AND NOW…

Under new manager Dusty Baker, the Cubs were supposed to make 2003 a new beginning. But it was only a solitary glimmer in the darkness. The team fell apart in the last week of the 2004 season, players began sniping—unbelievably—at Caray and Stone in the television booth.

The whole brouhaha started when a few Cubs began criticizing the announcers for being too quick to credit players on other teams with good performances. It was, of course, a ridiculous canard; objectivity used to be regarded as a good thing in a broadcaster. The Cubs should have looked in their mirrors instead.

Following the finish of the campaign, both announcers were history, as the organization caved in to pressure from whiny part-time players and a too-sensitive manager. The parting with Chip Caray is said to be irreparable.

It is also possible that Comcast Sports Net was part of the decision; the network outbid Fox for the rights to carry Cubs cable telecasts in 2005, and might have wanted to save money by jettisoning the two incumbents.

Comcast and the Cubs hired another former Milwaukee Brewers mikeman, Len Kasper, to take over on TV for 2005. Bob Brenly, Cubs radio color man in 1990 and more recently a World Series winning-manager with Arizona in 2001, joined Kasper for all telecasts. After a bumpy first year, in which Brenly received criticism for treating a struggling team with kid gloves, the duo improved in 2006—just as the team fell into the cellar for the first time since 2000.

The future on the air for the Cubs is suspect. Santo can’t go on forever, and at press time it is unclear whether the TV team will be a long-term proposition. In the past two years, several long-term radio rightsholders, such as KDKA for the Pirates, KMOX for the Cardinals, and WCCO for the Twins, have lost the bidding to keep their teams; the availability of broadcasts on the Internet has made paying rights fees prohibitively expensive for some stations.

WGN and the Cubs have been tied together since the 1920s, growing up together through the radio age and the TV age. The growth of cable and the Internet have put strains on the relationship, but it is almost impossible to think of the Cubs without also thinking of WGN.