Re: Enhancing the Spa guest experience (637 Views)
Posted by:
Topcat (IP Logged)
Date: July 12, 2015 11:05AM
FrankD. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A little fun with Rogers Wrigley Field analogy:
>
>
> Mike Royko was Wrigley Field's poet laureate
> Chicago columnist specialized in pointing out
> Cubs' follies for more than three decades
>
> April 04, 2014|Paul Sullivan
>
>
> 409
> Mike Royko in December 1974.
> Mike Royko in December 1974. (Frank Hanes /
> Chicago Tribune)
> We can only imagine how much fun it would've been
> had Mike Royko's fantasy of buying the Cubs come
> to fruition.
>
> The late Chicago columnist, the conscience of Cubs
> fans from the 1960s through the '90s, met with
> former A's owner Charlie Finley in the Billy Goat
> Tavern in 1981, scheming to persuade former
> Sun-Times owner Marshall Field to put up 51
> percent of the money to buy the club and let them
> run it.
>
>
> Ultimately, Field procrastinated and owner William
> Wrigley wound up selling the Cubs and Wrigley
> Field to Tribune Co. for a relatively measly $20.5
> million.
>
> The rest, alas, is history.
>
> Whether Royko could have ended the championship
> drought is anyone's guess. But as a former legman
> to Royko and a longtime Tribune employee, I feel
> confident in saying a Royko-run Cubs team would've
> been much more interesting than the one run by the
> suits in Tribune Tower, and he would not have let
> Greg Maddux leave. (And, yes, he would've
> installed lights, just as Tribune Co. did in
> 1988.)
>
> Few loved the Cubs or Wrigley Field as much as
> Royko, whose memorial was held at the ballpark
> after his death in 1997. Many writers have poked
> fun at the Cubs over the years, but no one pointed
> out the absurdity of the franchise's follies like
> Royko did for more than three decades in the pages
> of the Chicago Daily News, Sun-Times and Tribune:
>
> While many Chicago sportswriters helped
> perpetuate the story of the Billy Goat Curse in
> which tavern owner William Sianis put a hex on the
> team after his goat was denied entrance to a 1945
> World Series game it was Royko's widely
> syndicated column that transformed the curse from
> urban legend to nationally renowned piece of
> Chicago mythology.
>
> Royko's annual Cubs quiz traditionally kicked
> off the season, reminding us of the obscure yet
> transcendent moments in Cubs history, such as the
> pitcher (Bill Faul) who said he could hypnotize
> his arm and the adventures of outfielder Jose
> Cardenal, who once missed a game because his
> eyelids got stuck. Royko always referred to
> Cardenal as "the immortal Jose Cardenal" and
> admired his ability to come up with bizarre
> excuses to avoid playing. ("An inspiration to
> those of us who believe in sleeping late, walking
> slow and calling in sick at the office.")
>
> After another Cubs season ended in failure,
> Royko would crank up a column on the "Ex-Cubs
> Factor," which theorized no postseason team could
> win a World Series with three or more former Cubs
> on its roster. While he always credited freelance
> writer Ron Berler, Royko wrote about it so often,
> many believed it was his creation.
>
> Royko once wrote fired manager Don Zimmer
> "looked like an aging Munchkin," and his
> replacement, Jim Essian, "acts like the master of
> ceremonies in a strip joint." When the Tribune
> hired outfielder Dave Kingman to pen a column for
> its sports section, Royko skewered the slugger
> with a parody column in the Daily News by "Dave
> Ding-Dong."
>
> Royko even poked fun at popular announcer Harry
> Caray: "If some obscure player does something
> exceptional, Harry tells us: 'Well, they're
> dancing in the streets of his hometown of
> Cowsville.' But how does Caray know that? It is
> mere conjecture. For all we know, they are
> sprawled in the gutters of Cowsville."
>
> In some of his most memorable Cubs columns,
> during the 1984 National League Championship
> Series, Royko labeled Padres fans as sushi-eating
> wimps who didn't deserve a World Series. The Cubs
> promptly lost three straight in front of a
> frenzied crowd at Jack Murphy Stadium, and some
> Chicagoans blamed Royko for inciting the fan
> base.
>
> żżż
>
> Before I became a sportswriter, I was a
> reporter/researcher for Royko from 1985 to '87, an
> apprentice to the master of column writing.
>
> This was before night games at Wrigley, and I can
> attest Royko had his portable TV tuned to Cubs
> games every summer day in his office, turning down
> the volume only when he began writing his
> columns.
>
> After the Cubs' near-miss in 1984, he bought
> season tickets in '85. But as the rotation went
> down and the team went south, part of my
> responsibility as legman was to unload Royko's
> tickets in the Tribune city room (and get as close
> to face value as possible).
>
> During our frequent conversations about sports,
> Royko often bragged that on days he wrote columns
> on the Cubs, Bears or other local teams, he was
> the town's top sportswriter. It was hard to deny.
> There's no doubt he was the most important
> chronicler of the Cubs' foibles, the one who kept
> telling us the sky was falling on an otherwise
> perfect summer day.
>
> "As a Cubs fan and this could also apply to Sox,
> Bears and Hawks fans you should have known
> better," Royko wrote in a Tribune column on Feb.
> 8, 1996. "But you became a true believer. You
> forgot the one hard rule of being a Chicago sports
> fan: If anything bad can happen, it figures that
> it will happen to us."
>
> Some of my favorite assignments were Cubs-related.
I spent a number of years around the Sun-Times / Daily News sports department caddying for local racing Jack of all Trades Dave Feldman, so was exposed to Royko on a sustained basis. Royko's best stuff was tough to beat, but he was never the same after losing his first wife in '79.