Bob Newhart, the Chicago-born comedian who died Thursday at the age of 94, was remembered for his many accomplishments, from stand-up comedy to starring in two beloved sitcoms.
But I’ll remember him mostly for his love and promotion of the Chicago sports scene on “The Bob Newhart Show,” where he played Dr. Bob Hartley, a psychologist and avid Bears, Cubs, Bulls and Loyola fan.
Newhart also was as nice a person as you could imagine from watching him on TV. When I wrote a column a few years ago dubbing him the “indisputable Godfather of celebrity Chicago sports fans,” Newhart sent a handwritten letter to the Chicago Tribune, thanking me for the “new title.”
“I will wear it proudly, until of course it is eclipsed by someone else,” he wrote.
Newhart also addressed an episode I referenced about the time Dr. Hartley treated fictional Cubs catcher Moose Washburn, who was seeking professional help to deal with anxiety over hitting .183. It ends with Bob and his wife, Emily, in bed watching a Cubs-Reds game.
Bob tries to show empathy for Moose, until the catcher strikes out pinch-hitting to end the game. Bob suddenly shifts into typical Cubs fan mode, shouting at the TV that Moose is a bum.
In the letter, Newhart explained that the show’s New York-based writers had no clue the team only played day baseball at Wrigley Field back then.
“An interesting sidebar to the Moose Washburn story is during the writing of it, the writers — largely NYCers— described how Emily and I would be watching a night game of the Cubs in which Moose is catching,” Newhart wrote. “I had to explain to them at the time that the Cubs didn’t have lights, so Chicago Cub fans couldn’t be booing Moose.
“So they suggested a night game at Cincinnati. I had to explain that the Cincinnati fans wouldn’t be booing Moose’s .128 batting average. Such is the crisis of a ‘Godfather.’”
Newhart remained a Cubs fan through thick and thin, and when they won it all in 2016, he posted on Twitter: “The billy goat is dead!! As I’ve said, from the beginning, I’m getting too old for this!”
The billy goat is dead!! As I've said, from the beginning, I'm getting too old for this! #GoCubsGo #FlytheW pic.twitter.com/iCOL6A3s1i
— Bob Newhart (@BobNewhart) November 3, 2016
As Newhart told the Tribune’s Steve Johnson in 2016, being a Cubs fan helped form his outlook on life.
“In my standup, I always said that I’m a Cub fan and it kind of prepared you for life,” he said. “You know, you’re ahead now, but you’re going to screw it up somehow. You don’t know what it’s going to be, but you know you’re bound to screw it up.”
Jim Leyland takes a bow
Jim Leyland’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame Sunday is a case study in perseverance. Leyland never made it above the Double-A level as a player in seven minor-league seasons, and was resigned to being a minor-league manager for all of his career before he joined Tony La Russa’s White Sox staff in 1982 as the third base coach.
Leyland would go on to manage the Pittsburgh Pirates from rebuild to annual pennant contenders, won a World Series title with the Florida Marlins in 1997 before a massive sell-off, left a Colorado Rockies job in 1999 after complaining of “burnout,” and returned to manage another the Detroit Tigers’ successful rebuild, where he took them to the 2006 World Series.
The old-school, chain-smoking, throwback manager could be gruff at times with his players, but was loved even by the ones he sparred with, including a young Barry Bonds.
“He’ll fire a comment to kind of yell at you and keep you motivated, and then fire right back with a joke,” former Tigers center fielder Curtis Granderson once said. “He’s able to go from one extreme to the other in a matter of seconds.”
Leyland said last December at the MLB winter meetings that having six siblings factored into his success as a manager because it taught him how to deal with a clubhouse full of diverse players.
“This is going to sound a little corny, but I actually think coming from a big family helped my managerial career,” he said. “Because all my siblings, all my brothers and sisters, had little different personalities, and you had to learn how to understand each one of them and how to take each one of them. I think it was beneficial when I handled players that had different personalities, different styles.”
Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said last week he planned to be in Cooperstown, N.Y., for Leyland’s induction.
“We traded jokes all the time,” Reinsdorf told reporters last December. “He’s a great audience for a joke and can tell a joke, too, and when he tells a joke he usually laughs before he gets to the punchline. He’s just loose. He’s not full of himself, has a great sense of humor, a great understanding of the game.”
Reinsdorf recalled trying to convince Leyland to come out of retirement with the Sox after he left the game with “burnout.”
“I did try to bring Jim back,” he said. “We had a reunion of the ’83 team in 2003. And at that dinner, I asked him about coming back. He said, which I think he really believed at the time, was that he was never going to come back. Then a couple years later he came back (with Detroit) in our division. So I called him, with a few expletives, and he came back and he did great.”
La Russa’s Sox staff in the early 1980s, with Leyland, pitching coach Dave Duncan and hitting coach Charlie Lau, could arguably be the greatest in baseball history. Reinsdorf can have a laugh with the boys in Cooperstown over having hired a general manager who, in a two-week span in 1986, fired a future Hall of Fame manager (La Russa), a legendary pitching coach (Duncan) and a young vice president of baseball operations (Dave Dombrowski), who will also be inducted in the Hall some day.
That GM, of course, was Hawk Harrelson, who replaced another baseball lifer in the late Roland Hemond.
Talk of the All-Star Game
“Our players recognize the importance of media,” MLB Player Union executive director Tony Clark said Tuesday when speaking at a meeting of the Baseball Writers of America Association.
That’s debatable.
Among the many problems of covering baseball in the post-pandemic era is the lack of access to players, many of whom studiously avoid the clubhouse during the brief period of media availability. That’s why some fan favorites are rarely quoted in stories — including the biggest star of all, Los Angeles Dodgers unicorn Shohei Ohtani.
Commissioner Rob Manfred, at a separate BBWAA meeting, pleaded ignorance when asked why MLB allows Ohtani to avoid talking.
When club-controlled Zoom sessions replaced in-person interviews during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, only a few players had to be available on any given day. Zooms ended in 2022, but players enjoyed the media-free experience of ’20-’21 and planned their pregame routines around the time of the open clubhouse.
When the media surrounded Cubs rookie Pete Crow-Armstrong before a recent game, manager Craig Counsell walked by and wondered aloud what all the commotion was about. In truth, no players in the starting lineup had made themselves available, so Crow-Armstrong, who was out nursing a thumb injury, became one of the day’s storylines.
The union maintains there would be future conversations about players’ media responsibilities, but I wouldn’t bet on things changing any time soon.
