Media & Organizers

Bill Kohl

Bill Kohl graduated from Morton East in 1969 where he played football. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1973. He started his career in parks and recreation after coaching basketball teams to four titles in five years at Clyde Park, including two undefeated seasons. These teams included ability levels from sixteenand- […]

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Steve Kashul

Steve Kashul serves as the pregame, halftime, and post-game host for the Chicago Bulls, working alongside the play-by-play team of Chuck Swirsky and Bill Wennington on the Chicago Bulls Radio Network. He is co-owner of Channel Fore, Inc, a media production company that produces the Golf Scene for television and radio. He serves as the

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Mike North

Raised in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, Mike’s first real job was as a hot dog vendor at Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park in 1969. After a stint in the military and several jobs with the City of Chicago, Mike capitalized on his talent for serving hot food and spicy sports talk when he opened his

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George Schaaf

George Schaaf grew up in the South Englewood neighborhood of Chicago and attended Chicago Christian High School where he played baseball. He started his thirty-five year playing and organizing career at a young age with the Englewood I Church team and the Calvin Church team. Both teams won their respective leagues most of the years

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Bob Sirott

Ask most Chicagoans what they know of Bob Sirott and they are likely to mention his current assignment as anchor of NBC News at 4:30 p.m. with Marion Brooks, or they might mention his years developing WTTW’s -Chicago Tonight into a one hour newsmagazine, or they might talk about his years as a radio and

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Joe Sarna

Like many young people growing up in Chicago, 16″ softball became a passion for him early in life. He started playing organized softball at Cornell Park in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago when he was in the fifth grade at St. Michael School (starting on the sixth grade team). After grade school

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Paul Rowan

Paul Rowan began his twenty-seven plus year softball-organizing career in 1978 when he formed the Dukes to play in a six-team league that he also started. The Dukes and the league stayed together for four years. From 1978 to 1982 he played for and managed a few neighborhood teams before the desire to play more

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Dan Cahill

Picking up where Mike Royko and Don DeBat left off, Dan Cahill penned a weekly 16-inch softball column for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1985 to 1993. Every Monday, the Clincher crowd would turn to his popular “ringers, dingers and broken fingers” column to get the softball scoops. No major daily paper has run a softball

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Joseph Umana

For more than fifty years, Joseph Umana did what most players did not want to do: he organized games and leagues so that softball players could play. His fifty-three year career of softball playing and organizing began in 1950 at Welles Park. Playing in an intermediate league, his team won two park championships and placed

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Irv Porter

Before becoming an umpire and a softball writer, Irv Porter was a softball player for eighteen years, starting his playing days in the 1960s. Indeed, Porter has played in nine World Tournaments. He recently completed his nineteenth year as an umpire, calling games at seven World Tournaments. Irv Porter’s softball writing career began when W.J.

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