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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

One of the highlights of my youth was going to stay with Grandma in Lemont and watching the Cubs with her.

The end of an era.

First Cubs tv game I remember was coming home from school in 1987 and seeing a skinny OF for the Pirates named Barry Bonds.

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

This really sucks. The Cubs and Braves on free TV locally and basic cable nationally was great for the game of baseball. But hey, increased revenue streams mean Theo Epstein can sign more relief pitchers who can't pitch.

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Hell, I remember when you could watch the Mets' games on local Chicago tv (Channel 50, I think).

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

The Mets were on WOR, which had superstation status but got dropped from Chicago-area cable systems around I wanna say 1994 (I think CLTV took its place). They never would have been syndicated to channel 50.

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Ah, thanks for the clarification.

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

You could change the title to Sports on WGN-TV.

Sox, Bulls, and Hawks are done on WGN too.

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Yeah, Stoney only mentioned baseball was done.

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

I understand that you can't cling on to tradition and nostalgia forever, but dammit the cubs belong on WGN television + radio. Obviously the days when every damn game was on WGN are long long gone; even a preponderance of "free tv" games have switched up to WCIU and most recently ABC-7 over the years... But still, there's something to be said for the brand staying true to its roots and always having an olive branch extended to their goddamn HOME going forward into this new/ish era of revenue streams beyond those streams traditionally deposited alongside many of the expensive residential buildings in the neighborhood. Methinks keeping even 1 weekendly game every Sat/Sun on WGN-TV would be a proper tradition that makes you wanna up and bellow out #ThatsCub!!

Instead, we're just left with a soulless husk of a ballclub that wants inferred/assumed credit for their longtime tradition and occasional success while doing everything in their power to screw up good will with their fans accrued over the yeara-- especially the last few-- while out the other side of their mouth they're busy destroying the continued upper echelon success of their product due to being short-sighted, greedy, and quite frankly (without Stephen A. Smith) stupid...

...oh yeah, and I reckon ^^^this^^° also applies to their media situation too, as i was obviously talking about their on-field product here =P

AHEM. yeah this isn't some kind of pussified lashing out at the evil rightist media conglomerate that the cubs are willing to get in a Russian hotel bed with, this is just me talking about the very fabric of the "Cubbie Experience" that compelled marketing people to come up with #ThatsCub in the first place.

People who grew up spending their afternoons with Harry and the Stone Pony on WGN-TV are gonna have a hard/er time selling their grand/kids on the magnanimous glory of the "Cubbie Experience" when they gotta find some cable channel in the 200-300+ range so they can hear lenkaspercubstv and jim freaking deshaies in some kind of slick modern "pay what you owe" media package that's essentially no different than what the 5000 people in/around Tampa experience when they tune in to Rays baseball.

But hey, once again I gotta confess that it's not like there's any chance of Harry coming back to WGN-TV to do 150+ games that are 90%+ likely going on in the afternoon, so really what does a game being on WGN-TV IN 202# bring to the table? IM[H/C]O** the Cubs always wanted to eschew that lovable franchise-defining tradition (daygames, WGN/SuperStation, little-to-no-onfield-advertising/OG-scoreboard-only) to have the same advantages/opportunities that everyone else had, EVEN THO THEY ALWAYS WANTED TO SELL YOU (ON) THAT TRADITION.... Ergo, they always wanted to put themselves in a situation where their on-field product defined them more than anything else.....

.......and they're doing a bang-up job with that since lucking out and having one of their really good teams win the October tournament a few years back, eh? Now you just gotta sit back relax and strap it down and hope that your $$$ACE$$$ pitcher can manage an ERA under 4 while providing triple digit innings while some kids like the dude who pitched against the cardinals Friday can pop up and decide they wanna be millionaires all while your bloated offensive core can cobble together enough offense to offset your generally-meh-at-best pitching and come together for 90+ish wins and another magic October crapshoot before you start crying poor when it's time to pay babe Bryant and Baez and maybe even Rizzo. I can't wait for that crying poor even tho they've gotten everything they've wanted and thensome.from the city/neighborhood/etc.

oh and you gotta pray they can trip stumble and fall into some.quality young/ish pitching otherwise they're gonna totally piss away the primes of bryzzo (autocorrects to "brutal" =) and Baez and then they're truly what the spanglish call "el fuckedo")

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Yeah, they will regret leaving WGN.

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

I miss WWOR. I have MANY fond memories of stuff like Howard Stern's weekly show and new York news from when I was a pre-teen/tween. I can't say i remember catching met games on there (even tho I kinda of remember them being advertised now that I think about it) -- it was really TBS and the braves that had the fond adolescent memories over here. Oh and the tail end of 6:05 Saturday night wrasslin. Hell even the Sunday afternoon MLB game of the week immediately after they stopped being the home of the braves (wholesale?).

Skip Caray's voice was always endearingly acerbic, if that's oxymoronic enough for you =P

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Great point. Everyone said the Cubs winning the World Series would make them just another team, but I think getting exiled to expanded-sports-tier cable is what will really make them just another team.

I wonder if it'll even be Len and JD in the booth next year. They're raising Chicagoland's cable bills for the dry muttering of Jim Deshaies?

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Kerry Wood or Ryan Dempster

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

sry about the TLDR but yeah basically the whole "cubbie thing" is long dead. it used to be that kids like me.could come.home.from school and catch the ass-end of a cubs game with Harry just about every weekday. you remember/ed where you were when Tuffy Rhodes hit those 3HR on opening day (Ryan Smith's house watching on the living room TV) and you could forge habits and rituals that are only rivaled by Radio nowadays...

...and then a few times a year you could go to "the world's largest outdoor beer garden" and hang out with andre's army of bleacher bums who were still kinda actual bums and not soulless yuppies taking their girls/clients out for liquid lunch; you know, people who lived and breathed baseball cuz it was their identity. nowadays i reckon ppl would only wanna convince you that the cubs are their identity cuz of the winning, as they're more winning junkies than baseball junkies (SEE: HAWKS, BLACK)

BUT HEY, c'est la vie. those days ain't ever coming back and I can't fault the creepy ricketts clan for doing what they did. THE PLAN™®© technically worked and they got everything they wanted, so it'd be nice if they could stop sucking at baseball so you lot could get back to getting your still-beating hearts torn out of your chest in October instead of the slow/gradual realization that your team is upper-echelon shit by like june/July and then people sporadically tap out along the bataan death match from the all star break to the proper funeral dirge in mid-late september.

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Do you remember in the early 2000s when AOL Time Warner started getting itchy about TBS being an Atlanta station and tried to recast their Atlanta Braves coverage as MLB coverage that always just so happened to involve the Atlanta Braves? They took Skip and Pete off TV and everyone had to petition to get them back.

Skip had a great voice. If you go on YouTube, you can find games where they still had Ernie Johnson, Sr. and his Vermont Yankee "you cahn't get they-uh from he-uh" voice.

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As I've been saying the lack of [even-90%+] day baseball is one of the big things that made them just another team. Remember about how you'd hear about it being hard/er on the players to play at 1:20 every day and therefore it'd be harder to attract upper-tier free agents because they're gonna have to curtail their social lives to get up early most mornings for 1:20pm first pitches? Well the cubs keep on getting more and more and more night games to the point that I don't think they're a "day baseball" team anymore, even compared to like ~10yrs ago when night games felt like more of a special occasion / rare treat as opposed to nowadays where like, shit, do they even do weekday day games outside of getaway days (last game of a series) ?? Day games are the rare treat now.

Also look at the fans in this video of Harry broadcasting from the bleachers back in the 80s -- Cubs games used to be filled with genuinely-hokey-motherfuckers*** who often wore fanny packs under their dirty tight/stretched mono-color shirt (if not an open Hawaiian / style shirt with a Gilligan hat) with just a peek of gut coming out of the bottom of their shirt in sandals and jorts, a lot of time bringing the kids/family out from the near/suburbs and making a day of it in the city. I'll say it again: cubs fans were generally hokey motherfuckers. you'd have lots of dirty unshaven people in single-color shirts (or gaudy $9.99 "CUBS [logo]" shirts that they bought at jewel or k-mart; plump rotund suburban ladies with visors and fanny packs. Beer and shot guy functioning alcoholics chain/ smoking in the concourse. Bleacher Bums weren't called Bleacher Bums cuz they were in the bleachers; they were called Bleacher Bums because they were Bums.

But then with the Dan-Bernstein-Approved gentrification of the organization / revenue-streams / neighborhood / and ballpark you eventually got the "gentrification" of the fans attending games, and now you've got those "good monied people" who Bernstein in/famously championed filling up the lower levels of bulls games (whilst the riff raff stay upstairs where they belong) filling up your cubs games. you've got WAYYYY more 20something-30something wannabe/yuppie couples attending and the families are driving out in their Range Rover from.Barrington, as opposed to the old-school hokey obese fanny pack contingent. These new/er fans show up decked out in no less than $50+ worth of hats shirts and jerseys and wanna look good in the place to be as opposed to being there to service their baseball jones. They're not trying to smuggle in flasks + beers + weed (outside of the newer security measures) because they wanna show off that status that they can afford an evening of $10 beers for them + their ladies + their friends, as opposed to the people who know how to get a good buzz on for < $10 b4 the game cuz they go to so many games it'd be ludacris to drop $80-150+ on alcohol at any given game.

so yeah, I reckon the cubs sold their soul a long time ago... and hey I'm not saying that's a bad thing-- it is what it is-- but they've put themselves in a position where their on-field product needs to be the thing that makes them more than just another team... And umm... About that.... they ain't the astros, you know what I'm saying?

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** = in my humble/correct opinion.

*** = I have to be one of less than 25-50 people in the whole of human existence to utter the phrase "generally-hokey motherfuckers" -- yes, I am proud of myself.

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Great job by Sini in this thread.

Yup

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Thirded.

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

Not bad. And quite succinct for a generally loquacious poster.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

In defense of 1980s Cubdom I will say that everyone looked hokier back then.

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