This Cubs team has really jelled. They’ve hit their stride. They’ve firmly established themselves as winners this season–a team for the ages. No, I’m not talking about anyone on the field.
It’s the Cubs’ radio team that has blossomed, in the summer of our discontent.
I never thought it would happen, but Pat Hughes and Ron Santo have made me finally stop yearning for Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau. Lately they’re approaching the stratospheric entertainment level of baseball on radio reached by my childhood hero, the sainted (by me, and those in the know) Jack Quinlan.
I have ceased being a Cubs fan only once in my life: in the months after March 18, 1965, the date the all-too-brief era of the magnificent Quinlan ended with a car crash near the Cubs’ spring training camp in Mesa, Ariz. Starting in 1958, Quinlan had teamed with Boudreau in the WGN radio booth.
The fact that they broadcast every Cubs game during one of the most hopeless, barren and woeful periods in the history of the franchise didn’t stop them from providing fans with uncanny insights into the fine points of the game (Lou’s forte) and wildly offbeat and hysterical moments, as when Jack egged Lou on during the reading of a live commercial for a pantyhose sale at a local store.
Quinlan’s pure, golden voice and his impeccable delivery made his off-the-subject, off-the-wall and occasionally sarcastic comments stand out that much more. He was also the perfect balance to Boudreau’s unpolished “player’s voice.”
Like all good teams in show business, they were a study in contrasts. I lived vicariously through Jack and Lou in those years, transistor radio under the pillow for the late West Coast games not on television back then. They were natural personalities, and they connected deeply with many 12-year-olds like me.
So when Quinlan died I was left with a feeling of “what good is it if the Cubs win now; Jack’s not around to enjoy it.”
Lloyd, who bled Cubs blue and also had a penchant for mirth and merriment in the booth, regardless of the disasters unfolding on the field, took over for Quinlan in ’65 and remained with Boudreau through 1986, needling him about his major-league consumption of hot dogs.
He was able to resurrect my Cubs loyalty, and that of tens of thousands of others who needed someone to be a fun but firm link to our favorite team whenever Jack Brickhouse and the television set weren’t handy.
In the years following the ill-conceived forced retirement of Vince and Lou, the WGN radio booth featured a parade of broadcasters and ex-athletes who, with the notable exception of Harry Caray, just seemed to be visitors in Chicago.
Which brings us back to today, which finds Hughes and Santo facing the same challenge Vince and Lou faced in their heyday: a succession of games in which the Cubs are looking forward to the next day, or next year, by the third inning.
Yet they keep us listening. Lately I find myself in the car, at my destination, Cubs hopelessly out of the game, me sitting there parked, engine off, unable to turn off Pat and Ron because they’ve gone off on another of those crazed tangents that fortunately have nothing to do with the game at hand, often nothing at all to do with baseball.
Years ago, in a rare quiet moment with the always entertaining and unpredictable Caray, I professed the fantasy of my childhood: to be the Cubs’ radio announcer just like Quinlan had been. Harry, who thought Quinlan was one of the greatest, told me: “Anyone can be good when your team is in first place. But when you’re 16 games out, late in August, in the middle of a long, losing road trip, that separates the men from the boys.”
I never forgot that. It helped me realize I’d never have what it takes to do that job as well as my idol did. And it makes me appreciate what Hughes and Santo are doing this season.
Focus off the field
For example: The Cubs are losing 3-0. It’s late in the game, and much to the chagrin of the “emotions on his sleeve” Santo, the team is flatter than a pancake run over by a steamroller.
The Cubs are just going through the motions, yet I’m entranced by Ron’s exhaustive analysis of how he plays the game of Monopoly.
Hughes, tongue firmly in cheek, questions Santo about it, as Tim Russert might grill Donald Rumsfeld some Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
“Ronnie, do you always try to buy Boardwalk and Park Place?” Hughes asks in the dulcet tones of a serious tenor at the Lyric.
The worse the team is going, the better these two are. In one of the many blowouts this season, Santo tried to get his straight-laced partner to say the word “vagina.”
Actress Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island,” was appearing locally in the popular “Vagina Monologues” and had been booked to sing during the seventh inning.
Santo, skimming over the press release provided in advance of her visit to the radio booth, told Hughes, “It says the name of the play right here, Pat. It’s a very interesting name. I can’t wait to hear you talk about it.” Then he snickered like a high school sophomore in study hall.
“It may be interesting and you’ll hear a lot of talk about it, Ronnie, just not on this broadcast,” Hughes responded. That’s all Santo needed to hear.
“Gee, Pat, don’t you think the name of this play she’s in should be mentioned?”
“Yes, it should, just not by me.” And with Santo in the midst of hysterical giggles, Hughes turned into the greatest straight man since Bud Abbott and got out of it with his standard, “Why don’t we continue this conversation another time, Ronnie, so you can tell us about your experience playing in this particular situation we’re in right now?”
Saving the season
The point should be made here that no one is more on top of the game when you need them to be. Hughes brings out the best in Santo by setting him up with questions that allow him to offer a player’s insight, as well as tell a story or two about Cubs history. And nobody paints a more descriptive picture of the game than Hughes.
Right down to his description of the way Sammy Sosa superstitiously enters the batter’s box, he allows you to “see” the game vividly. I have witnessed replays later on television and realized I had already “seen” it on the radio thanks to Hughes.
But they also understand that in the middle of a terrible game, during another losing streak, it is appropriate–no, essential–that we be entertained and distracted from the injustices being heaped on the boys in blue.
So bravo, congratulations and a hearty thanks to Hughes and Santo for saving the season and sparing us so much misery.
Here’s to more conversations about anything but baseball. And when the Cubs boot another one and the “Cubs legend and future Hall of Famer” starts moaning in the background, let that be Hughes’ cue to start another discussion about toupees.
`He loved the Cubs’
Quinlan broadcast Santo’s first games, and I once asked Santo what he was like.
“The best,” he told me. “It was really a shame. He was only in his 30s. He could have gone on to any big network job he wanted, he was that good. But he loved being in Chicago and he loved the Cubs.”
I think some of that spirit and soul has returned. You can hear it on WGN-AM 720 during Cubs games again. Especially when they’re losing.
