O'Donnell: The anniversary of Keith Reinhard's disappearance sparks fresh perspectives
TWO KEENLY MEMORABLE EVENTS happened 35 years ago this week on the Chicago sportscape:
• The Cubs played the first official night game at Wrigley Field. They beat the Mets, 6-4. Reliever Frank DiPino got the win. Thomas Alva Edison did not throw out the first electric bill.
• Keith Reinhard, a Daily Herald sports writer, walked off the face of the earth while on a 90-day sabbatical in Silver Plume, Colorado.
Night baseball at Wrigley is now as much a part of the local sports fabric as monthly TV sports carriage fees.
Reinhard's disappearance still baffles. And, if a peculiar western moon looms too large, it still stings.
HE WAS 49 YEARS OLD and — along with the fabled Bob Frisk — was one of the two critical tent poles that anchored 20 years of relentless ascent by the Daily Herald Sports department.
Reinhard's intellectual eclecticism unlocked his adventurer within. And a desire to touch the mystic led to his express checkout.
“Murder, mountain or Mexico” was the best that snowcapped investigators in rocky Colorado could conclude — and Mexico was a non-starter.
SILVER PLUME IS A SPOOKY LITTLE point of mountain entry roughly an hour from Denver. It's a great place to walk into the forever — to penetrate the evening that the city seeks to hide. The town is a refueling port for UFOs with Michael Rennie at the pump.
A documentarian named Eric Walter has spent close to seven years click-polishing a chunk of cinema about Reinhard's exit titled “Dark Side of the Mountain.”
It's still awaiting release into film festivals.
Eldest son Sven Reinhard died in a traveling mishap 22 years ago. Next-up Kai Reinhard and his five kids live in McHenry. Tiffany Reinhard-Fraser and her Tyler and Riley are in southern California.
RUMOR HAS IT THAT that former Prospect High basketball coach John Camardella is working OT to get the annual boys Christmas tournament at Wheeling renamed “The Bob Frisk / Wheeling Hardwood Classic.”
It's obscene that neither High School District 214 or High School District 211 has branded something of substance in honor of Frisk. Regional high school sports had no greater friend, no greater media influencer. He died at age 83 in May 2020.
REINHARD WAS THE FAITHFUL and quietly ferocious wingman of Frisk. The difference was that Frisk went home after work every night. Reinhard sometimes hung with lager-swilling German soccer players and chased dawns and mountaintops.
The Bob Frisk-Keith Reinhard Wheeling Hardwood Classic has an energizing bada-bounce to it.
Cubs night games are now a $1,000 a dozen.
Media exemplars of style and grace are an endangered species.
STREET-BEATIN':
Pat Fitzgerald's next coaching position could be coming much sooner than later: He's mulling over a role as a “volunteer assistant” at Loyola Academy for the upcoming prep season. No. 2 son Ryan Fitzgerald is in the hunt to be the No. 1 QB for Beau Desherow and the Ramblers. ...
Also amid that Northwestern ball of confusion, credible reports of a growing rift between athletic director Derrick Gragg and Pat Ryan Jr., the son of the university's longtime top sports benefactor. Pat Ryan Sr. has stayed inside an intriguing cone of silence as NU burns. ...
Speaking of Pat Ryan Sr., no authoritative word on the status of the 2% of Bears stock owned by Andy McKenna, who died at age 93 in February. It was the brilliant Mr. McKenna who secured needed cash for the McCaskey family and slightly more than 17% of the team for Ryan back in 1989. The move held off barbarians at the Halas Hall gate. ...
Bill Hazen (Arlington High '68) will surface as an adjunct communications instructor for the fall term at Marquette University. Hazen's knowledge of broadcasting — historic and contemporary — is somewhere over the transmitting towers. He's OK if you don't mind insight. ...
Dave Corzine was a celebrity centerpiece at Craig Dreiling's massively successful “Craigstock '23” in North Barrington last weekend. Nine bands played and only one insouciant keyboardist was snubbed. The fabulous Kevin Purcell and a variant of his Nightburners headlined and ruled the rolling green. ...
Cheryl Raye-Stout is under consideration for the Jack Brickhouse Award from the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame. She deserves it; the Palatine-based WBEZ-FM (91.5) contributor has radar ears that Israel's Mossad would love to replicate. ...
Jerry Reinsdorf's sunken White Sox have been reduced to attendance begging with “$5 Tuesdays.” It'd be much better if that was the new daily pay rate of “The Doom Duo” of Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn. ...
Young Jimmy Martin is taking his football talents to Wisconsin-Stout after a stay at Northern Michigan. The Prospect High grad has been pouring over Cooper Kupp video like Rich Roeper studying a new Frances McDormand film. ...
And TV trivialist Scott Thomson, on a report that improved “bat planes” have helped the Cubs in their midsummer surge: “Do they store them in a “Bat Cave” on Adam West Way?”
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Thursday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.