CHANGE OF THE GUARD

Through the thirties through the eighties, Cubs viewers and listeners had been well served by unpolished, raw, but thrilling broadcasters like Lloyd, Boudreau, Pat Flanagan, Wilson, Brickhouse, Pettit, and Caray.

But the ingress of “professional types,” which began with Hamilton in 1982 and has continued through the intervening years, has changed the quality of Chicago baseball broadcasts. Some of these “pro” types have lent a high quality to the game, but a far greater number have simply been car wrecks.

Truly, Caray, Brickhouse, and Lloyd were from a different age: unfashionable, stewards of their own special language, and occasionally ridiculous in their homerism, but Chicago fans loved them that way. Stone proved a perfect foil to Caray’s nearly out-of-control style without falling into the pattern too often favored by glossy, tiresome “professional voices.”

Lloyd faded out of the picture, taking over in 1985 as developer of the Cubs’ radio network. Boudreau hung around through 1987. But they weren’t easy to replace; experiments with two color men, bumbling former Manager and GM Jim Frey in 1987 and the frankly horrific Davey Nelson in 1988–89, ended ignominiously. (Nelson does deserve mention, if for no other reason, as the team’s first ever African American broadcaster.)

In 1990, to help augment the aging Caray (who had missed several weeks in 1986 due to a stroke), the Cubs hired Thom Brennaman, son of Cincinnati broadcaster Marty Brennaman, as the #1 radio guy. The Tribune Company believed that Brennaman was on his way to a great career, and brought him in even though he had just two years of part-time TV coverage to his credit.

While Brennaman the Younger indeed has gone on to greater heights, in Arizona and with FOX on national television, he certainly ranks far from the top on the Cubs broadcaster list; in Chicago, his boisterous voice and forced enthusiasm belied a serious lack of insight.

In addition, former players Bob Brenly and Ron Santo—neither of whom had any broadcasting experience—came aboard in 1990 as color men. While Brenly lasted just one year before going back on the field, Santo carved himself out a new career as one of city’s most beloved radio personalities.

Santo, more than any other among his generation of Wrigley Field baseball heroes, bleeds Cubbie blue. Back in the 60s and 70s, Ernie Banks was “Mr. Cub.” But with Banks’ exile from the organization in the early 1980s, Santo has taken over in the last fifteen years or so as the new face of Cubbies past. A hero to many through his work for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (he has lost both his legs to the disease), Santo is unpolished, frank, emotional, and completely entertaining. He is more loved now as a broadcaster even than he was as a player.

Santo didn’t really come alive in the booth, however, until former Minnesota Twins and Milwaukee Brewers second-banana Pat Hughes came aboard as the Cubs’ radio voice in 1996.

Hughes, heretofore Bob Uecker’s straight man in the County Stadium booth, immediately took to the #1 job in Chicago. Showing an excellent sense of humor of his own, along with a smooth delivery and a terrific knowledge of the game, Hughes in his 11 years in Chicago has gotten more out of Santo than anyone else. His booming voice ranks among the true pleasures of being a Cubs fan.

Santo is not really capable of play-by-play duty, as fans learned during some terrifying trial runs in the mid-1990s. Therefore, Hughes was forced for years to man the mike for all nine innings of 162 games a year before WGN brought a third man, Andy Masur, into the booth, starting in 2003, to handle a paltry half-inning of action. Masur shows promise, though it’s difficult to grow into a job doing four minutes of play by play per game.

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