The Gad About Town

Chicago’s Cult of Harry: Harry Caray at 100

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Mark Aldrich

When I moved to the Midwest in the summer of 2000, I learned that Phil Rizzuto was not the baseball announcer who had coined the phrase, “Holy cow!” I also learned that there was a controversy about this, and that, as a Yankee fan and native New Yorker—and worse, someone unaware of a controversy—I was on the wrong side of said dispute. Born wrong.

No, I was informed, the recently departed Harry Caray was the first to use the phrase on-air and was the announcer with whom it should be associated. Not the beloved Yankees announcer. For Cubs fans, a long-simmering resentment against all things New York became easy to openly express after a “Seinfeld” episode featuring a Phil Rizzuto keychain that exclaimed “Holy cow!” when its head was squeezed unfairly cemented in popular culture the notion that the saying was Rizzuto’s.

Upon learning that I was from New York and a sports fan, one new friend—in our very first conversation—brought up the issue. “You know who used to say ‘Holy cow,’ right?” As an astute observer of humankind and its many denizens, I picked up that there was only one answer and if I said “The ‘Scooter'” I would be inciting conversational violence. But I was not certain what the correct answer was. From my lofty, ivory tower, New York post, I was oh-so dimly aware that Harry Caray, the voice of several Midwest baseball teams over several decades, who had passed away just two seasons before, had been in a feud with my beloved Yankees announcer. Or that Cubs fans were in a feud. I also “knew” that it was possible that both used a really common euphemistic exclamation, Caray in the broadcast booth and Rizzuto on the field and later in the booth.

When I am confronted with a statement that is either false, uninformed, or ill-informed, but I do not see the value in debating the merits of facts, I will respond to such statements with a nod and say something like, “That is an idea.” Period. No emphasis on any syllable. Or even more aggressively passive-aggressively, “That is a sentence.” As if I am attempting an escape from a hostage-taking situation. I shared my theory about how both iconic baseball figures may have come up with the expression independently, since it is a common euphemistic exclamation, with my new Midwestern friend. He replied with a nod and said, with no emphasis on any syllable, “That is an idea.”

Harry Christopher Carabina was born in St. Louis, Missouri, 100 years ago today, March 1, 1914. For over fifty years he was a mostly regional, sometimes national, baseball and college football announcer. At some point in his career, he realized that as an announcer, he was not only the eyes of the fan in the broadcast booth, he was the fans’ voice, too. He wasn’t their representative, he was one of them, one lucky enough to be paid to watch a game he loved to watch. Thus, even though he had been an official broadcaster for teams that Cubs fans naturally detest—the White Sox and the Cardinals—when he became the voice of the Cubs in 1981, he was embraced as if he had always secretly been a Cubs fan. WGN, the station that broadcast the Cubs, was also one of the first “superstations,” which made him a nationally famous quirky regional personality. (Upstate New York, where I am from, did not have WGN, so Harry Caray was as much a rumor to me as Phil Rizzuto, heard on the non-national non-superstation WPIX, was to my Iowa friend.)

By the late 1990s, Will Ferrell started performing his Harry Caray impression on “Saturday Night Live,” and many other performers followed suit, but really, they are performing an impression of Will Ferrell’s Harry Caray impression. From my lofty ivory tower New York perch, I only knew Ferrell was poking fun at an elderly and much-loved baseball broadcaster, one much like my own beloved ‘Scooter’ Rizzuto. I did not understand why the impression continued after Caray’s death in 1998, but again, I was living in New York.

Former Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster is noted for his pretty funny impression of Will Ferrell’s Harry Caray:

Because it is almost the same distance to every major metropolis with a major league sports team, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where I lived, is one of the luckiest cities in the country for a sports fan. “Local” television broadcasts include the Cubs, the White Sox, the Cardinals; and the Bears, the Vikings, the Rams. I became a Cubs fan in part, I believe, because of all the day games that they play and that I could listen to while at my job writing instruction manuals. In August 2001, my “That is a sentence” friend and I drove to Chicago for a memorable day: a Friday afternoon ~~loss~~ game against the rival St. Louis Cardinals and dinner at Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse, a day that made me feel like I was finally a Midwesterner. The meal was terrific, and the Harry Caray name is now more associated with the seven establishments bearing his name and caricature (see the photo at the top of this post) than with the memorable broadcaster himself.

Which is too bad. Harry Carabina, born in desperate poverty in St. Louis, authored one of the unique success stories in baseball, in broadcasting, in America, when he invented Harry Caray. The success of those restaurants some sixteen years after his death, the fact that comedians still get gentle laughs at his memory, his long career, all stem from one man’s brilliant and rare talent at becoming beloved.

A last word from Harry Caray himself, from the last day of the 1991 season:

Rare Disease Day 2014

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Mark Aldrich

One friend has antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, which causes blood clots to form in any blood vessel in the body and leads to transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), or what she cheerfully refers to as “mini-strokes.” (Most people who have recurring TIAs call them mini-strokes; my friend has the happy quality of coming away from hers with anecdotes about the experience that make them almost sound like something I want to have, too.)

One of my closest friends has fibromyalgia, a disease of chronic pain with a “here today, gone tomorrow, here again and worse” pattern-less pattern of symptom presentation that sometimes renders her almost breathless with the pain. Everyone experiences physical pain, but a full-body stabbing pain with no traceable cause, and thus not many ways to treat it?

Other friends have multiple sclerosis, one whose symptoms are affecting his balance and control of his legs, and one whose hands are malfunctioning. One other friend has a form of epilepsy that is triggered by sleep deprivation yet also causes insomnia, which is one of the most vicious of vicious cycles I can imagine.

I have spinal muscular atrophy, type 4, a progressive, degenerative neuromuscular disorder. I have difficulty walking, because I am losing muscular control of my legs and my balance is affected because my legs from the knees down do not function.

Each of these conditions is a rare disease or a special form of a disease that makes it rare. Sadly, my personal, anecdotal experience with rare diseases is that they are not so rare, but each disease I mentioned above affects fewer than 200,000 Americans apiece, making each one a “rare disease.” However, there are almost 7000 officially recognized rare diseases in total, so rare diseases affect some 30 million Americans, or almost one in 10 people. Eighty percent of rare diseases are genetic in origin and fifty percent affect young children.

February 28, today, is International Rare Disease Day. Rare Disease Day was first established in 2008 by EURODIS, the European Rare Disease Organization. In 2009, the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) in the United States joined the effort to educate the public, advocate for better care, and shape policies to improve access to health care. This year’s theme is “Join Together for Better Care.”

Even though some 30 million Americans have a rare disease, and many millions more have rare diseases around the planet, each disease affects relatively few people, so rare diseases are also known as “orphan diseases.” The medical and pharmaceutical industries do not have a stellar history with treating rare diseases; drugs for rare diseases are called “orphan drugs,” because they do not address a family of disorders. In the video below, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, son of Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer, addresses this issue. His mother died in 1993 from a rare form of cancer, Pseudomyxoma adenocarcinoma, that had not been researched in decades. A diagnosis was difficult to come by and treatments were limited to decades-old knowledge.

Those who care for and live with people with rare diseases are also affected by the disease and the sometimes grueling path to diagnosis. My family, my friends, and my girlfriend have walked with me every step of my path and keep me upbeat, encouraged, and sane. This day, honoring care for those with rare diseases, honors them, too. I love them.

The Mag. Glass Pelican & You

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Mark Aldrich

The Magnificent Glass Pelican (MGP) is a live half-hour radio comedy show that my friends and I have written, produced, and acted in for over two decades. Lately, it has been an improvised half-hour, produced by us and scripted live on-air.

It is broadcast from a college FM radio station during the school year, and even though none of us has had any connection with the school as an educational institution for many many years, no one seems to have noticed our graying hair and lack of school books, so the station keeps inviting us back. Or we bribed them when we could not help ourselves. This current season is our twenty-second.

That’s a lot of comedy.

Some of the members, “Pelicans” we call ourselves, have had long careers in the creative arts, some have gone on to careers in technical writing. Myself, I am retired. Among our influences are the usual suspects: Monty Python, Firesign Theater, Del Close. The late Matt Coleman, a beloved friend and eternally a Pelican, once declared to a newspaper interviewer that we “separate the wheat from the chaff and keep the chaff!”

Each Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. (tonight), the MGP half-hour is broadcast on 88.7 FM WFNP (“The Edge”) in the Rosendale-New Paltz, New York, area or is streaming live here at this link. This is at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, and the broadcasts are not archived, so if you can check us out live tonight, thank you.

Here are two samples of our work, via my friend John’s SoundCloud stream; he is a founder of the Magnificent Glass Pelican and of the great rock/pop group, the Sweet Clementines. The first skit, “My Mother,” was written for us by our friend Brian Scolaro, who once upon a time shared a studio with us. I play the jury foreman. “We find the defendant guilty.”