Hatchetman wrote:
phil rosenthal today column makes it clear that Grote did not want to do this.
Quote:
Mark Grote had asked for a meeting with his boss, Mitch Rosen, WSCR-AM 670’s operations director, to talk over the coming baseball season, which was to be his fourth as the Cubs’ pregame and postgame host.
Grote had a checklist of things he wanted to go over when they sat down the day after Christmas. Rosen had a thought. So much for the list.
“He proposed the idea of me going to the Bears and possibly putting Zach (Zaidman) on the Cubs, and I have to say I was surprised,” Grote said Thursday, a day after the job swap was announced, pausing ever so slightly between “was” and “surprised.”
“I had no idea. There was no thought in my mind whatsoever that there would be any kind of proposal for change, but I took the time to think about it, and at this point I’m at peace with it.”
Zaidman, who logged 14 seasons as The Score’s Bears reporter and sideline reporter on game broadcasts for Entercom sister stations WBBM-AM 780 and WCFS-FM 105.9, indicated he would prefer to be interviewed closer to Cubs spring training. He said Wednesday via Twitter that he is “excited to join the Cubs broadcast team” and “extremely grateful for my time covering the Bears,” which he called “quite the journey.”
As for the impetus to upend The Score’s two biggest reporting beats — a change affecting game-day broadcasts for both the Cubs’ and Bears’ flagship stations — Rosen has said only that he felt it was time for a change.
The switch was announced less than 24 hours after the Bears introduced Matt Nagy as their new coach and almost four months after the Bears renewed their rights deal with WBBM, their radio home since 2000.
“The best part of this is both Zach and Mark are terrific people,” Rosen said. “For Zach, it gives him an opportunity to work in baseball and travel full time with the Cubs. For Mark, he will cover what could be an exciting year with a new coach and do sideline reports on WBBM during games. I look at it as a win-win for everyone.”
Zaidman will continue to report on the coaching comings and goings as Nagy assembles his staff, and he’ll keep doing “Bears All-Access” through the end of this month.
But after calling Friday night’s DePaul-Providence basketball game, Zaidman also is scheduled to work a three-hour shift beginning at noon Saturday from the Cubs Convention. Eventually he’ll make his way to spring training in Arizona.
The Cubs open their 2018 season in about 11 weeks in Miami.
“My offseason just got extended,” Grote said. “I was getting ready to go to work, and now I’ve got even more free time than I thought, and for the first time in three or four years I’ll have a summer.”
Grote enjoyed terrific rapport with Cubs announcers Pat Hughes and Ron Coomer, but baseball broadcasts are less regimented than pro football.
Whether he’ll have the opportunity to be as loose with Bears voices Jeff Joniak and Tom Thayer while weathering rain and snow, or even as he reports on the team during the week from Halas Hall, is an open question.
“It probably will be difficult, but to be honest with you, I thought it would be difficult with the Cubs too,” Grote said. “I’m going to try my hardest to be myself. I know I can’t always make a joke out of everything, but I can’t help but be myself. I hope that (humor) will come through in a non-forced way. … If I lose that, I lose myself, so I hope there’s room.”
Oof. That's just a great big oof.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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