Game 98: Twins at Cubs

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Very good friends Steve Goodman and John Prine. (Photo by Tom Hill/Getty Images) | Getty Images

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Time: 7:05 Central​

Weather: Slight chance of early rain, smoky/muggy, 93°​

Opponent’s SB site: Bleed Cubbie Blue​

TV: Twins TV. Radio: But they said it really loud, they said it on the air​

Tonight’s Cubs starter is Colin Rea, a 35-year-old who’s been around the block a few times, as they say, including two stints with the Fukuoka Hawks of NPB. Fiore throws a low-90s fastball, a slider and changeup, plus several junkball pitches. The slider’s his best one.

When the Twins play at Wrigley, I do a Steve Goodman post. Because I love the guy. And he loved the Cubs. And maybe, sometimes, somebody else discovers Steve Goodman’s music because of these posts. That’s good enough for me.

In the early 70s, singer/songwriter Steve Goodman had gotten an opening gig for Kris Kristofferson’s concerts in Chicago, but Kristofferson hadn’t really paid attention to what Goodman was doing. Until his band convinced him hey, this guy is really good, you should check him out. So Kristofferson did, and was impressed. He told Goodman so. And Goodman said, hey you think I’m good, you REALLY gotta check out my buddy, he’s even better.

(How many friends have you ever had who would do that for you? I haven’t had many. A few.)

The buddy was John Prine, who was performing at a different Chicago club. Even though the club had closed for the night, Prine went ahead and played a few songs for Kristofferson. When he was done, Kristofferson asked him to play them again… and anything else he’d ever written. It ended up being a long night… and led to both Prine and Goodman getting their first record contracts.

Now, if you don’t know who any of those three people are, that’s alright! I didn’t always, either. Yet it’s very possible you know some songs they’ve written. Janis Joplin’s “Me & Bobby McGee,” Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” those are Kristofferson songs. Bonnie Raitt’s “Angel From Montgomery,” that’s Prine. “City of New Orleans,” the one with the chorus “good morning, America, how are ya?”, that’s Goodman. (Johnny Cash said the biggest regret of his career was how he passed on it.)


And the one where David Allen Coe does a verse about “everything that’s ever been in any country song”? That’s “You Never Even Call Me By My Name,” written by Goodman and Prine together. Except it wasn’t published with Prine’s name on it, because he thought it was the stupidest song he’d ever written. So Goodman recorded his own version, and dutifully kept Prine’s name off the label.

When the song became a huge hit for Coe, Goodman asked Prine if he wanted to change his mind about credit, and Prine said nah, it was my dumb decision to take my name off it, you keep the royalties. So Goodman bought him a $12,000 vintage jukebox from the 1940s as a thank-you. (The thing was busted as hell and didn’t work, but Prine loved it anyways, it looked cool.)

Goodman and Prine wrote several more songs together, including “Unwed Fathers” and “Blue Umbrella.” And “Souvenirs,” which they would often perform together. That’s how I learned about Steve Goodman, by the way. I had a friend who was really into John Prine, and he got me hooked. I’m the kind of person who, if you play me a song with the lyrics, “there’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes,” I’m not just gonna love it, I’m gonna put it in the family car’s tape deck when we go Christmas tree shopping. (I did do this, and my mom got so mad she stopped the car and made me walk a mile home.)

So when I heard Prine’s greatest hits album, Great Days, I was like, “‘who’s that guy singing on “Souvenirs”’? I knew who Raitt was, that voice’s unmistakable. But I didn’t know the voice on “Souvenirs.” That’s Goodman.

Goodman was actually friends with a lotta people — Arlo Guthrie, Jimmy Buffet (they both recorded Goodman songs). And Shel Silverstein. Which strikes me as odd, because Goodman was a romantic, one-woman guy, who married his wife at 22 and would be with her until he died. While Shel Silverstein was NOT a one-woman guy. Shel Silverstein was an voraciously perverted weirdo. I mean, just LOOK at the dude.

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Still, Silverstein had a knack for very funny songs. “A Boy Named Sue,” “The Cover of Rolling Stone,” those are Silverstein songs. And Goodman had a knack for very funny songs, like “Lincoln Park Pirates” and “Vegematic.” So that’s probably just a case of game respecting game.

Here’s one that’s not strictly hi-larious, but it’s a great demonstration of how Goodman, by sheer energy, could win over almost any crowd. In fact, Kristofferson saw him charm crowds enough times that he stopped having Goodman as an opening act! Not because he didn’t like him, he did. But because following Steve Goodman was futile. Kristofferson called it “like following Jerry Lee Lewis.”


Goodman (a Chicago native) was a huge Cubs fan. He recorded “When the Cubs Go Marching In” (it’s exactly what it sounds like, “When the Saints” but with the names of Cubs players added — you could do a fun version for any team). And “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request,” here performed by Goodman, looking sickly because he was sickly. Diagnosed with leukemia at 20, he died of it at age 36. (Which adds so much more poignancy to songs like “Souvenirs”… and how anybody with cancer can write the peppy-yet-profound “Between The Lines” is beyond me. Goodman somehow did it.)

“A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” is funny (especially live), yet it’s slyly dour — the chorus goes like this:

Do they still play the blues in Chicago
When baseball season rolls around
When the snow melts away, do the Cubbies still play
In their ivy-covered burial ground?
When I was a boy they were my pride and joy,
But now they only bring fatigue.
To the home of the brave, the land of the free —
And the doormat of the National League.

The song actually ticked the Cubs off for a bit, so they definitely weren’t gonna allow it to be played at the stadium. But a few years later, Goodman would record a much cheerier tune, “Go Cubs Go,” for WGN, and it became popular enough to be played at Wrigley Field after Cubs victories.

Now, “Go Cubs Go” is not Steve Goodman at his finest, it doesn’t have the wit or heart of his great songs. You can tell he dashed it off in a hurry. Still, as far as baseball songs go, it ain’t bad. Less than a third of teams use a song that’s actually about the team itself; the Dodgers use Randy Newman’s noxious “I Love L.A.,” and the Yankees, of course, have Ol’ Blue Eyes singing “The House I Live In.” (No, they don’t play that at Yankee Stadium, but it’s a better Sinatra song than the one they do play.) “Go Cubs Go” is like Toronto’s “OK Blue Jays” — slapdash lyrics and a great chorus everybody loves.

There had actually been some talk over the years of replacing “Go Cubs Go” as the Cubs’ victory song, and in 2015 Bleed Cubbie Blue even submitted an entry to a songwriting contest held by the Chicago Tribune (they didn’t win). And then, in the 2016 World Series, the Cubs found themselves down three games to one, facing elimination at Wrigley Field. They didn’t lose. The TV network kept the broadcast going as 40,000 people sang “Go Cubs Go.” (Well, at least the chorus part that everybody knows.)


That song wasn’t going ANYWHERE.

Heck, there was a popular discussion on BCB this May about “what are the words said at the end of the song” (where you can hear a voice after each chorus saying things like “take charge,” “Kid Natural,” and what sounds like “go Huey Lewis.”) It was determined that Kid Natural referred to Ryne Sandburg, then becoming a All-Star player. As for the rest, it might be nonsense jabbering, or hidden messages telling teenagers to worship the devil. (It’s not that, but 1984 WAS the height of the Satanic Panic, when it was believed by many that rock music was a secret demonic recruiting tool. My dad believed AC/DC stood for “anti Christian / Devil’s chariots.”)

Steve Goodman died on September 20th, 1984, right before the Cubs made the postseason for the first time in 39 years. Like Goodman once said, “September baseball is a motherf—” (you know the rest of the word). The team had even invited him to play the anthem at the first home playoff game, too; Jimmy Buffet did it instead. And, just like the in “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request,” his loved ones scattered some ashes at Wrigley Field. (Of course they had to be sneaky about doing that, it IS technically illegal.) In January, several of Goodman’s friends and admirers performed a tribute show at Chicago’s Arie Theater. It’s where Bonnie Raitt and John Prone first sang “Angel From Montgomery” together, maybe just to let Prine put his feelings out there. You can hear it in his voice, he lost someone he cared about a ton.

Jethro Burns and Mike Smith were there, too. If you don’t know who they are, Smith was a legendary songwriting figure in the Chicago scene, and Jethro Burns a mandolin virtuoso who moved to Chicago in the late 40s and frequently performed with Goodman. Here they are doing Mike Smith’s “The Dutchman.”


I don’t know how many songs about an old guy with Alzheimer’s and his loving wife there are, but I would guess this is probably the best. Unless there’s a great one by Nickelback.

I’ll just leave you with one more little tidbit. In 1983, Goodman released his next-to-last album, Affordable Art — it’s the one with “Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” on it. After that track, there’s a upbeat version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” with Jethro Burns playing a very sprightly mandolin. But, right at the end, Goodman slips in one of his little funny/resigned moments; he sings, “root root root for the home team / If they don’t win… what else is new.“

We’ve all been there.

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