Ghostown

By: Chicago Sports Review

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It’s 3 o’clock.

Deadlines are looming. Producers are lurking. And Mark Giangreco has nothing.

“That’s the real test,” he says. “It’s coming in here and realizing, ‘Man, I’ve got three and a half minutes to fill and a couple hours to do it and I got a whole lotta’ nothing right now.’”

While he’s not literally alone, it’s easy to see the affable sports director at ABC 7 strolling idly into the boarded up ghost town of Chicago sports, sagebrush rolling by, the audible whistle from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” signaling a showdown.

But there’s nobody to shoot-at least with a camera.

“I remember when I first came to Chicago in ‘83,” says Giangreco. “Everybody told me ‘It’s a great sports town but the teams are lousy.’ Then the Sox win the division in ‘83, the Cubs do it in ‘84, and the Bears clean up in ‘85, and then you had the rise of the Bulls. I’m thinking ‘This ain’t that bad.’”

Now it is. Real bad.

How bad? The Bears are a dispiriting 3-5 and the romantic luster of new coach Lovie Smith’s arrival now lingers like the upside down dead roses you wish your girlfriend would just toss. The sweet scent of young love(ie) is already stale. Prior to their Sunday win over San Francisco, ESPN ranked the Monsters-of-Everyday-but-Sunday dead last in their power rankings.

How bad? The Bulls enter the season as an outright favorite to repeat. Unfortunately, that repetition prediction implies that another 20-win campaign may be in store. The Bulls “repeats” have now become like Hootie and the Blowfish tunes. All vaguely similar. All pretty unsatisfying.

How bad? The Blackhawks really are boarded up. Though some may find this appealing-an amputation in lieu of a lingering infection-the stagnant negotiations between the NHL Players Association and the league owners have had about the same value as an “Ashlee Simpson Live” compilation. Words are coming out of their mouths, but nothing worth listening to.

As for the college sports scene, aside from the occasional surprise from Evanston, the same largely anonymous scene that has pervaded for years continues.

Dead Air?

If reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs, as Lily Tomlin said, perhaps the airwaves are an elixir for the analytical, and often over-critical fan.

Posing opposite Giangreco’s 3.5 minutes of highlights, summaries, and sound bites are the people on AM sports radio. Four consecutive hours of discussing the Chicago sports scene, beverages not included? Is it possible? In this voidosphere, talk radio should seem like an uphill marathon, hold the water.

Len Weiner would like to invite you to his nightmare (though he’d never call it that). Hop in. The water is warm.

Weiner has been the program director at ESPN 1000 WMVP for a year and a half. He feels the pain, and manages to put on an un-medicated happy face and also impart as much to the voices he helps direct.

“What we try to do is just stay on hot topics. I mean, we’re the 3rd biggest market in the country, if we can’t find something to talk about, we need to look deeper here.”

Weiner also points out how so many stories relate back to Chicago, pointing to Bob Ryan’s column in the Boston Globe the day after the Red Sox broke their own curse and won the World Series over St. Louis. Ryan had ended his column with “Go Cubbies.”

“Actually, Cubs fans weren’t as happy for Boston as I thought they would have been,” said Weiner. “Perhaps that just made them feel worse….Hey, people forget we also have the White Sox here who haven’t won since 1917.

“We try to find what’s bugging people. We also try to be creative every day, and though I mean that modestly, we do try to tap into new things.”

Last year, CBS 2 TV sports anchor Mark Malone left the national scene and a ten year stay with ESPN to join the local. His expertise and perspective are aided by the ten-plus years he spent as a quarterback in the NFL. But how do you go from the everyday buffet of the national sports scene to the bread and water spread of late fall in Chicago?

“It’s two different genre’s and I think with the way things are right now here, yeah, maybe you do hit some more peripheral story-lines. Would it be more fun to be covering the Cubs in the World Series? Yeah. But there are other fans out there, and fans of other teams, and again, it certainly can require you to be more creative.”

Fanning the Fire?

Chicago sports fans are the epitome of the abused, latchkey supporters. They’ve been arriving in stadiums for years to find nobody home. They know their history, but mostly because they are constantly eating leftovers.

“This is one of those towns where it can be more fun to cover a loser,” says Giangreco, sounding like a child who’s come to enjoy picking scabs. Does he overlook how they got there?

“It’s a different perspective. I mean, you really can cover a loser in earnest and do it well when the fans still care. In this town, they do”

Unfortunately, Chicago fans are capable of the kind of cynicism and self-deprecation that could make Lou Holtz sounds like Muhammad Ali. Combined with multiple 24-hour TV, radio, web and print options, the match and lighter fluid for a virtual barbeque of local sports teams is set. With these records, there’s plenty of meat to scorch.

“I’m just true to myself when it comes to that,” says Giangreco. “I’m a pretty jaded, cynical and sarcastic person anyway so I try to have fun with it but also avoid certain things and step back for some perspective….I guess you try to do the stories people are interested in, but we also need to realize we’re as out of control as any of the players are these days, and there needs to be some accountability.”

Malone should know. As an NFL player he felt the adulation of the press, but also the harsh brunt of unfair criticism.

“Our job is not to feed the fire,” he says. “It’s not what we aim to do. We just have to be fair and realize that our job is both to be entertaining and to have fun with this and not to work to sway opinion. Just get the information out.”

Ah, but talk radio is a different animal. Imagine a creature equal parts instigator, predator, and scavenger, and you can capture the persona. Probably doesn’t smell too sweet either. The power of a jockey gone sour on a local team or coach is well-know in major cities. Names like “Mad Dog” “The Freak” and Chicago’s recent “Wise Guys” sound about as friendly as a pissed off mob boss and his to-the-grave entourage.

“You know as far as the cynicism goes, it gets old, and guys here pretty much feel the same way,” says Weiner, who cleans the coat of a chorus that many liken to sports hyenas. “The struggle of the teams doesn’t necessarily cause us to go negative.”

Diversify the Portfolio

Anne Maxfield is already an anomaly in sports radio.

A woman in an obscenely male-dominated field, she hits the microphone every weekday with the outspoken Mike North and Fred Heubner on The Score 670. Their solution to the sorry state of Chicago sports? Get outside. The anomaly extends to their show.

“Our focus just isn’t always on sports,” says Maxfield, previously of WGN. “We try to mix in plenty of entertainment, politics, and social issues. I guess with the sports here in town we try to laugh about it.”

Which doesn’t mean there’s no need to bash.

“We just take the calls and mostly let the fans blow off steam, which lately has always been on Monday after the Bears game.

“It’s good to get it out there and get it out of their system I guess. You sort of exhaust the subject after a while and that’s when we try to get into everything else.”

Giangreco agrees.

“The struggles of the bigger teams on the Chicago scene can actually be a good thing. It does give us a chance to cover some of the other teams-the Fire, the Rush, the Wolves-teams who can feel slighted when it comes to coverage.”

Perhaps this is a remedy for us all.

But Weiner still concludes, “Whatever we do, we always try to tie it back in and bring it back to Chicago.”

Ugh.

When the horrors become too un-Bearable, and the doomsters have a Bulls-eye on the city, perhaps it’s simply best to look the other way.

Probably a short-lived experiment.

Hope endures. So does the suffering.

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