For a generation of kids growing up in Chicago in the ’60s, Jack Brickhouse was a mother’s favorite babysitter. Running home after school at 3 in the afternoon, countless thousands of kids would plop in front of the TV to be mesmerized by the last few innings of the Cubs game, with Jack describing the action.
Jack was a homer, sure, but that was because he loved the Cubs and he loved baseball, and he passed on that love of the game to us watching at home. These were the days before free agency, when ballplayers good and bad (usually bad in the Cubs’ case) were stuck on a team until the team got rid of them. They were our family, and Jack provided the oral history and made them seem Olympian in stature. Santo, Kessinger, Beckert, Banks, Williams, Jenkins–even Al Spangler and Paul Popovich–they were the best we had ever seen on the North Side, and we thought them invincible. We sat by the TV every day after school, and became familiar with Jack’s catch phrases, of which there were many, but the most famous: “There she goes, back, back, back, hey-hey!”
Jack was pushed aside in the ’80s when the Cubs hired Harry Caray to take his place. They said Jack was retiring. But we knew, because Harry and Jack were the same age, that the Cubs were showing him the door to usher in a new era at Wrigley Field. To be honest, I always preferred Harry over Jack. During my teen years in the early ’70s, I was on the anti-Jack bandwagon because of his unwavering optimism and “gee-whiz” delivery.
But in recent years I have come to realize what a valuable treasure Jack is to Chicago, to the Cubs and to me. I will miss him and the honest love of the game that he had. Baseball is no longer the game it was when I was a kid; it’s now a business first.
I miss those old days, and for me and thousands of others who were kids at the time, Jack was part of that.
Goodbye and hey-hey, Jack.
