High school-era Pete Crow-Armstrong

SOUTH BEND, Ind.—Maybe this isn’t all about baseball.

I’ve devoted some of the summer following the South Bend Cubs, the Midwest League High-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. The future lives in South Bend, the birthplace of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. I’ve followed the team to Midwest League outposts in Beloit, Wi. and Davenport, Ia. Last Friday I saw the Cubs lose 3-1 to the Quad Cities River Bandits before 6,700 fans on a steamy South Bend evening.

I keep a notebook on the passenger side of my car.  I jot down thoughts and observations. Some ideas confront me and I do nothing with them. Other reflections may be serendipitous.  Look there: Al and Sally’s Motel, a beautifully restored motor court near the Indiana Dunes National Park in Michigan City. Just like me, it’s been around since 1955.  I’ll have to check it out before it is washed away.

In other items needing repair, my right knee has been locking up after driving longer than 90 minutes or so. Sometimes I get out of the car and stretch. Other times I can’t get Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song” out of my head, where he sings, “My friends are all gone and my hair is grey/I ache in the places I used to play.” Lenny was 54 years old when that song was released in 1988.

It has been a while since I’ve driven through Michiana. There are lake people and there are river people and I spend more time at the Mississippi River than Lake Michigan. And traffic west is lighter than eastbound traffic. But while rolling through La Porte, Ind. last week I thought about my friend Pat Colander. (1952-2019.) A former writer for the Chicago Reader, she grew up on the South Side of Chicago. She was my editor at Shore magazine in Northwest Indiana. She was open to all ideas. She said what was on her mind. She was funny. The last thing she sent me was a tin bucket of Utz potato chips because they reminded her of the Peerless potato chip factory that closed in 2017 in Gary, Ind.

I miss her.

After the South Bend game, I saw a dive bar called the Linebacker Lounge. It is on a bend in the road at 1631 South Bend Avenue South in South Bend. The Linebacker Lounge was next to a package liquor store and there were several pick-up trucks in the parking lot. This looked to be the crazy ass place I once couldn’t wait to discover. It’s near the University of Notre Dame, but I have never been to a Notre Dame football game. There was a $5 cover to enter the Linebacker Lounge.  There was no band, maybe there was karaoke. I wasn’t going to pay $5 just to have a beer. Times are tough.

The Linebacker Lounge. Jim Lynch was the only Notre Dame linebacker I heard of. He died on July 21 at age 76.

I went to my hotel. It was 10 p.m. It was my corner of the world at that moment in time.

I’m investing in these young Cubs because they are playing for the promise of tomorrow. Don’t we all do that? Slugging outfielder Owen Caissie came to the Cubs from San Diego in the 2020 Yu Darvish trade. The red-headed Canadian is just 20 years old. The other night I saw 6’4”, 230-pound pitcher Porter Hodge make his Midwest League debut  He’s just 21. He pitched 4 2/3 shutout innings.

And then there’s Pete Crow-Armstrong who has become known as PCA.

Just like my knee, ACL.

I remember when the Cubs traded Javy Baez to the Mets for PCA last July.  I was with my Chicago baseball friends Mike and Paul and we were driving to see our State of Sound exhibit at the Abraham Lincoln Museum and Presidential Library in Springfield, Il. I about drove my van off the road. I thought it was a great trade for someone that Cubs ownership was never going to sign. was excited. I had heard about PCA. I was drawn to his colorful backstory.

His father is actor Matthew John Armstrong. Like me, he is a graduate of Naperville Central High School. He was born in 1973, the year I graduated from NCHS. Unlike me, he was two-time football Defensive Player of the Year in the Du Page Valley Conference.  PCA’s mother is actress Ashley Crow, whose credits include 1994’s “Little Big League” where she played the mother of a 12-year-old who becomes the manager of the Minnesota Twins after his grandfather’s will bequeathed the team to him.  PCA was born in Sherman Oaks, Ca. but grew up a Cubs fan because of his father’s Chicago area roots.

Crow-Armstrong’s favorite player was Javy Baez, who woodshedded in 2012 for the Cubs’ Peoria affiliate in the Midwest League. PCA calls Baez “Defensive Jesus” and loves his free jazz style of trying to track down everything in sight. There are no time patterns. I haven’t been as excited about a Cubs prospect since I saw Baez play in Peoria. It’s more fun when life becomes circular instead of linear.

That’s the deal with watching PCA. A 6’0” left-handed hitter, his power is emerging and I saw him pop a home run to right field in South Bend. (It was his 12th home run in a combined season with South  Bend and lower level Myrtle Beach.) He is fast and has 20 stolen bases this season. When I visited Beloit on July 3 the Cubs won their 10th game in a row. Crow-Armstrong outran a ball in left center field to make a sliding major league catch. (It’s on YouTube.) Anything is possible.

I was young again.

Crow-Armstrong has a healthy dose of attitude. He wears his cap bill down just above the eyes. He plays with his heart on his sleeve. He deploys a direct swing. Originally drafted by the New York Mets, he recalls a nicer version of Mets wise guy center fielder Lenny Dykstra. Crow-Armstrong played at Harvard-Westlake, the Los Angeles area high school that produced the White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito and Cardinals pitcher Jack Flaherty. I hope I live long enough to see PCA become one of those old guy Cubs commentators on the Marquee Sports Network.

Modern Woodmen Park, Davenport, Ia. (Via Ballpark Digest, a fine website.)

PCA was out with an injury when I traveled to Davenport in mid-June to see South Bend at the beautiful Modern Woodmen Park along the Mississippi River. After the game, I found the awesome Devon’s Complaint Department in downtown Davenport. I ordered a beer. Sweet soul music floated like clouds across the room. I heard the Impressions and Bill Withers from those mid-1970s. A framed vintage picture of the late Cubs Hall of Famer Ron Santo hung behind the retro-designed bar. There was no beginning to this trip and there is no end.

And I took a long walk along the timeless banks of the Mississippi River.

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