Len & Bob

I’m eventually writing about Len Kasper and Bob Brenley, but in order to understand anything about Cubs TV broadcasters you have to delve into history a little bit. Inevitably, we compare these two to the broadcasters who preceded them, and I always enjoyed Steve Stone. A lot of color guys can take you into the strategy of a game, but nobody was better than Stone at going a level closer to break down the strategy of a single at-bat. His partner, Chip Caray, was decent. He suffered -- as we all did -- during the Joe Carter and Dave Otto seasons, and with Stone back I thought Chip was getting better, (although a little too wholesome and corny at times for my taste).

Before Chip was Harry Caray, of course, and there will never be another one like Harry. There’s not much else to say. Harry said things that no one else could, and remained untouchable.

Really, though, I’ve come to learn that the juggernaut of Cubs Nation owes the most to Jack Brickhouse. Cubs Nation came to exist largely around WGN TV, and if Arne Harris was the architect, Brickhouse was the designer. Brickhouse brought panache to Harris’s vision. Everyone since has broadcast in his shadow.

Scott Simon, the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, was fortunate enough to call him Uncle Jack, as Brickhouse was close to both Simon’s father Ernie and his stepfather Ralph. Much of Simon’s writing about becoming a Cubs fan in his book Home and Away owes to his closeness with Brickhouse when he was very young. It’s in the epilogue, though, where he gives us his most poignant Brickhouse memory:

             I had not seen Jack Brickhouse for several months. He had been recovering at home from surgery to remove a brain tumor. But he told me over the telephone a couple of nights before that it was important for him to “get up off my ass to say good-bye to Ralph.” A man passed a microphone around the crowd for recollections; Uncle Jack was not about to let it pass. He held a hand on the shoulder of his wife, Pat, to steady himself as he stood. “You know,” he managed to boom in a hale, Wrigley Field inflection, “we have a saying in baseball. ‘Class will tell.’ Well, it sure did. Baseball might have lost a mighty good player when Ralph left. But history got a real classy guy, too.” Over the past year, I had learned a little about the exceptional effort it takes to get up off your ass when your body fights back for every inch. I looked over at Uncle Jack as he sat back down, heavily, and caught his eye. “Hey, Uncle Jack,” I mouthed the words. “Hey-hey.”

             He chortled. Just a couple of years before, I had told Jack what a woman had told me: that men of my age who grew up in Chicago often exclaimed the words of his home run call in the highest moments of romantic intensity. He was flattered to know that his personal motto would thus be enshrined for future generations. It became a covert little joke between us; something to say in front of his wife and my mother, just between us boys. “Hey, kid,” Jack would say. “You keep saying Hey-hey now.”

Cubs’ fans have a closer relationship with our announcers than most, I think, largely because this is the way it was when we learned to watch a game on TV. We expect personality; we want the guys in the booth to talk like they’re talking to us. We want them to talk like us. We feel an attachment, which sort of explains the phenomenon that the woman explained to Scott Simon. Some broadcasters feel detached from the team, as if they’re broadcasting impersonally from a tower. Cubs’ broadcasters don’t feel like that; they feel almost like Cubs sometimes, halfway between the team and the rest of us and close enough to relate to either side.

That’s why it doesn’t surprise me to find later in Simon’s epilogue a scene such as this one from the evening of the playoff game against San Francisco:

              Mark Grace held forth in the locker room just before the game. The incumbent Cub, a sturdy iron rail of a first baseman, amicably gruff and compellingly profane, the team’s favorite teammate. He had been a Cub for eleven years, his entire major league career.

              “Yessir, he said, shaking his chop-top head with determination, “this is the greatest place to play in the world. Tonight, this is the greatest place in the world. Greatest fans in the world. Can you ever beat going to the office here? Look at this. Look at all those folks out there. Listen to this, goddamn, can you believe it? Win or lose. Look at this night. What a great group. What a great, goddamn night. Look as hard as you can, and remember. I just wish,” Gracie added, “that Harry and Jack were here to see this.”

That’s just it: no one would have enjoyed a night like Monday, September 28, 1998, more than Harry Caray or Jack Brickhouse. Cubs’ broadcasters -- more than anything else -- love the team as much as any fan. That’s why we like them so much, and give them so much liberty. That’s why no one thought Harry should retire even when his faculties were slipping, because it was clear that he still loved the team. That’s why we put up with Ron Santo asking Pat Hughes what happened earlier in the inning -- every game -- because it’s more important to us that he sincerely loves the team. Everything else pales. I wasn't around for Brickhouse, but I think a lot of it goes back to him, and it's a fine lineage.

This brings me back around to Len & Bob. Early in the year, I wasn’t so fond of these two. Part of it was that I missed Steve Stone, and part of it was that they were still finding their style. Len was pretty dry that first month, and Bob was awkward at times, repeating himself or offering nothing but silence.

Now, I like these guys. You have to admire the way that Len has put in the time to immerse himself in Cubs history, and he has a remarkable grasp on what sort of things Cubs fans connect with for having been here less than a year. This must have taken a lot of effort, spending a lot of time talking with everyone in the organization he could. Yet, I get the impression that Len really enjoyed all of that work, and that goes a long way in my book.

Bob has gotten steadily better as well. He will still drop an obvious-ism on us from time to time, but as he and Len have developed a cadence, now more often than not he analyzes the game quite well. It’s obvious that Bob loves baseball, and loves being a member of the fraternity of players and managers. Even though he broadcast here for a while earlier in his career, his focus isn’t as Cubs-centric. Yet I wonder if it's unfair to expect this of him since he played for the Giants and managed the Diamondbacks, and is just now restarting with the Cubs.

In the next couple of years, either Bob will get another shot at managing, or he’ll have spent a few more years here, and by then he’ll probably start to betray a deeper loyalty to the Cubs. Given time, that’s inevitable. Either way, while it took a while for him and Len to develop their on-air chemistry, I’d be just fine with Bob coming back next season.

(Although, more than anyone else, I’d love for the Cubs to bring Mark Grace into their booth. I know there’s a bit of bad blood going back to when Grace didn’t get re-signed, at least in part because he and Sammy Sosa didn’t get along. In retrospect, it looks like Grace was right, and so the Cubs management would have to swallow a bit of pride to get him back if it’s even possible. But I wonder if they couldn’t just sweep all that under the rug and try. Guys with charisma like Mark Grace’s don’t come around very often any more. Plus, the Cubs this season could have used a lesson in slumpbusting.)

Going into the season I was skeptical. I wondered how it would work out, bringing in a pair without much history or attachment to the Cubs. Maybe Bob won’t be around for too many seasons or maybe he will, but Len has jumped right in and made himself at home. Plus, I love Len’s wide-ranging knowledge of music and occasional pop-culture references (usually of the sort that would horrify the holy Chip Caray if he could get them). I think Len is a guy I’d want to hang out with off the air as well, and that counts for a lot.

Since I’ll be missing many of the broadcasts in September, I thought I’d mention now how much I’ve enjoyed them this season. An A would be impossible because it depends on significant history with the Cubs, but I’ll give Len a solid A- and Bob a B+. Not bad.