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Eternal Skybox By Bob Sanders

Die-hard Chicago Cubs fans, hoping for their first World Series title in 100 years, now know they can at least be buried in a Wrigley Field look-alike when they do.

“Beyond the Vines,” an internment location at Bohemian National Cemetery on the Windy City’s Northwest Side, will provide “eternal skyboxes,” otherwise called urns for those who have moved on from the deliriousness of Cubs mania. 

A key factor in the bereavement process, announced at the recent ground breaking ceremony, will be an ivy-covered memorial wall--some 14 feet high and 35 feet long. Featured will be a stained glass window created to remind observers of Wrigley’s green scoreboard. Prices range from $5,000 for the home run burial with single, double and triple options costing less. Thus far, the subject of concession stands has not been introduced. All this should attract the attention of filmmaker Oliver Stone who has made much  out of less. 

Word of the Wrigley miniature brings to mind one of Hollywood’s largely forgotten films giving one the kind of pause suggesting that, perhaps, memories of “The Loved One” entered into the creation of “Beyond the Vines.” 

“The Loved One,” produced in 1965, is largely a send-up of the funeral business and, as it was promoted, offers something to offend everyone. The film succeeds in no small measure thanks to writers Terry Southern (“Dr. Strangelove”) and Christopher Isherwood whose inspired lunacy was based upon Evelyn Waugh’s novel. Directed by Tony Richardson, “The Loved One” explores bizarre marketing aspects of the funeral business with a remarkable cast including Liberace as a creepy casket salesman, Rod Steiger as cosmetician “Mr. Joyboy” and Jonathan Winters in twin roles.  Winters plays the Blessed Reverend Wilbur Glenworthy of Whispering Glades and his brother, Harry Glenworthy of Happier Hunting Grounds Pet Cemetery. 

There are secondary targets in “The Loved One” including the Los Angeles British movie colony’s John Gielgud, wickedly sardonic as Robert Morse’s uncle, providing biting insight. Robert Morley is corrosively condescending as the colony’s leader and it is by way of Gielgud’s suicide that we learn of the offensive practitioners of the death trade.  

Whispering Glades is a take-off on Forest Lawn, a Southern California institution where countless film celebrities are buried. It is owned by the Blessed Reverend who has better plans for his real estate: an old-folks home with a dependable turnover. He also schemes to free up his land by sending Loved Ones into space for eternal orbiting, a subject whose obvious progression is thankfully interred as plot development.

Commercial sham and vulgarity are the coinage of the Blessed Reverend’s realm with its denizens offering Gladespeak--cleverly disguised jargon uttered in false reverential fashion by mortuary minions including sleek women called “comforters” who minister to the “waiting ones.” One of the comforters provides love interest of a sort beyond the film’s title.   Anjanette Comer, as Aimee Thanatogenos, is decidedly dippy and falls in love with poet Morse (Dennis Barlow) who gives every indication he would be deeply challenged by the slightest suggestion of sexual aggressiveness on Comer’s part.

Steiger, superb as “Joyboy,” the chief embalmer whose epicene flutter is beyond hideous, has a mother (played by Ayllene Gibbons) with an eating disorder. I will not attempt to describe what she does to the contents of a refrigerator.

“The Loved One” came out of Waugh’s disappointing experiences in Hollywood where he had been summoned to do a film treatment of his best-selling “Brideshead Revisited.”  People who should have known better finally realized the book is about Catholicism (“Oh, I thought YOU read it”) and Waugh was sent packing but not before compiling material for “The Loved One.”

It’s quite likely inspiration for the film was the result not only of “The Loved One” but, also, two non-fiction books about the mortuary business: Jessica Mitford’s “American Way of Death” and “High Cost of Dying” by Ruth Mulvey Harmer. Both were published two years before Richardson’s film was released to very mixed reviews. 

With Hollywood now cranking out re-make films seemingly eye blinks apart, “The Loved One” in new drag should offer compelling opportunities 43 years later by way of Chicago cemetery real estate providing fan fulfillment “Beyond the Vines.” It’s also a perfect title for a film about a family torn asunder by split loyalty to Chicago major league baseball teams, the Cubs and White Sox , who battle for World Series inclusion. A Cubs fan, one of two brothers, dies as a result of being hit by a game winning home run ball while sitting in Wrigley’s left field bleachers. This, as Alfred Hitchcock would point out, is the McGuffin of the piece. The faux Wrigley Field burial ground, to the redo what Whispering Glades is to “The Loved One,” is owned by Stetson Frickert; we’ll bring back Jonathan Winters to play not only Stetson but Earl Avarice, Cubs owner. The film, as with the original, will give us two penetrating looks at society: the baseball business and its new-found cousin: eternal peace for die-hard Cubs fans. And, yes, Woody Allen should play Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.

As a-former Wrigley Bleacher Bum with sufficient awareness of mortal coil departures, I feel eminently qualified to write “Beyond the Vines.”  However, I’ll not reveal any more of my plot for obvious reasons.

Ready when you are, Mr. Stone.

Ronald Reagan on the Road By Bob Sanders

That anguished hand-wringing by the conservative media over John McCain’s decision to rebrand himself by adopting Theodore Roosevelt’s spirit of reform was somewhat stunning. The suggestion that a Republican running for the White House without either Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan as a role model was enough to be met by chilling reaction including that of  Joshua Hawley of National Review Online.

Proffering that conservatives believe TR was a big government “closet socialist,” Hawley cranked things up a bit by suggesting that the Rough Rider was no Reagan. Indeed, he’s not.

I met Reagan in the fall of 1961 in Kansas City while employed by TV Guide. My office was located at the corner of 10^th & Grand, close to the Hotel Muehlebach, scene of so many large luncheons and dinners. Few K.C. hotels were capable of handling such events then and the Muehlebach won business pretty much by default. During his Presidency and afterwards, Harry Truman maintained an office there. Reagan would return to the hotel 15 years later to pitch for delegates at the Republication National Convention at which Gerald Ford was nominated.

The year I met Reagan had been one of triumph and change for him. President of the Screen Actors Guild, the actor had worked out a strike settlement in the face of charges that his connection with the General Electric Theatre (he both hosted the Sunday night show and was 25 percent owner of it) put him more on the side of management. In spite of the charges, he received a standing ovation at a mass meeting that produced a landslide approval. That November, just after I met him, he was re-elected to his sixth term as SAG president. A liberal from the time he became old enough to vote, Reagan was turning toward conservatism largely because he reviled Communism. His marriage to actress Nancy Davis eight years before also was a factor.

Earlier that year, my magazine had run a cover of Reagan and we received a number of 18”x12” blowups for distribution to stations carrying the General Electric Theatre. The photos usually wound up on lobby and corridor walls. I kept one for myself knowing that my mother-in-law, Allie Weiler, was an ardent Reagan fan. Armed with the blow-up, I approached the dais where Reagan had spoken impressively at a meeting of the Kansas City Advertising Club.

“What’s your mother-in-law’s name?” he asked. “Allie,” I replied. “How do you spell that?” I told him. He then wrote a glowing paragraph to Allie—something like 50 or 60 words—making reference to what a “wonderful” son-in-law she had acquired. It was charmingly effusive and his words and photo quickly became a prized possession of my wife’s mother who provided a place of honor in the vestibule of her Bristol, Virginia home. “Are you expected somewhere right now?” asked the future U.S. President. I told him I didn’t have to be back in the office for a while and he invited me to his room for a drink.

When we got there, he ordered a couple of scotch and waters (I learned later a screwdriver was his favorite drink) from room service and we began talking. Based in the Quad Cities for 18 months during the recent past, I commented about WOC, a Davenport radio station where I knew Reagan had worked early in his career. I had pushed the right button.

WOC was an unusual station and may still be. With call letters standing for Wonders of Chiropractic, WOC was founded by Bartlett Joshua Palmer, the son of Daniel David Palmer. The senior Palmer, a Canadian, had originated Palmer Chiropractic College in Davenport spreading the gospel through teaching and practice. His work was carried on and extended by his son, usually referred to as B.J. I recalled that a huge picture of Palmer graced a wall of the station’s lobby and that the picture looked not unlike Andy Gump, a chinless bombastic blowhard comic strip character (1917-1959). Reagan laughed heartily and suggested I had a pretty good eye.

As we continued our talk, he commented about Walter Annenberg, the owner of TV Guide and a major philanthropist-to-be. “Apparently Walter has spent much of his life hounded by the thought of his father’s time in prison. I think it’s a shame. I think his dad got a bum rap,” said Reagan. Triangle Publications Publisher Moses L. Annenberg, who founded most of what his son inherited with the exception of TV Guide, spent 18 months in Lewisburg Prison for tax evasion and was released a few weeks before his death in 1942

During our two-hour conversation accompanied by more scotch and water, I sensed his longing for those early days in radio when he learned his craft, first at WOC, then at sister station WHO in Des Moines. We know so much about Ronald Reagan and, yet, there is so much we don’t know. Perhaps he was always an incurable romantic who spent the second half of his life reserving everything beyond his beguiling personality for Nancy and Nancy alone. When I mentioned how radio had been a defining part of my youth and how I used to sneak a radio into bed with me to hear such shows as “Inner Sanctum,” and “The Hermit’s Cave” complete with characters my imagination had defined so clearly, Reagan went into high gear. An enthusiastic collector of popular culture trivia with an emphasis upon the entertainment industry—and a baseball nut to boot—I was an excellent audience for him.

Reagan’s memory was remarkable. I got the feeling he could pluck any given day out of the past and provide the nuances of those experiences that had contributed so much to who he was and, in retrospect, where he was going. Politics did not come up in our conversation with a single exception. That was the role Franklin Delano Roosevelt had played in Walter Annenberg’s version of his father’s prison sentence; it centered on retaliation for contributions to the Republican Party. Everything else concentrated on sports and TV with oblique references to the film industry where age had moved Reagan, then 49, from leading man to G.E. television spokesman.

I was particularly curious about Reagan, the sports announcer who used to recreate Chicago Cubs games. Having acquired the name “Dutch” Reagan after moving to WHO, he was assigned to announce Cubs and White Sox games. The home plate umpire’s balls and strikes decisions were sent by wire and Reagan ad-libbed everything else including fan reaction, the weather and game interruptions when the wire service momentarily broke down. In the words of biographer Ed Morris, “he could out-talk Bugs Bunny.”

Sensing he wanted to reminisce about his old announcing days, I questioned him regarding recreations of Cubs games. His eyes twinkled and he began a game description of a contest that had occurred in 1934. It was WHO Sports Director “Dutch” Reagan at his mellifluous best on a 50,000 watt clear channel that reached Mexico and islands in the Pacific. Not until he was President would he command such an audience at one time. It was Cubs coverage that took him to the West Coast the next year to the team’s spring training camp at Catalina Island and discovery by Warner Bros.

My memory of a long ago conversation with the most totally charming person I’ve ever met is vivid. His enthusiasms, his interest in me and his great good humor are the sorts of things one never forgets. I can still hear him doing that Cubs game complete with references to Chuck Klein, Stan Hack and manager Charlie Grimm. As time warps go, it’s hard to beat.

Also, I can’t help but wonder about Ronald Reagan’s death by Alzheimer’s Disease. Is it possible he was done in by all that information he acquired and maintained over his first 83 years? Perhaps a mind can only hold so much until it goes on overload.

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Charles O. Finley by Bob Sanders

While baseball history is loaded with personalities of quixotic bent, I fear the awkward takeover by corporate America is draining the great pastime of its inclination for color. Rather than providing today’s fans with the kind of endearing looniness associated with past decades, baseball today offers such boring serious money oddities as Alex Rodriguez and Madonna, a tawdry attempt by an interim owner (Sam Zell) to sell re-naming rights to a stadium (Wrigley Field) and a commissioner of the game (Bud Selig) whose 16 sappy years in office was preceded by a career as a car salesman. Bearing considerable physical resemblance to Woody Allen, there appears to be a significant casting opportunity should Selig’s life ever be filmed. We’re talking boring.

Things are getting so dull that I’m beginning to miss the good old days of George Steinbrenner whose ownership of the New York Yankees has included 20 managers over a 23-year stretch plus the firing of one (Billy Martin) five times. 

I miss the crazies. Charles O. Finley was one of them and even in death provoked laughter. That was in 1996 when he departed for the great skybox, an event immediately followed by the kind of funny lines he would have enjoyed. The use of humor in connection with a death may seem a bit macabre, but Finaly was, as the saying goes, different. Maybe the most succinct observation about his quite unique life was by way of a squib in the Seattle Post Intelligencer’s sports section suggesting, “if Charlie Finley’s in heaven, you can bet the color white is out.” Baseball’s Finley was responsible for team uniforms utilizing such shades as Finley Green and Graffiti Gold thus  making golfers look by comparison like Amish carriage drivers. 

Over the years I had a number of conversations with the quixotic Finley, a reporter’s delight. He was highly quotable and did bizarre things such as celebrating victories by riding a mule around his Kansas City Athletics’ infield. Adding to the merriment was a recorded musical background featuring a braying mule set against what sounded like Looney Tunes accompaniment. 

Finley was a genuine eccentric full of ideas—most of them bad. All he really needed was an idea editor, something the egocentric Finley would never consider. Take the stupendously strange case of Betty Caywood, an absolutely gorgeous example of what back then in less gender-sensitive times was called a “TV weather girl.” Her moderate success in Chicago somehow suggested to Charlie O. that what baseball needed was a female color announcer for his team—the prettier, the better. Caywood then began a brief tenure attempting to bring greater understanding to the grand old game.

Possessed of minimal information about baseball, she became entranced during a lengthy at bat by slugger Rocky Colavito of the visiting Detroit Tigers. The 6’5” Colavito hit something like a dozen foul balls—most of them towering—at which point Caywood cooed: “Oh, I just love Rocky’s high balls.” 

My most vivid memory of Charlie O. involved one of his loopiest inventions: “The Pennant Porch.” Enormously frustrated because he felt the confines of his ballpark did not accommodate a largely left-handed long ball hitting lineup, Finley initiated a conference of carpenters. They quickly erected additional stands in right field to turn routine fly balls into home runs.

Finley, however, had conveniently ignored one of baseball’s firm rules: fences down the foul lines have to be a minimum 325 feet from home plate with the grandfathered-in exceptions of old-time ballparks. 

Threatened by the American League president to tear down his creation, the devious Finley then had a three-foot alley sawed to the wall--a move of such flagrant deception (the press quickly named the result a “Half-Pennant Porch”) to qualify the colorful owner as baseball’s all-time Machiavelli. 

It was then that Mel Durslag, an outstanding sports writer, did a free-lance piece for TV Guide for whom I then worked. Durslag’s effort was a paean to Finley’s creativity which eventually produced World Series night baseball—a development that took more than 40 years from the first major league nocturnal contest in 1936 in Cincinnati. Could any sport be more spectacularly numb than baseball?

Following a look at an advance copy of Durslag’s enthusiasm, I called Finley, read him the story and suggested he do a promotional spot for my magazine while seated in his half pennant porch while, of course, wearing an A’s baseball cap. 

A lengthy pause was followed by: “Well, Bob, that’s a very interesting idea, but I can’t do it.” 

“Howcum?” 

“Well,” said the man whose mode of transportation around an infield was by mule, “it lacks  dignity.”

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Bleacher Preacher (sports) by Bob Sanders

It’s rather astonishing how internet information can be stumbled upon. A case in recent point involved my search for details about that day’s untelevised Cubs victory. Partially satisfied by information on ESPN’s website, I went after a Chicago Tribune blog authored by one of the newspaper’s baseball beat reporters. With 99 years of World Series frustration behind us, we Cubs fans will dig for any information as long as it adds to our conviction that this, surely, will be The Year. 

My initial link offered massive opportunities to gain Cubs information including a tour of Wrigleyville, video highlights of the 1955 team’s 14-4 opening day victory over the thoroughly despised St. Louis Cardinals and YouTube confirmation of the winner of the Zell No! song competition won by a Chicago Tribune intern. Sam Zell is the interim owner of Tribune Company who attempted to sell the Wrigley Field name to the highest corporate bidder until temporary sanity was restored.  My keyboard stumbling eventually provided a chance to read about the newspaper’s front page coverage last month of a Chicago character known as the Bleacher Preacher with whom I watched a lot of Cubs games. A.K.A. Jerry Pritikin, the Preacher was a fellow Wrigley Field Bleacher Bum who rarely missed a game back in the 80s when the most you could pay at the box office for a seat between the lines was $6, a sharp contrast to today’s $46.  

The Tribune story was largely about the Preacher’s exhibit of Gay Pride Month photographs he took during San Francisco’s turmoil of the 70s. Further searching provided a video of the now 71-year-old speaking at breakneck speed about his exhibit and the Cubs. Within 10 minutes I had emailed the Tribune reporter expressing curiosity about my fellow Bleacher Bum who emailed me with greetings last exchanged 20 years ago.  

Pritikin came by his enthusiasm for the Cubs quite naturally. His dad, a die-hard fan, was on his death bed nearing the end of a 30-day coma. Suddenly, the senior Pritikin awakened. Motioning for his son to come closer, dad uttered his last words. They were in reference to a power hitting outfielder with low batting averages, a penchant for striking out and an errant arm that once put a ball in a dugout toilet during a game. Dave Kingman had been the subject of much ire directed by Pritikin’s dad culminating in a final observation of curt dismissal: “We gotta get rid of Kingman.” 

The Bleacher Preacher, whose income came from public relations projects that often found their creator getting as much attention as the product, was of serious bent at the ballpark while most often wearing a propeller topped pith helmet emblazoned with the words Bleacher Preacher. As the fans’ chaplain, he would arrive at the ballpark a couple of hours before game time. One of his missions was to convert holders of allegiances to such atheistic citadels as New York’s much-castigated Mets and the St. Louis Cardinals, considered an abomination by The Preacher. Conversions consisted of a ceremony part Catskill Mountains resort comedy and part religiosity.    

Voodoo dolls of opposing players and highly original signs created during the games were part of his ever-burgeoning repertoire. A huge array of colored pins were used to pierce the dolls at propitious moments of a game; the colors related to possible enemy bungling including fielding errors, missed signals and balks by the pitcher. One time The Preacher dropped his pin collections during a Cubs rally. He spent a couple of anguished innings putting his arsenal back in an alignment I never fathomed.

 The Preacher’s fondness for visiting players who distinguished themselves—usually for off-field heroics—resulted in his creation of an MVP Award. In 1989 it went to Trevor Wilson, a free-spirited Giants pitcher. With the hazing of rookies derigueur in the major leagues, Wilson was honored by The Preacher “for his courageous assault against the statue of General Sheridan and his horse Winchester above, beyond and below the call of duty in his rookie campaign.” Wilson’s award as “Most Valuable Painter” for his Lincoln Park escapade was for brushing Winchester’s testicles a brilliant pink; understandably, the hurler became a favorite of the Bleacher Bums. The feeling was mutual and word circulated that he wanted to be traded to the Cubs. His wish was never granted.  

Pritikin’s desire to try out his Baseball’s Moses gig in a minor league ballpark was realized later that year when wife Jan and I drove Jerry and Carmela Hartigan to John O’Donnell Stadium in Davenport. Iowa. Carmela, then 87, rarely missed a Cubs game taking two buses to get to Wrigley. The Preacher wore a flowing robe of white which, along with his Ten Fanmandments of Baseball, added panache to what was clearly spirited shtick. His attire also included the ever-present propeller topped pith helmet. 

There have been a lot of quotable quotes directed baseball’s way and I join the Bleacher Preacher in subscribing to two in particular. It was Humphrey Bogart who nailed it when he said: “A hot dog at the ballpark is better than a steak at the Ritz.” Maybe even better was Bill Veeck, baseball’s brilliant Barnum, who offered an appealing explanation of the bleacher mystique: “The sun is hotter and the beer is colder.”    

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