University, Class of '89) continued his energizing fill-in play-by-play on late-season White Sox radiocasts. The Glenview native even made the normally catatonic Darrin Jackson seem engaged. … Now it's no less than The Boston Globe that has hopped on the Theo Epstein-Could-Be-Gone Express. Was it Curtis Mayfield who sang: "You don't need no baggage, you just get on board?" … And reader Kenny Smith chastised this space for being "too soft" on Churchill Downs Inc. and Arlington Park during their recent penny-dime act with the Illinois Racing Board, saying: "I wanted hard-hitting, not 'Fluffy the Cat' stuff," the tough grader huffed.
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.