Jimmy Buffett was a best-selling author, songwriter, businessman, airplane pilot, sailor, surfer, father, husband, environmentalist, tequila drinker, dog lover, and more. Yes, he lived a huge life.
Buffett died on Sept. 1 from cancer. He was 76 years old.
The thread of all his magical pursuits is how he paid attention to detail.
Jimmy Buffett listened for every heartbeat.
He found a twinkle in the eyes of everyone he met.
I have dozens of Buffett stories. Twice I brought Richard Harding and his daughter Catherine to Buffett shows in the Chicago area. Richard Harding was the grizzled owner of the Quiet Knight music room south of [...]
Scorecards from the author’s basement.
The promise of Cubs opening day never gets old.
Time is a stiff wind, but when baseball’s opening day rolls in, I am young again. There is hope in the air. On April 1973 I attended my first Cubs season opener at Wrigley Field. I have not missed one since.
On March 30 I will attend my 50th consecutive home opener. I’ve made it through snow, rain, sun, lockouts, marriage, divorce, illness, a thousand woo-woos, and a pandemic. And I have a scorecard from every game. That’s the longest streak for anything I’ve done anything in life except for writing. And [...]
Ted Butterman, 1935-2022 (center)
The Chicago Cubs paid regal tribute to the passing of Queen Elizabeth II with a moment of silence before Friday’s game against the San Francisco Giants.
But they missed on Wrigley Field’s King of Swing.
Slugger Dave Kingman? Nope. Third baseman Patrick Wisdom? They’re still here.
Wrigley Field bandleader Ted Butterman died Aug. 31 in a care facility in Buffalo Grove, Il. The Dixieland jazz maestro was 87 years old. He was in hospice for one day. A lifelong musician, Mr. Butterman played to his biggest audiences between 1982 and 2017 at Wrigley [...]
I have many lovely books about Chicago baseball in my library.
One of my top ten favorites is “You Should Have Seen The Ones I Turned Down (Tales from a Life Spent in Hotels and Locker Rooms with everyone from Jerry Vale to Leo Durocher),” a 2008 autobiography by former Chicago Cubs traveling secretary Blake Cullen. I found the 156-page paperback in 2012 in the corner of Prince Books in downtown Norfolk, Va.
I couldn’t turn down a book with that title.
I learned that Cullen was born in Chicago and that his father George Thomas Cullen was hotel manager at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. When his father moved [...]
