Stonewalled

Long time readers (yeah, all four of you) know that I'd be the first guy to pull out a fiddle and dance a drunken jig if Wrigley Field burned to the ground, but news of veteran Cubs broadcaster Steve Stone's resignation at the end of October has still got me down. Steve Stone wasn't half bad as a player -- check out his amazing 25-7 season in 1980 for further reference. Note, as well, that it was enhanced by the four-man rotation Baltimore had in place during the season, but Stone was like the 70's equivalent of Woody Williams in his day.

I'm way too young to remember Stone as a player, though I can remember hearing the first game he called really well. It was in May 2004, before the players up and quit during the strike-shortened season. For my first trip to Wrigley, I tagged along with a guy who lived on the same floor of my dorm who just happened to be...Steve Stone's cousin. We sat underneath the broadcasting booth, within Budweiser-spilling distance of Harry Caray and Stone came out and greeted us during the 7th inning stretch. Quite an experience. The only other ballplayers I've ever that close were the 1995 Pirates (entire team) and this guy (also a relative of a friend), neither of which are anything to tell the future kids about.

I'm convinced that Steve Stone is one of the great unheralded geniuses of sports broadcasting and that time will unveil his 27-year run with the Cubs (with and without Caray) as deserving of Hall of fame consideration. Really, I apologize for the hyperbole -- the wounds are still raw -- but Stone got a raw deal. Apparently, Dusty Baker took issue with some of Stone's critical comments during a late-September game and that this year's team felt Stone wasn't really on their side.

The situation with the Cubs -- a team controlled by a monolithic media company, the parent organization of The Chicago Tribune -- is pretty complicated as it stands. The Chicago Sun-Times, despite its award-winning sports section, is engaged in a giant pissing contest with its competitor, and can't really be trusted to tell the truth about the Cubs. Stone was the guy I trusted to tell it to me straight -- he handled an ungainly, larger-than-life presence like Caray with ease and his commentaries were a perfect mix of erudition and regular-guy charm, unlike that obsequious boot-licker Chip Caray.

It's not a broadcaster's job to be a team booster when the team sucks. I had the opportunity to listen to all-time great Ernie Harwell call a late-summer Tigers game in his final season during an otherwise feverishly dull trip from Chicago to Pittsburgh. And it was great, no knocks on Harwell, but he was so good at masking his frustration with decades of sucky teams. The Cubs' freak pennant run in 2002 aside, Stone had the burden of witnessing the mishaps of a series of serially-underachieving teams. You have to bow to the party line to keep a job, though, and Stone ultimately realized this and drew his line in the sand. Stone's letter of resignation can be viewed in full here. The Trib didn't even have the guts to print it.

In case you're wondering, Chip Caray already left to take a job with the Braves and the booth remains open for next season and beyond. When asked if he'd be interested in assuming the mantle, Bob Costas politely demurred and said that he wouldn't be up to the challenge of -- get this -- "the greatest job in baseball." That, my friends, is the biggest lie in all of professional sports -- rivaled only by the idea that next year, any year, will hold more promise for the Cubs.