man.... this fucking sucks. i kept telling myself at some point i'd catch his show in the middle of the night and call in because i kind of reached enlightenment and les is a big part of that reason why. les "grobber" grobstein is the reason i'm on this bulletin board because when he strolled into the elk grove library one day and i was called over from youth services to help this dude with his scanner questions, you can bet your sweet ass he was scanning media guides to sell em on ebay. now any FOTS can bust his balls for doing this, people clearly wanted to question his finances.... however if you think about what les was actually doing (getting "insider" swag from the inner sanctum of sports teams and selling them to savvy fans on the cheap via ebay so real sports fans could get the real products from the real teams. go figure les was a "real dude" in every sense of the word. once i helped him with his scanner issue/s/ we got to talking and he told me about score670.com / the original board that was the precursor to this place (hence how i'm user #4 here or whatever) and he got me posting on that board and said it was a place i would like. well he was dead wrong cuz the lot of you have been a bunch of cocksuckers and assholes, but hey as long as somebody's getting work in the form of america's finest profession and we're not forgetting about our shitpipes well then i guess we're living up to the old midwestern ideal that leads us to have the most diverse and inclusive add on particible in the human language: ....and shit?
les did what he loved; talking sports. personally whether i was at the library on break or whether i was strolling the concourses of wrigley field if i ran into grobber it was probably a 25-30min convo. even my baseball uncle started referring to him as "my friend" and i always took that kinda quizically cuz i never felt like i had any special status with les, this is just who he was and how he lived his life. he loved talking sports with anyone no matter who you are, whether you're an executive athlete or garbageman who walked down a lucky path that one day. les didn't discriminate against people based on who they were (ok except maybe one guy from baltimore IIRC.... i havent listened to his show for awhile now but when i did i remember there was a dude from baltimore who was all kind of weird. maybe it was the ghost of earl weaver? i also remember one night where the calls got real weird and he had a caller from cincinnati "the queen city" whaaa? he talked about how calls like that should be made at the cook county jail but not on his airwaves, and it felt like some weird intelligent people were calling in to try and use grobber to get some kind of message out there but he was having none of it beyond the queen city cincinnati? fuck if i know..... but for all the people who love to show off his lack of 100.0% statistical accuracy on some numbers and scores (and he gives them to you so many damn times a night it's like wtf.... plus the weather doesnt change much between, say, 3-5am but i'll be damned if les wasn't doing weather on the half hour every half hour. it was a way you could pace yourself while listening to him)
and obviously we all know les and his tales of talking to people on the air.... he was the only show i called up.... james from morton grove. i loved to call him up after i went to bears games in the early-mid 10s and sopmetimes after raw TV experiences.... he always gave me time, he worked with me back and forth and it wasn't just "i'll hang up and wait for my answer" it was more "my dime our dancefloor" and that kind of ethos is always appreciated in an increasingly corporatized medium. his show was oldschool where it counted no doubt going back to dahl and meier busting his balls back in the day, the WLS era, sportsfone.... you name it and the guy was there, even if he had to run across detroit taking cabs buses and maybe even trolleys to get to a decent payphone to update sportsfone. he truly lived that life like the kool keith of sports talk radio (aka black elvis lost in space) and would you believe that he iterally put the Les in #ViveLesExpos cuz he got to call real live expos games in puerto rico in 2004? that's a lifetime achievement award cuz even if you watch the hawk harrelson documentary on youtube (the one MLB/network did) you'll see that hawkeroo even wore expos gear one day when he was calling a sox game at comiskey where there was a big ol brawl. the expos were said to be the farm system to baseball in the 90s.... but for even longer than that they were the farm system to all things finer baseball for much much longert (rusty staub fans unite!) and go figure at the end of the proud/storied history of the montreal expos they turned to the chicago sports legend of chicago sports legends to come down and call some games. the most legendary baseball team in the game was proud to have one of THEIR legendcs calling games for them in 2004.
i had always endeavored to do some kind of a rap song or rap reference about being the grobber of the rap game.... and suffice to say that was always going to happen but now it should happen sooner than later cuz man.... all these people i've been thanking lately as i finally get past my past addictions to being uncuccessful and miserable and i turn the corner and finally start to see some daylight ahead of me..... and i lose one of my absolute heroes/legends/etc. total kick in the dick but hey i was born in dick kick city and barring some kind of miracle where grobber is a bigger 2pac fan than me and was just like LOL JK WAAAZZZZUUUUPPPP at some point in the future (i never got to ask him what his favorite 2pac song was. see if i had a chance to talk to him in my new +sober state i would have been able to really find out about more about him and his wonderful longtime partner/wife/etc kathy and even his son scott..... i hope there's some kind of t-shirt or hoodie memorial thing that can help raise some proceeds for kathy and scott cuz like.... if jeff dickerson can get hoodies around chicagoland let's hope grobber can do the same. i might even have some ideas that can smile and nod to other successful entities if anyone wants to ask me. you know where to reach me via DM/PM/etc.
but seriously since it isnt today that grobber was found with his peephole closed (think vonnegut / deadeye dick) i cant say today is a sad day for chicago sports media.... but i can say it will be a better day for me as
i'm going to be motivated to track down what his youtube legacy is and i know that going forward if theres anything i can do to help add to that legacy i'm damn sure going to do it. thanks for taking time out of your otherwise amazing life to help a kid like me get more involved in the local sports scene, les. it's a pity i'll never be able to repay you whilst you're here on this mortal coil, but hey, you know what they say about mortality...... mortl was always a punkass bitch on efnet.
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Curious Hair wrote:
Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?
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