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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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. …
Watch any softball game and you’ll see fans marveling at the base clearing homerun, the split second calls at first base, and the diving grab that stifles a late inning rally. What you won’t see, however, is much attention being played to the organizer, the person who recruited the team, entered the tournaments, and made …
