It almost sounds like a writer’s dream – living off past rounds of copy

A part of me wonders if Mike Royko, the late columnist for just about every newspaper that existed in Chicago, has the ultimate fantasy assignment.

He hasn’t had the pressure of meeting a deadline in just over two decades – yet the two remaining metro papers in this city seem eager to dredge up his old columns (some 30-plus years worth of copy) and use them to fill the space they’re so desperately eager to create around the declining number of advertisements.

IT KIND OF threw me off for a second when I saw the editorial pages of the Chicago Tribune on Sunday included a Royko column amongst their choice commentary.

They dredged up a column from the 1980s (back in the days when George Bush, the elder was president) where Royko used his aging Slats Grobnik persona to mock Republicans for trying to be holier than thou and make it appear as though God himself is the ultimate member of the Grand Old Party.

I’d say they were trying to make Jesus out to be the ultimate Republican. But in today’s day, there are many Jesuses of a Latino ethnic persuasion whom the hard core of the Republican Party are looking for excuses to deport.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun-Times continued its trend of the past couple of months and published an old Royko column on Monday – but only online.

PEOPLE READING SUNTIMES.com could see an even older column from the 1960s where Royko told the tale of how big, corporate-minded businesses were squeezing the little guy out of work.

Specifically, he told of a one-time neighborhood cleaners where the woman who owned and operated it all by herself had to work extra-long hours, but eagerly did so to meet the desires of her customers.

Which, Royko claimed, was something that the new, modern cleaners in the neighborhood would never bother to do.

But they were able to justify charging a slightly cheaper price (you save perhaps a nickel) for their services, gambling that people would be so eager to save any money that they’d accept the lesser personal service and lack of a personal touch.

MUCH HAS BEEN made by the Sun-Times of how they’re dredging through their archives for Royko copy (both from when he wrote for the Sun-Times proper and also when he was a focal point of the old Chicago Daily News) out of the concept that what he said about issues way back when has an eerie relevance to modern times.

I’m sure the Tribune thinks the same thing. Although I also noticed that the Royko column published in the Sunday paper included a tag at the end informing the reader how the Tribune’s book publishing wing is coming out with a new book soon – one that compiles several of the Royko columns he wrote during the 17 years he was with the Chicago Tribune.

That book will be available for purchase come mid-August, and I’m sure somebody thinks (or at least desperately hopes) that somebody reading the column in the paper will choose to buy the book.

Personally, I don’t know that I feel the need to rush right out and buy a copy – largely because I actually own all six of the compilations of newspaper columns that Royko had published when he was actually alive.

I ALSO HAVE a hard-cover first edition of “Boss,” the biography he wrote of Richard J. Daley back when “Hizzoner” himself was still alive.

That book is one I have quoted from on occasion in this very weblog when trying to tell the history of Chicago politics. It may be the best piece of writing ever about our city’s political scene (although Milton J. Rakove’s “We Don’t Want Nobody Nobody Sent” has the best title ever).

You’ve got to admit, for a guy who hasn’t written a word since 1997 (he died a month after writing his final column for the Tribune), it’s impressive the staying power that the man’s copy has. Although I’m sure there are some snot-nosed brats out there reading this who are going to be taking a sense of pride in saying, “Royko? Never heard of him!”

All I know is that I seriously doubt anybody will be dredging up anything I (or 99 percent of the rest of the populace that tries to claim themselves to be writers for a living) ever wrote some two decades after my own eventual demise.

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Ever-changing scene that is Chicago

This is most definitely a scene from Chicago’s past.

Chicago's appearance is ever-changing. Photograph by Chuckman's Chicago Nostalgia

This particular photograph depicts what used to be in terms of the proximity of our city’s newspapers being published so close to each other.

THE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS the old Field Enterprises building that housed the Chicago Sun-Times until they sold it off about a decade ago to Donald Trump – who erected that ugly tower that looms over downtown Chicago in an ominous fashion.

Which is particularly notable because people used to become amateur architectural critics in bashing about the old Sun-Times building (it looked like a barge or garbage scowl, they’d say).

It seems Trump has come up with something even more despised in appearance than the old Sun-Times building.

To the right, just the other side of the Wrigley Building that Frank Sinatra made reference to in his unofficial city anthem, “My Kind of Town, Chicago Is,” is the Tribune Tower.

THAT EDIFICE ERECTED back in the mid-1920s from which Col. Robert R. McCormick ruled his newspaper empire and his vision that “Chicagoland” (stretching from Detroit to Kansas City) was a unique version of our nation that made far more sense than anything occurring on any coastal point of the United States.

Tribune's new home come '18. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

It used to be from these points about one block apart along the Chicago River that our city’s two major newspapers (and as you can see from this particular photograph, the Chicago Daily News was part of the mix as well) did their part to help create the character of our city – for better or for worse.

Soon, it’s only going to be a memory that either newspaper was ever in such a prominent place along the riverfront.

The Sun-Times, of course, moved a few blocks west along the river several years ago to the building that was the annex to the Merchandise Mart. Even that building is becoming history.

THIS WEEKEND IS when the newspaper is leaving the location for a site in the West Loop. At 30. N. Racine Ave., they’ll be out of downtown altogether.

What will become of Alamo, Comiskey Park bricks?

While the Chicago Tribune reported Friday that they, too, are leaving a riverfront site. As part of the many actions of corporate restructuring, they sold their nearly century-old building to a Los Angeles developer who envisions turning the tower on Michigan Avenue into retail and luxury residences.

The newspaper confirmed they’ll be moving sometime early in 2018.

They will be relocating to the Prudential Building – which may be just a few blocks south of the Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue. Which could give their newsroom a prime site overlooking the Millennium Park.

BUT I CAN’T help but think that the Chicago River is going to be a little less active with two such prominent residents moving away from their riverfront locations. Even though I understand that riverfront land is so precious and valued from a real estate standing that it probably makes more sense to sell it off and take the money – rather than use it for newsroom space.

One other thing does amuse me about this particular photograph. Notice off in the background that the Hancock Center building is under construction. Which means if one had turned around and looked to the south, the Sears Tower would be non-existent. Chicago’s “twin” towers (only Trump thinks Chicago has three towers, with his building completing the trio) were not yet to be.

Lake St. location won't be the same as Lower Michigan Ave.

I do have one question, though. That is the main site of the famed Billy Goat Tavern, which used to draw a significant share of its business from reporter-type people (I myself have had too many drinks there throughout the years, although it has been a couple since I last ventured to Lower Michigan Avenue) for a “cheezbugga” and a beer) from its proximity between the two newspaper buildings.

Now, that clientele will be gone. Where will they move to, to ensure their future in 21^st Century Chicago?

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Ramis – the eternal ‘straight man’ who made Bill Murray funny – dies

It was a bit of a blow to learn Monday that actor, comedy writer and film maker Harold Ramis – who started out at Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe – is dead.

Because he’s the guy we didn’t notice as prominently as people like Dan Aykroyd or Bill Murray, but whose sense of how to play the “straight” role made the characters those other two played seem all the more off-the-wall, funny and entertaining.

RAMIS, WHO DIED early Monday at age 69 from a condition that caused his blood vessels to swell, was one of the Ghostbusters, along with Aykroyd and Murray.

He also was the friend of Murray’s “John Winger” character who got conned into enlisting in the U.S. Army along with him, thereby giving him somebody to watch his back – and join him when the two have to go into then-Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia to retake their army unit.

Who, by the way, were only captured because they were searching for the Murray and Ramis characters – who had taken the Army’s experimental prototype of a combat-ready recreational vehicle out for a spin to pick up some girls.

It literally is a line from Stripes (along with Murray’s quip about how Tito Puente was unappreciated in life) that still gets quoted by my brother.

WITH MURRAY’S CHARACTER telling Ramis’ role: “Come on, it’s Czechoslovakia. We zip in, we pick them up, and we zip right out again. We’re not going to Moscow. It’s Czechoslovakia, it’s like going to Wisconsin.”

To which Ramis’ “Russell Zitsky” character responds, “Well, I got the shit kicked out of me in Wisconsin once. Forget it!”

Much of the humor was in the timing. It’s funnier on film than it is on the written page. Although I’m not about to reduce Ramis’ working life to a single quip about the cheeseheads to the north of us.

It was just this past weekend that I happened to be stumbling my way through television channels when I came across “Meatballs,” a Bill Murray comedy from back in that period right before I began high school.

WHICH MEANS ITS overly-horny prepubescent characters and trivial nonsense were at about my age level (I drooled back then over the blonde who, looking at her now, makes me feel like a dirty old man). With Murray as the out-of-control camp counselor who befriends a particularly vulnerable summer camper.

Ramis co-wrote that script.

While I don’t doubt that Murray can improvise with the best of them (the film was basically Bill Murray saying and doing outrageous things), it was Ramis who put the thoughts and images onto the page of a script so they could be turned into something resembling reality on the movie theater screens (and now our television screens every time we watch it).

Although I thought that the repeated running gag about the head camp counselor repeatedly finding his bed moved in the middle of the night (with him still in it) to various locations (up in a tree, alongside a lake, at the entrance to the camp) was a bit overdone.

THEN AGAIN, THIS is the man who also wrote the script for Ghostbusters who envisioned the idea that all of mankind could be threatened by a gigantic Stay-Puft Marshmallow man.

Which brings to mind Murray’s celluloid response of a quip, “Now that’s something you don’t see every day.”

Although it’s not just these moments that Ramis gave us. He also was the director of “Analyze This” (and the sequel, “Analyze That”), which purported to give us the concept of an organized crime boss (played by Robert DeNiro) having to see a psychiatrist (portrayed by Billy Crystal).

Which is very “The Sopranos” sounding. Although we should remember the Sopranos scene where the late actor James Gandolfini appears like he wants to smack upside the head the psychiatrist who tells his “Tony Soprano” character that he understands “the mob” because he saw “Analyze This.”

THESE ARE JUST a few of the career moments that have given us humor. It is why we’re better off that a one-time Rogers Park resident who actually once wrote freelance stories for the old Chicago Daily News decided there were better things to do with his life than try to report the news.

He’s given us moments to brighten our day, for so long as all those DVDs of his films continue to function properly.

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Slow-pitch Softball - What's the Point?

I’m about to commit a serious Chicago infraction, one that might actually get my city identity citizenship revoked. Heaven forbid, I might have to start identifying myself as a native of some god-awful generic, touristy city like Las Vegas, Nev., or Orlando, Fla.

I don’t like the game of 16-inch softball. I have never understood the point in playing the slow-pitch game. I’d sooner slather ketchup all over my Vienna Beef hot dog.

Now as a Chicagoan by birth, I know there are people who think the slow-pitch version of softball is something special, just one of many aspects along with deep dish pizza and blues music that gives the Second City its unique character.

But I can remember being a kid playing the slow-pitch version in gym class, thinking to myself that I was wasting my time playing a cheap, inferior knockoff of baseball – which is a game I love to watch but have become too old and slow to play any longer without making a fool of myself.

So I must admit to being in shock to learn that the Chicago 16-inch Softball Hall of Fame not only exists, but is holding its latest round of induction ceremonies this coming week.

Twenty-three individuals who played, managed or umpired the game in the amateur leagues that have flourished in Chicago for decades are being honored, along with three intact teams who are being honored for their lifetime accomplishments.

Personally, my interest in the old school journalists who chronicled the activities of Chicago caused me to notice that one of the inductee teams is the ball club that consisted of reporters, editors and pressmen who worked for the now-defunct Chicago Daily News back in the 1960s and 1970s.

I also couldn’t help but notice that the Hall of Fame’s lifetime achievement award is named for the legendary Chicago mayor, Richard J. Daley, who in his youth played for softball teams in his home neighborhood of Bridgeport and on occasion as mayor would pitch to a hitter or two in games, albeit usually fully dressed in his political attire of dress jacket, tie and dress shoes.

If the outfit didn’t intimidate the hitter, the knowledge that the mayor could cost him a city job if he made the mayor look too ridiculous probably did.

I understand how ingrained the slow-pitch version of the game is in Chicago. Personally, I have never in my life played fast-pitch softball. It was never an option in the Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs where I grew up.

In fact, as a kid I always presumed the slow-pitch game WAS softball, which differs from the fast-pitch game in that a larger, mushier ball is used in the Chicago game compared to the 12-inch ball used by men who play competitive fast-pitch softball (an 11-inch ball is used by women who play).

By comparison, a baseball is 9 inches in circumference.

What I have always enjoyed the most about baseball is that each at-bat is a battle between a pitcher and a hitter. A good pitcher doesn’t need to throw balls 95 miles an hour past a hitter to get people out. Anybody who remembers former Chicago White Sox pitcher Shingo Takatsu getting American League hitters out a few years ago with breaking pitches that moved at about 60 miles an hour knows what I am talking about.

Slow-pitch softball takes away that entire element. The pitcher is lobbing the ball up to a hitter so that he can smack it. Outs in softball are recorded by the defense fielding ground balls and throwing out base runners. A good infield, particularly at shortstop, is all-important.

Smacking the ball around might be okay for a few guys wanting to whittle away a few hours in a public park. But for someone who wants to play a competitive athletic event, it can get a bit dull – especially when one takes into account the portly nature of some aging softball players.

Now having made such a disparaging remark about slow-pitch softball players, I have to concede that one of the greatest major league baseball players to come out of Chicago got his ball playing start by playing the 16-inch game in the Second City’s amateur leagues.

Bill “Moose" Skowron, the star slugging first baseman for the New York Yankees back in the early 1960s who later returned home to play for the White Sox, didn’t actually play competitive baseball until he got to Purdue University, where he was recruited to play Big Ten football.

The prep football star at Weber High School has said he learned to hit a pitched ball by smacking base hits while playing for a slow-pitch softball team sponsored by Koolvent Awnings, sometimes in games at Thillens Stadium on Chicago’s far northwest side.

He must have learned something right, because it was Skowron’s power-hitting threat that forced American League pitchers to have to confront both Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris during that season of 1961 when both challenged the single-season home run record then held by Babe Ruth.

But on the whole, the un-athletic nature of slow-pitch softball is why I can’t help but laugh whenever the Chicago game’s proponents argue they are playing a superior sport because they do not use fielder’s gloves.

With a big bloated ball that can turn to mush during the course of a game, one does not need a fielder’s glove to catch it. Also for me, baseball was more interesting to play because one can get a firm grip on the smaller ball and throw it with more accuracy. I think that results in a better-played, more interesting game.

For those who really want to have a bat and ball alternative to baseball, one ought to seriously look at fast-pitch softball.

I am always amazed at how hard pitchers like Jennie Finch of the Chicago Bandits can throw underhand. Also, Jennie, who has an Olympic gold medal among her possessions, is more of an athlete than any of the pudgy people who take the field to toss around a Clincher, particularly if their primary motivation for playing is the keg of beer available after the game.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The Chicago 16-inch Softball Hall of Fame will induct these people (http://www.ad-hoc-news.de/CorporateNews/en/15053596/Chicago+16”+Softball+Hall+of+Fame+Induction+Dinner+to+be) during ceremonies to be held Saturday, Jan. 26 in Cicero.

For those who need a quickie lesson as to what 16-inch softball is, check here. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1163.html. If you can handle some more details, read here. http://www.16inchsoftballhof.com/.

Some advice as to the proper way to do a Vienna Beef hot dog can be found here. http://www.viennabeef.com/culture/chicagostyle.asp