Meeting my heroes (my dad's version)
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
This week I went to the Cubs game. It was my grandmother’s (dad’s mom) birthday, and the Cubs were celebrating 100 years of Cubs radio broadcasts. I was joined by three friends from Northwestern, my (and my dad’s alma mater.)
The game was against Cleveland, which is the team we beat to win the World Series in 2016. I watched some of those playoffs on the phone with my dad, and then called him from the victory parade which I watched next to the Jack Brickhouse statue outside Tribune Tower. At the game, current Cubs radio broadcasters Pat Hughes and Ron Coomer threw out the first pitch wearing jerseys numbered 100.
This was special for a number of reasons. To explain, I’ll turn to an interview my kids and I did with my dad at Christmastime, 2018. In it, he talks about meeting some of his heroes. Here’s how this went:
Andrew: Which sports team are you a fan of as a child.
MFC: I was a Chicago Cubs fan because my mom was when we lived in Chicago. [Note: my grandmother was a literal card-carrying die-hard Cubs fan. When she died in 1987 I inherited her subscription to the Cubs fan magazine, Vine Line.] We could take the L and go to Wrigley Field. We did that on what were called Ladies Day. This is when the people who went to baseball games were mainly men. So in order to have more women interested in the game so maybe they'd go with their husbands and take their kids, they created ladies day and ladies got in at a reduced price and if they brought their kids it was even better. So we'd get off the L and walk to Wrigley Field and go watch a Cub game during the day.
MLC: Were there some Cubs you especially remember seeing or some memorable games?
MFC: Ransom Jackson was one of my favorite Cubs and Hank Sauer. They were all just great. I mean it was just such a wonderful experience to be watching with all that grass and fresh air.
Did you ever see Fergie Jenkins?
MFC: Yeah I did. When I got older and went to work for WGN for a while one of my duties was the backup producer for Cub games. So I got to know Vince Lloyd and Lou Boudreau who were doing color and the play by play at the time. I went to a couple games when I could be in the broadcast booth. But that was before Harry Carey, "Take me out to the ballgame" so I didn't get to get involved in all that.
MLC: And Brickhouse too right?
MFC: Oh yeah Brick was kind of… I wouldn't call him a friend but I certainly knew …him. In the great snow storm of 1967 when you could barely move, I would pick up his secretary on the way to Bradley place and so she could go to work.
MLC: What were you doing with Jack Brickhouse in December.
MFC: I was also the backup producer for the Brickhouse show which was the afternoon talk show. And he would have celebrities and whatnot.
MLC: That segues really nicely into Jane's question.
Jane: What famous or important people have you known?
MFC: Probably the most famous one besides Vice President Hubert Humphrey was Maurice Chevalier. We did an interview with him in his hotel suite and I had a cold. So I was sort of chugging Robitussin. And by the end of the interview which was little longer than an hour I was pretty tipsy. I met him. I sat in and produced. When "Sing along with Mitch" was popular, he sat in for some one of our regular radio hosts and I ended up producing his show. I met Arlo Guthrie.
Vice President Humphrey was a special treat because we did an interview with him during the ‘64 election and he autographed a book for me and he had his dinner while we were doing the interview. His dinner was a cold cheese sandwich and an apple. This is the Vice President of the United States.
I worked Lyndon Johnson and I met Ladybird. Lyndon Johnson was our President of the United States. I was the assistant director of the Radio Television News Service at the Democratic National Committee. We recorded all of his speeches no matter where he went through the Army Signal Corps and we would then produce an edited news digest of what he had to say. The White House did a transcript of all of his speeches and I was the official presidential translator because he came from West Texas and he sounded like my granddad. So the Eastern ladies who were actually doing the transcript didn't always understand what he had to say. I did.
MLC: Did you get to meet him?
MFC: No I never did. But we went to his inauguration we went to and we got on television one when we did that. And my dad was asked by the president to be whatever the title was at the time the National Highway Transportation NHTSA trains at whatever that stood for the time and he has pictures of him getting a bill signing pen that we still have that. And we still have the pen [Note: of course we still have the pen.]