Royko

[never cry wolf]

This thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2911361#2911643 in LBN about the Sun-Times turning to the left got me nostalgic and I needed a Royko fix, thought I'd share it here.

I found a couple of pages of excerpts so I could get my fix.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/730735.html
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/730719.html

An excerpt from the 2nd link:

October 25, 1972
(Mike wrote this column the day Jackie Robinson died.)

Jackie's Debut a Unique Day

All that Saturday, the wise men of the neighborhood, who sat in chairs on the sidewalk outside the tavern, had talked about what it would do to baseball.

I hung around and listened because baseball was about the most important thing in the world, and if anything was going to ruin it, I was worried.

Most of the things they said, I didn't understand, although it all sounded terrible. But could one man bring such ruin?

They said he could and would. And the next day he was going to be in Wrigley Field for the first time, on the same diamond as Hack, Nicholson, Cavarretta, Schmitz, Pafko, and all my other idols.

I had to see Jackie Robinson, the man who was going to somehow wreck everything. So the next day, another kid and I started walking to the ballpark early.

We always walked to save the streetcar fare. It was five or six miles, but I felt about baseball the way Abe Lincoln felt about education.

Usually, we could get there just at noon, find a seat in the grandstand, and watch some batting practice. But not that Sunday, May 18, 1947.

By noon, Wrigley Field was almost filled. The crowd outside spilled off the sidewalk and into the streets. Scalpers were asking top dollar for box seats and getting it.

I had never seen anything like it. Not just the size, although it was a new record, more than 47,000. But this was twenty-five years ago, and in 1947 few blacks were seen in the Loop, much less up on the white North Side at a Cub game.

That day, they came by the thousands, pouring off the northbound Ls and out of their cars.

They didn't wear baseball-game clothes. They had on church clothes and funeral clothes·suits, white shirts, ties, gleaming shoes, and straw hats. I've never seen so many straw hats.

snip----- HIGHLY I recommend reading the entire collection for any DUers not familiar with Mike.