May 2, 2025 • 33 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a fun Friday for you! Ben welcomes FSR Alumni member Mike North for some schmoozing about his career in sports radio. North is the godfather of Chicago sports talk and was recently named the recipient of the 2025 lifetime achievement award from Barrett Sports Media for his work as a trailblazer in the radio world. Settle in as Mike regales you with classic stories from his wild ride on the airwaves of America!
#BenMaller
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Cutbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old Republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio, who will be producing this podcast,
will join me at some point over the weekend, but
we have made it into the first podcast of the
month of May here and as we talked about on
the Overnight Show last night promoting this, I am very
(00:51):
excited because today is not your normal Friday Run of
the Mill podcast where I start out talking about some
dopey holidays and go through the week that was not
a no no no by popular demand. A chance to
catch up with a sports talk radio leg And I'm
not blowing smoke when I say that, especially if you're
(01:12):
from Chicago. But this guy worked at our place. He's
part of the Fox Sports Radio Alumni Association. The Great
Mike North is going to join us now. The reason
we're having Mike on today is a I love him.
He's one of the great characters in radio in my
journey in radio that I've come across. And then also
the fact that he has been honored one of the
(01:34):
great accomplishments in his career. He's the godfather of Chicago
sports radio and did our morning show at Fox Sports
Radio for a number of years with Andy Furman. So
Mike North has been given the Lifetime Achievement Award from
Barrett Sports Media. And this is a big industry website
that tracks the business and keeps up to date with everything.
(01:57):
So next week, a week from today, on May ninth,
there's a gala ceremony in Chicago and a sports radio
legend from Chicago, Mike North, there will receive the Lifetime
Achievement Award. So I thought, what better way to celebrate
this than have the man on? And it's an excuse
(02:19):
to him on. So I saw it, I said, I
got to get this guy on. So I reached out
to him and he now joins us right now. On
the fifth hour we walk him in. He's still working,
by the way, he's got his own show, on the
ESPN station there in Chicago. So we walkme in the
great Mike North. Mike, congratulations, what has it been like
since you found out that you have been given the
(02:41):
honor of a Lifetime Achievement Award for your radio career.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
How do you doing, Ben? That's great by talking to you.
You're a legend. Come on, shocking to be honest with you,
because you know, I won a lot of awards. I
won four Talk Show host Awards in Chicago for local radio.
I won two Emmys, and I won a Cleo Award
even for a Best Commercial. But they were all voted
(03:06):
from out of town. So because what they do is
they don't want the locals voting for the people that
are in Chicago. You like the Chicago radio people voting
for Chicago personalities because then they'll be biased, they'll vote
for their own and stuff like that. I don't know
how Barrett came up with this, How Jason did it,
(03:30):
I don't know, but he said by a landslide. And
I mean, I know a lot of great radio sports
radio people that came out of there. But I think
the difference is that I started the whole thing basically
off a lark, I had read in the sometimes that
Dan Lee, the owner of w x R tier progressive
(03:51):
rock station, was going to start a jazz station. And
I saw that in Robert Feed's column in the Sun Times,
and I said to my wife and we were working
the hot dog stand, our hot dog stand at the time,
we owned a hot dog stand in Chicago, Big One,
and I said, you know what, Dan needs sports station
in this town. Well, she says, well, I don't think
(04:14):
you have much of a say in this. But what
happened was some of the XRT people used to come
in my stand, and I only had met Dan Lee twice.
And Dan Lee, there was like a couple of sports
shows on rock and roll stations, like The Loop and others,
but there was no all sports station, not even the Fan.
The fan had Imus in the morning, so they had
(04:35):
it only for middays in the afternoon. So this long
and behold. A day after the article is in the
paper that they've bought the call letters to w jay
z Z and they're going to go country. Dan Lee
comes walking in and at that time you could only
own two stations. He only owned one. Now you can
own eight stations in a way which takes away a
(04:57):
lot of the bargaining power of many radio people. But
at that time, you know, you could only own two,
so you had a lot of suitors. Well, I didn't
have any suitors. Nobody even knew me. I was a
high school dropout. I owned a hot dog stand and
I had a successful thing. And then he comes walking
in and I asked him. I go, I hear you're
going jazz and he says, uh yeah. I said you
(05:21):
should go off sports, sir, And he goes, really, he
goes why. I said, well, I think it's the next
big thing. And there's only twelve of them in this
country right now, the fan there's one in Denver, there's
la and back then San Diego I think had one.
Boston I think was strong, Philadelphia was strong. I said
(05:42):
you should try it. Well, he buys his hot dog himself.
He goes, I'll think about it. He walks out. I
chase him out. I go think about it, because jazz
won't sell sports is a huge sports jump. He goes
home that weekend and if you remember, Ben, they had
the Tribune and Sun Times. Thick papers were one hundred
and forty four pages. He bought the He looked at
(06:04):
he bought the Bulldog editions of the Sun Times and
Tribune and he looked at the entertainment section and saw
two or three jazz advertisements, advertisements for jazz. Then he
went to the sports section. And back in the day, folks,
thirty forty adds in these sports sections, and I mean
twelve fourteen pages full with the standings and everything and
(06:29):
what the players were hitting. It was so much bigger
back then. He meets on Monday with his music people
and they said, were ready to go. He goes, yeah,
we're going to do all sports. They go, are you crazy?
You're going to listen to that hot dog guy? And
he goes, I'm going to listen to him. And that's
how it all started. And he started to score, and
he as a music guy, Ben, and you know how
(06:50):
it is to find people. He filled day day as
music people. Put together a station that only last would
the last twelve hours for four years until it got
a full time license. And we ruled the airwaves on
a twelve hour station. That's great.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
And those were the days right where there were like
radio people that were making the decisions, right. I mean,
it's not it's the business has changed, obviously, a ton.
I'm younger than you, but there's so many people now
that are not really like radio people that are making
those decisions. Would that be the thing that's got to
be the thing you're most proud of?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Right?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
You went from running a hot dogs stand, which you
were doing very well at, and then he became the
godfather of Chicago sports radio. When you give your speech,
will that be the lead of the speech? Is that
going to be the.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Well to the lead of the speech? Is I was
basically a high school drop out. My own dad called
me a bomb. I'd never amount to anything. I had
a tense relationship with him, but he always put a
rough over my head. He was a decent guy, but
he if and if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't
be here. But he wasn't happy with me. I dropped
(07:56):
out of high school. I ended up going to the Service.
I was going to have to go to Vietnam. I
was drafted because I didn't have any schooling. I had
to go for my draft card. I went. My orders
were canceled. I was supposed to go to Long being
young wherever that was in Vietnam with a bunch of
other goofy nineteen and twenty year old kids, and my
(08:21):
Nixon canceled our orders because they were going through the
Paris Peace talks. So that was a bit of luck.
I come back and I meet my wife and from
there on, she tried to change me for a long time,
and I finally changed. And I would say one day
I was picking paper in a park working for the
Chicago Park District and mark and ballfields, and the next
(08:42):
day I was the biggest thing in radio. It was
culture shock and day when I see twenty year olds
go through it. I ended up making a lot of
money in this business. And when I and I was
thirty nine and I wasn't ready for it, but yeah,
I'm going to it's a Rag's the richest type of
situation for me. I went from nobody. I met a
beautiful lady. She helped guide me, helped fix me up,
(09:06):
and I went to work every day. I've never missed
a day of work in thirty three years. Never missed
at Fox, never missed at ESPN, which I'm working at
now one thousand, never missed at the Score where I
worked for sixteen years. So I love it. It's in my blood.
But I started talking sports on the street corner. And
my uncle, who's ninety years old, told me the other day,
(09:28):
you're getting this because you were built for it. He says,
I remember you talking circles around the older relatives when
you were nine years old. So you were born. I
was born to do it. You were born to do it.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
And I think part of the key is like you're
like a lot of the people in the business. Even
when you were when you were starting out and I
was listening, is you know, young guy, they were kind
of program they were buttoned up.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, you're just like a regular dude.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Which that's at that time especially, I think even now,
but at that time, there weren't a lot of people
that were like you that were doing this.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I give you a big advantage. I did have a
huge advantage. It was different than ninety two. It was
I mean, there was no social media. There was no Twitter,
but there was phones in the cars. We didn't even
have computer yet. Our producer, Jesse Rodgers was my producer.
I had Abby Pulaski. Then I had a guy named
Jesse Rodgers who's now number one baseball guy at ESPN.
(10:21):
For seven years, we got the best guests. But when
we had phone calls. They had to hold up the
sign with the guy's name on it. Joe from Tinley Park,
Bill from Alsip, Illinois, Bob. You know, so there was
no computers. You had to know what you were talking
about without the use of a computer. What do I
see now? I see scripts? I mean I broke it,
(10:43):
broke my heart. I read on Twitter about a month ago. Hey,
me and my three buddies are getting together. We're going
to go to the bar, and we have a script
that we're going to discuss each sport. That's not what
it was designed to do. Sports radio was designed around
the way I wanted it. I was designed about around sports, alcohol, women,
(11:06):
and entertainment. You want to talk about movies, that's fine.
Even the little politics used to sneak in. But you
could talk politics back then. Now you can't. As far
as your other question, you know how great it was
to walk in to a corner office and the boss
was sitting there in the same building, and you didn't
have to call New York. You didn't have to call California.
(11:26):
If you wanted to go to New York and see
the Bulls and Knicks, you didn't have to call California,
New York or some other place to see if you
could go with the White Sox to Boston. We would
ask him. He'd go, yeah, And you know what, he
was a music guy who four years later, Ben sold
the station that he put a seven hundred thousand dollars
(11:50):
investment with along with XRTI, because he already had the
building and stuff for seventy seven million bucks.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And it was a part time station until he went
all time the final year and then Westinghouse came and bought.
As far as who's running radio now, of course you
need a radio guy to run radio. And as far
as people that are running radio, most of them. I
used to I called my boss back in the day.
(12:19):
I said, you're not a sports guy. You're not a
radio guy. You're a bean counter. That's what you are.
And I said, don't try to pretend that you know
more about sports or anything else. Because the original boss left.
And once the original boss left, it's an all new
ball game. It's like getting a new manager. As you know,
because you've been through a few in baseball.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
My favorite Mike Norss story, and there's bunch of them, though,
is your confrontations with Ozzie Gian back in the day,
and I saw I wanted to get your reaction. I'm
sure you've talked about this in your show in Chicago,
but I haven't heard your reaction. So the other day
Ozzie and I guess I'm one of the local he
does a White postgame or something like that. He said
that doing sports radio is harder than managing in the
(13:07):
major leagues. And I agree with him, by the way,
But what was your reaction, because you got you really
got into a dust up, one of the famous sports
radio dustups with us. So when you saw him say that,
what was your reaction?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Right? First of all, I haven't seen as he since
I understand I came down after I had the argument
with him. I was doing a remote from Wrigley Field.
The argument was all about he wasn't going to start
a J. Prazinski. Now, if you're playing like the Braves
or somebody, that's fine. You're playing the White Socks, which
was still a fevered pitch back in two thousand and six.
(13:39):
The Cubs are coming off a World Series, I mean,
the White Socks are coming off a World Series, and
he wanted to start. A guy named Toby Hall so
I'm ranting and Raven, the guy's just coming off the
disabled Listen. He's not a very good catcher and he
can't how's he going to hit? And you're playing the
White Socks on a Friday, it's the first game. Now
I'm across the street in the place at a bar
doing a remote filled with people, and all of a sudden,
(14:00):
he calls up and he goes nuts and he starts swearing,
and me and him went at it, and he wasn't happy,
and I wasn't happy, And to be honest, Ben, I'm
tired of the cut. But this is the fun part.
He's going to be at this thing. He's going to
be at the ward and me and him are going
(14:21):
to be together for the first time in hell twenty
twenty five years, and they're probably going to play that cut.
And I am so tired of it, and I'm sure
he is too, So I might have to retire it,
because you don't want to hear how you were twenty
five years ago in d Vane. He was a great manager.
Me and him at times are the same people, type
(14:42):
A personalities. We've both shot ourselves in the foot a
couple of times, so we have a lot in common.
And that day that he called, it wasn't a manager
in a radio host. It was basically two Chicago neighborhood
guys going at it. And it was admire him for calling,
and I admire him for taking it down. But as
(15:04):
it turned out, Toby Hall had two pants balls that
day and he had just an awful outing and he
was cut down the line. There you go.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
But that's and it's nice that you know, when you
run into him, he did say, you know, this is
what we do. What you've done your whole you know,
life is harder than managing in the major leagues, which
I agree with that people you're talking about doing the
job every day. And I often will say, Mike, like
anybody could probably do what will you do? And what
I do during football season when there's stuff going on.
(15:33):
But the problem is day in day out, like people
don't realize, Like I'm sure there's some days, Mike, you
go in there even though you have the gift for gatt,
you're not really feeling it, but you still have to
do the show. You have to present the show, and
those are the days where I feel like you make
their money. Anybody can go in there when there's a
ton of stuff to talk about yes days when there's
not much and you can create something out of nothing.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
That to me, that's what separates.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
And you've been doing it forever.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
So yeah, thirty three years. But I'll tell you, Ben,
I know what you have to go through working overnights,
and it's not easy. Some of the great overnight guys Chicago,
Whity Schwartz, a lot of overnight guys I listened to
in Chicago. It wasn't easy. Not less. Robstein a great
a great voice and a good friend of mine back
in the day, one of the great overnight guys. So
(16:17):
what you do is not easy. But I'll be the
first to tell you. In ninety two we were the
first of our kind, an all sports station. We never
had a meeting, me and Dan Jiggets or our producers.
We would write down who we want for the next day,
whether it be Tom Glavin because the Braves are in town,
bring on an Assie gee in, or bring on this
(16:38):
guy or that guy. We never had a meeting. Jiggs
Dan would get there about a quarter two. I'd get
there a little bit more earlier. I was already prepared
the night before, so if Dan came on and he said,
welcome to the scores. You know, sports radio ladies and gentlemen.
I'm Dan Jiggets. We're the monsters of the mid midday.
(16:59):
Mike is along with me. Mike, how you doing? Good Dan?
But that cub game last night? Or good Dan? That
Bear game? Boy? I'll tell you, I'll tell you what
I mean. Irlacker just didn't get it done yesterday, and
he was ready and I was ready. He led the show.
I loved being a second banana because that's where you're
you don't have to worry. And I did read commercials.
(17:20):
You do it all your solo a lot. That's tough.
I did solo at Fox two on weekends, brutal, but
going off of somebody, okay, is the best because we
turned into and he was a He was a Harvard
educated black man and I was a high school dropout
(17:41):
white man. And do you want to know how many
people thought it was reversed just because of the color
of our skin until people found out. So it was
a great thing. And Andy Furman was the same way.
Andy is one of the greats, as you know how
I feel about him. And I think that Andy and
I and Jonas Knox had one of the best shows ever.
(18:02):
Unfortunately we weren't on Next Time like you guys are
at the time. But I thought that was a great show.
I just feel like I was like Hyman Roth then
you know, all my partners are going to make money,
you know, and.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
And and Jonas has followed in your footsteps.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Oh yeah, morning guy, now the great. I am very
proud of him. I do know this. If he asked me,
I'd tell him our show was better. And that's nothing
against Brady or or or or anybody else a lovar,
nothing against them, nothing against Jonas.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
I love you and a couple of great radio characters
because you're the Chicago guy, Andy Fight. It was fun
and you just you really played well off each other.
You mentioned though Less Cropsy. I know Less passed away
a while back. But yeah he did, Yeah he did
recorded and this is actually the week the anniversary the
other day on this Yeah. I mean, did he ever
(18:57):
get into that and tell you some of the behind
the scenes.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Oh absolutely, I mean, give me some That was.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
The greatest rant in the history of rants. I've never
there's nothing that can match Lee Ilia attacking the cub.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
No and to let people know, you could go to
and then listen to the Yauzie in North tape and
it's not close to what Lee Elia was with Les Grobstein.
What happened was somebody asked him a question. I believe
it was less. They had the gang of reporters down there.
He had the tape recorder going and he just lost
his mind. Unless was the first guy to put it out,
(19:29):
and lee Elia went on a tirade, you're ten people
are all fifteen percent of your unemployed. That's why you're
at the ballpark. You guys are a bunch of losers.
You know. He was, you know, and so to nobody's
surprised he didn't last long after that, but he he
was a fiery guy, Lee Elia. He'll always be famous
(19:52):
for that, and Les Cropstein will be famous for that.
If you folks get a chance to listen to the
Lee Ilia tyrae and you haven't heard it, it's up
there with the Bobby Knight tirade? Did I used to play?
Or the yazzie It's better than yes well? Which which no?
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Which Bobby Knight one? Because he had the one about
Purdue and then he do you do it?
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I played it every day and then Jesse Rogers, my
producer at the time, who's one of the great baseball guys,
and we're still best friends. Indiana was playing Northwestern. At Northwestern,
I said, and I used to make I used to
give Jesse a bounty and I was making a lot
of money, so I shared it because I was. Some
(20:33):
of them didn't. So I used to put a bounty
on Jesse. If you can get Bobby Knight. Now this
is like early nineties, if you get Bobby Knight on
the radio with me tomorrow, I'll give you five hundred dollars.
Five hundred dollars to a producer that was like twenty
five years old back in the nineties. Okay. He goes
(20:54):
to the game, Bobby Knight's coming out. They won. He goes,
mister Knight, I worked for a host, Mike North and
he goes, I know who he is. I heard the tape.
Now Jesse's walking with him, and he goes, I'm not
doing it. I won't do it. That's it. I mean,
(21:15):
but the guy loves you, Mike loves you. But it's
an entertaining thing. He goes, yeah, well snuck in on me,
you know. And I didn't appreciate it, and he keeps walking.
Jesse follows him onto the bus. You gotta help me.
I can make five. Anyone do it for him. But
Jesse got thrown off the Indiana bus. He followed him
in after night, told him fifty paces back. That's what's following.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, yeah, that is outstanding.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Well, hey, you gotta make the money man, that's even
he was. I mean he it was like he found
a gold mine and he wanted to mind it. But
the gold mine was Bob was Bobby Knight. My favorite story,
Ben and I don't even know if you know this.
Dave Steep nineteen ninety three. Yeah, he got picked up
(22:02):
by the White Sox.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
No, the White Sox got you.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Okay, I'm on the radio and he hears me say
he's washed up. I love the guy. He's a competitor,
but he's not going to help this White Sox team. Period,
end of story. Okay. I'm at Gibson Steakhouse that night.
It was a hangout of mind. Who comes walking in
(22:28):
just got in the day before, was told by the
White Sox where I hung out, walks in to the bar,
somebody says, somebody wants to see you. I walk into
the vestibule of the place. He goes, I'm Dave Steep.
You have a little problem with me. I go, I
have no problem with you, Dave. First of all, it's
good to meet you. He goes, well, I heard about
(22:51):
what you said on me on the radio. I said, Dave,
nobody loves you as a competitor, one of my favorite
role players. But you're you've got to know that what
I was saying has to be half true. He goes,
you know what he says to me. Then he says, well,
why don't you try to help me? I go, what
are you talking about? Well, the team's on the road.
(23:12):
I go, yeah, and I need to throw tomorrow. I go,
where are you're going to throw? He goes, We'll find
the park somewhere. He goes, I'm staying where the White
Socks keep all the new players on the on Lake
Shore Drive at this building. Can you come by tomorrow?
I go, sure? What time? He goes seven o'clock? I
go in the morning. Now it's already nine at night.
(23:35):
He goes, yeah, and I've already had a few belts.
I go, okay. He gives me the address. I get up.
The rain's going sideways or I call them up. Dave,
too bad? Huh. He goes, where are you coming or not?
I go, what are you talking about? He goes, I
need to throw because they're coming back, and I got
(23:55):
to be ready. I need to throw sixty five sony pictures.
I go, there's nothing open. It's born like that. He goes, well,
find a viaduct. You know viaducts around here. I go in,
know the whole city. So I go get him and
I take him to Grand Avenue where there's a viaduct
by the Chicago River. He stands on one side. I
stand on the other side. I got a catcher smid.
He had a chest protector and a mask, okay, And
(24:19):
he threw sixty five pitches between cars going by from
one end, from one side to the other. And I
caught all of them but three period. And the story, true,
true story. It would never happen. I couldn't make that up.
And it actually happened because the white Socks said no
love for me, and they thought they could start something
(24:40):
and it n ended up being a good thing. And
Dave's one of the great guys.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
That's awesome, a great story.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
I always think about that yeah, that is.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
That is wonderful.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I love the guys.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Well, you know, a lot of them will say they
don't listen. I had a guy years ago that was
with the Dodgers who I was ripping, and then I
was in the law. I was in the clubhouse the
next like the next day, and the guy came up
to me. He was ranting Mike. He's like, I don't
listen to sports radio and I said, well, how do.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
You how do I know? How do you know that
I said anything? He said, well, my wife does you know?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
And then he was giving me the whole, you know,
the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
About well, you know, Brian Harlan was the pr man
for the White Sox for the Bears, and he's now
an agent. And when we were rolling, uh, we ran
into each other and he says to me, I heard
the station didn't have that good of ratings. And I said,
I heard your three and seven and we kept walking.
I mean, that's how it used to be in Chicago.
You know, a lot of ball busting going on. But
(25:36):
it was the teams hated us because at the time
we had no teams discourage of any local radio station.
If you want your people to be absolutely free is
to have no teams, and we ended up getting the
team and the station changed a little, but it's now.
I was told we were going to last six months,
and Dan Lee took my vision made it into something
(25:57):
big and now the Chicago Cubs. When I'm I'd been
in my car around that station. Yeah, I gotta ask you.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
I've been to Wrigley Field a number of times over
the year there, but it seems last time I was there,
it just felt like I was at Disney or something.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Well, yeah, you should have been with me in the seventies.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Well, I did get I didn't go in the seventies obviously,
but I did go back in like the nineties. It
was sure, sure the way it was, I guess then
it wasn't as crazy, But.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Are you kidding me? We could have bought the buildings
across the street with the change we have in our pockets.
Back in nineteen seventy, it was a heavily it was Hispanic,
it was a mix white Hispanic. They had gang problems
down farther down the street. But then it just changed.
(26:49):
Harry Carey came, okay from the White Sox, and as
soon as Harry Carey came, and then they got some
people who were Dallas Green came, and then Wrigley Field
Old became cool like Fenway, and they lived off that,
and then they lived off Harry And now when you
(27:10):
go down there, I swear to god, I hadn't been
down there for like ten years after, you know, because
I live way out now. I went down there. You're right,
I couldn't even recognize it. I didn't have a clue.
They used to have Murphy's Bleachers. Used to be a
bar with twenty five stools at a pool table in
the middle. So now it's this massive bar all there.
(27:34):
You know what, I knew a guy that lived across
the street. We took lawn chairs in the eighties and
sat on top and watched the games. Now they got bleachers,
you know, and they got clubs inside and everything. So
it's just a gigantic difference.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I think the Cubs, I think the ownership, like bought
a lot of the land around there, and they just
own like that that whole area. But it does feel
very corporate, and that's to me, that's not the essence. Obviously,
we're getting times right, Mike. But that's as you said
when you were going there. Back in the day, it
was just sodom and gomorra.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Right, well, I was a vendor. I was a vendor
in sixty nine and seventy. I told my father there's
no way I'm going to school. I'm not tober. He goes,
what are you talking about. We're having enough trouble getting
you to school as it is. I go to, Cubs
are going My dad wasn't really sports oint. I go to,
Cubs are going to go to the World Series. I'm
going to be making nothing but money. And I was
when I was sixteen, making its where doubleheaders, forty Bucks,
(28:26):
selling cokes, twenty five cent cokes. Hey, coke, get your
coke here, get coke care? I remember like it was yesterday.
And then I remember to collapse, which I could not believe.
The sixty nine Cubs, not that they played badly, but
the Mets were just so good. So, you know, it's
the greatest sports to me. I mean from the time
(28:47):
I'm nine and I you know, Howard Stern said it best.
Anybody can go to Amazon and be a podcaster. And
this is nothing against podcasting, because I have a couple
of great podcasts, and he says, but it takes unbelievable skill,
and I don't always agreeing with Howard Stern unbelievable skill
(29:11):
to do what any radio guy does, any radio guy does,
And he's absolutely right, because I've had guys come into
the studios you have that thought they could knock it
down and get it down, and it didn't happen. Then
you know that as well as I do. And then
there's others that it just flows, like yourself and like
other people that we know and love. So yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And the other dudes. You'll see guys professional athletes or something.
They'll come off the field and think they can just
get on a microphone because they played and they can
start yep, And it's not that easy. You gotta as
you said, there's an art to it. There's you've got
to know what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And if why doing two o'clock in the morning, if
you're Ben mallor in July, in July, why do it?
Why do it? Mike North while the Indianapolis Cults are
playing the Packers at eight o'clock on Sunday, Okay on
Sunday night. I had no problem when when I was
with the team, you know, with Dan jiggots, and you
(30:10):
had somebody to bounce off of. Okay, but doing what
anybody does, I've had so many people think they can
do it and they can't. It's it's an art. It's
it's how much work are you going to put into it?
You have to come up with stuff. My buddy and
you brought up a Dan Lee, the owner. He passed away,
(30:31):
and before he passed away, I had a three hour
contrave with you talking about the days, and he said
the thing about you that set everybody apart, Mike, and
it's the highest compliment that I could have been paid.
You never had an offseason. If there was hockey, you
knew every black clock. If it was football, baseball, basketball,
(30:51):
we didn't worry about you. We worried about the others.
There was a couple of football players like you just said,
a baseball player that worked with us, a couple of journalists.
So that was probably one of the great things he
ever said, amongst many things. He gave me changed my
whole life. He was going to give me weekends and
I said, I can do every day, and the other
guy they were not going to give it to me.
(31:13):
And the one guy turned it down. They gave me
a six month trial, and here I am thirty three
years later, and you know, it's the roller coaster ride.
Ben ups downs in all rounds. I mean, talk show
hosts for the most part, folks, and even Ben, at
some point we're wackos. We are. We're wackos, no doubt
about it. But we put our heart and soul into entertainment, entertainment,
(31:36):
and you get it for free.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Well, and there are very few that I've met along
my journey that have passion and energy, and you're one
of a kind. My congratulations, you got that lifetime achievement
of word, which will be next Friday. There's a big
galo there in Chicago. Thanks for doing this, dude, I
appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Thank you. You know what, Ben, I hope to see
you soon the next time in Chicago. We got to
hook up. I know you were in Chicago not too
long ago. I believe if I'm not right, you want
to that is true.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
But my brother lives in Wisconsin. My younger I do go.
You know, I usually try to go through Chicago.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
You know what's funny. I live right by Wisconsin. I
live right by Lake Geneva now, but I live in Illinois.
But I'll tell you what. Yeah, when I see a
picture of somebody and the first thing I said is boy,
I'd like to see him and go to the ball
game with him. Because if you've never been to Wrigley, folks,
and you drive down the street, you go, where the
hell is this park? And then all of a sudden, boom,
(32:30):
Oh it's wonderful.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Yeah, but I mean to go to That'd be awesome
to go to a Cub game with Mike North.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Now that's the most we will have to do it
and say hi to everybody over there, and I will.
I enjoyed being on and thanks so much.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Now let me tell you I see jonas your old protege.
I love them every day and we will occasionally randomly
there'll be a Mike Norse story that we will tell
and it's it's just a cluss. But but thanks to
Thanks Mike, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
You're the best. Ben, thank you, and thank all the listeners.
Thanks guys,
Cutbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old Republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio, who will be producing this podcast,
will join me at some point over the weekend, but
we have made it into the first podcast of the
month of May here and as we talked about on
the Overnight Show last night promoting this, I am very
(00:51):
excited because today is not your normal Friday Run of
the Mill podcast where I start out talking about some
dopey holidays and go through the week that was not
a no no no by popular demand. A chance to
catch up with a sports talk radio leg And I'm
not blowing smoke when I say that, especially if you're
(01:12):
from Chicago. But this guy worked at our place. He's
part of the Fox Sports Radio Alumni Association. The Great
Mike North is going to join us now. The reason
we're having Mike on today is a I love him.
He's one of the great characters in radio in my
journey in radio that I've come across. And then also
the fact that he has been honored one of the
(01:34):
great accomplishments in his career. He's the godfather of Chicago
sports radio and did our morning show at Fox Sports
Radio for a number of years with Andy Furman. So
Mike North has been given the Lifetime Achievement Award from
Barrett Sports Media. And this is a big industry website
that tracks the business and keeps up to date with everything.
(01:57):
So next week, a week from today, on May ninth,
there's a gala ceremony in Chicago and a sports radio
legend from Chicago, Mike North, there will receive the Lifetime
Achievement Award. So I thought, what better way to celebrate
this than have the man on? And it's an excuse
(02:19):
to him on. So I saw it, I said, I
got to get this guy on. So I reached out
to him and he now joins us right now. On
the fifth hour we walk him in. He's still working,
by the way, he's got his own show, on the
ESPN station there in Chicago. So we walkme in the
great Mike North. Mike, congratulations, what has it been like
since you found out that you have been given the
(02:41):
honor of a Lifetime Achievement Award for your radio career.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
How do you doing, Ben? That's great by talking to you.
You're a legend. Come on, shocking to be honest with you,
because you know, I won a lot of awards. I
won four Talk Show host Awards in Chicago for local radio.
I won two Emmys, and I won a Cleo Award
even for a Best Commercial. But they were all voted
(03:06):
from out of town. So because what they do is
they don't want the locals voting for the people that
are in Chicago. You like the Chicago radio people voting
for Chicago personalities because then they'll be biased, they'll vote
for their own and stuff like that. I don't know
how Barrett came up with this, How Jason did it,
(03:30):
I don't know, but he said by a landslide. And
I mean, I know a lot of great radio sports
radio people that came out of there. But I think
the difference is that I started the whole thing basically
off a lark, I had read in the sometimes that
Dan Lee, the owner of w x R tier progressive
(03:51):
rock station, was going to start a jazz station. And
I saw that in Robert Feed's column in the Sun Times,
and I said to my wife and we were working
the hot dog stand, our hot dog stand at the time,
we owned a hot dog stand in Chicago, Big One,
and I said, you know what, Dan needs sports station
in this town. Well, she says, well, I don't think
(04:14):
you have much of a say in this. But what
happened was some of the XRT people used to come
in my stand, and I only had met Dan Lee twice.
And Dan Lee, there was like a couple of sports
shows on rock and roll stations, like The Loop and others,
but there was no all sports station, not even the Fan.
The fan had Imus in the morning, so they had
(04:35):
it only for middays in the afternoon. So this long
and behold. A day after the article is in the
paper that they've bought the call letters to w jay
z Z and they're going to go country. Dan Lee
comes walking in and at that time you could only
own two stations. He only owned one. Now you can
own eight stations in a way which takes away a
(04:57):
lot of the bargaining power of many radio people. But
at that time, you know, you could only own two,
so you had a lot of suitors. Well, I didn't
have any suitors. Nobody even knew me. I was a
high school dropout. I owned a hot dog stand and
I had a successful thing. And then he comes walking
in and I asked him. I go, I hear you're
going jazz and he says, uh yeah. I said you
(05:21):
should go off sports, sir, And he goes, really, he
goes why. I said, well, I think it's the next
big thing. And there's only twelve of them in this
country right now, the fan there's one in Denver, there's
la and back then San Diego I think had one.
Boston I think was strong, Philadelphia was strong. I said
(05:42):
you should try it. Well, he buys his hot dog himself.
He goes, I'll think about it. He walks out. I
chase him out. I go think about it, because jazz
won't sell sports is a huge sports jump. He goes
home that weekend and if you remember, Ben, they had
the Tribune and Sun Times. Thick papers were one hundred
and forty four pages. He bought the He looked at
(06:04):
he bought the Bulldog editions of the Sun Times and
Tribune and he looked at the entertainment section and saw
two or three jazz advertisements, advertisements for jazz. Then he
went to the sports section. And back in the day, folks,
thirty forty adds in these sports sections, and I mean
twelve fourteen pages full with the standings and everything and
(06:29):
what the players were hitting. It was so much bigger
back then. He meets on Monday with his music people
and they said, were ready to go. He goes, yeah,
we're going to do all sports. They go, are you crazy?
You're going to listen to that hot dog guy? And
he goes, I'm going to listen to him. And that's
how it all started. And he started to score, and
he as a music guy, Ben, and you know how
(06:50):
it is to find people. He filled day day as
music people. Put together a station that only last would
the last twelve hours for four years until it got
a full time license. And we ruled the airwaves on
a twelve hour station. That's great.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
And those were the days right where there were like
radio people that were making the decisions, right. I mean,
it's not it's the business has changed, obviously, a ton.
I'm younger than you, but there's so many people now
that are not really like radio people that are making
those decisions. Would that be the thing that's got to
be the thing you're most proud of?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Right?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
You went from running a hot dogs stand, which you
were doing very well at, and then he became the
godfather of Chicago sports radio. When you give your speech,
will that be the lead of the speech? Is that
going to be the.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Well to the lead of the speech? Is I was
basically a high school drop out. My own dad called
me a bomb. I'd never amount to anything. I had
a tense relationship with him, but he always put a
rough over my head. He was a decent guy, but
he if and if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't
be here. But he wasn't happy with me. I dropped
(07:56):
out of high school. I ended up going to the Service.
I was going to have to go to Vietnam. I
was drafted because I didn't have any schooling. I had
to go for my draft card. I went. My orders
were canceled. I was supposed to go to Long being
young wherever that was in Vietnam with a bunch of
other goofy nineteen and twenty year old kids, and my
(08:21):
Nixon canceled our orders because they were going through the
Paris Peace talks. So that was a bit of luck.
I come back and I meet my wife and from
there on, she tried to change me for a long time,
and I finally changed. And I would say one day
I was picking paper in a park working for the
Chicago Park District and mark and ballfields, and the next
(08:42):
day I was the biggest thing in radio. It was
culture shock and day when I see twenty year olds
go through it. I ended up making a lot of
money in this business. And when I and I was
thirty nine and I wasn't ready for it, but yeah,
I'm going to it's a Rag's the richest type of
situation for me. I went from nobody. I met a
beautiful lady. She helped guide me, helped fix me up,
(09:06):
and I went to work every day. I've never missed
a day of work in thirty three years. Never missed
at Fox, never missed at ESPN, which I'm working at
now one thousand, never missed at the Score where I
worked for sixteen years. So I love it. It's in my blood.
But I started talking sports on the street corner. And
my uncle, who's ninety years old, told me the other day,
(09:28):
you're getting this because you were built for it. He says,
I remember you talking circles around the older relatives when
you were nine years old. So you were born. I
was born to do it. You were born to do it.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
And I think part of the key is like you're
like a lot of the people in the business. Even
when you were when you were starting out and I
was listening, is you know, young guy, they were kind
of program they were buttoned up.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, you're just like a regular dude.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Which that's at that time especially, I think even now,
but at that time, there weren't a lot of people
that were like you that were doing this.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I give you a big advantage. I did have a
huge advantage. It was different than ninety two. It was
I mean, there was no social media. There was no Twitter,
but there was phones in the cars. We didn't even
have computer yet. Our producer, Jesse Rodgers was my producer.
I had Abby Pulaski. Then I had a guy named
Jesse Rodgers who's now number one baseball guy at ESPN.
(10:21):
For seven years, we got the best guests. But when
we had phone calls. They had to hold up the
sign with the guy's name on it. Joe from Tinley Park,
Bill from Alsip, Illinois, Bob. You know, so there was
no computers. You had to know what you were talking
about without the use of a computer. What do I
see now? I see scripts? I mean I broke it,
(10:43):
broke my heart. I read on Twitter about a month ago. Hey,
me and my three buddies are getting together. We're going
to go to the bar, and we have a script
that we're going to discuss each sport. That's not what
it was designed to do. Sports radio was designed around
the way I wanted it. I was designed about around sports, alcohol, women,
(11:06):
and entertainment. You want to talk about movies, that's fine.
Even the little politics used to sneak in. But you
could talk politics back then. Now you can't. As far
as your other question, you know how great it was
to walk in to a corner office and the boss
was sitting there in the same building, and you didn't
have to call New York. You didn't have to call California.
(11:26):
If you wanted to go to New York and see
the Bulls and Knicks, you didn't have to call California,
New York or some other place to see if you
could go with the White Sox to Boston. We would
ask him. He'd go, yeah, And you know what, he
was a music guy who four years later, Ben sold
the station that he put a seven hundred thousand dollars
(11:50):
investment with along with XRTI, because he already had the
building and stuff for seventy seven million bucks.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And it was a part time station until he went
all time the final year and then Westinghouse came and bought.
As far as who's running radio now, of course you
need a radio guy to run radio. And as far
as people that are running radio, most of them. I
used to I called my boss back in the day.
(12:19):
I said, you're not a sports guy. You're not a
radio guy. You're a bean counter. That's what you are.
And I said, don't try to pretend that you know
more about sports or anything else. Because the original boss left.
And once the original boss left, it's an all new
ball game. It's like getting a new manager. As you know,
because you've been through a few in baseball.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
My favorite Mike Norss story, and there's bunch of them, though,
is your confrontations with Ozzie Gian back in the day,
and I saw I wanted to get your reaction. I'm
sure you've talked about this in your show in Chicago,
but I haven't heard your reaction. So the other day
Ozzie and I guess I'm one of the local he
does a White postgame or something like that. He said
that doing sports radio is harder than managing in the
(13:07):
major leagues. And I agree with him, by the way,
But what was your reaction, because you got you really
got into a dust up, one of the famous sports
radio dustups with us. So when you saw him say that,
what was your reaction?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Right? First of all, I haven't seen as he since
I understand I came down after I had the argument
with him. I was doing a remote from Wrigley Field.
The argument was all about he wasn't going to start
a J. Prazinski. Now, if you're playing like the Braves
or somebody, that's fine. You're playing the White Socks, which
was still a fevered pitch back in two thousand and six.
(13:39):
The Cubs are coming off a World Series, I mean,
the White Socks are coming off a World Series, and
he wanted to start. A guy named Toby Hall so
I'm ranting and Raven, the guy's just coming off the
disabled Listen. He's not a very good catcher and he
can't how's he going to hit? And you're playing the
White Socks on a Friday, it's the first game. Now
I'm across the street in the place at a bar
doing a remote filled with people, and all of a sudden,
(14:00):
he calls up and he goes nuts and he starts swearing,
and me and him went at it, and he wasn't happy,
and I wasn't happy, And to be honest, Ben, I'm
tired of the cut. But this is the fun part.
He's going to be at this thing. He's going to
be at the ward and me and him are going
(14:21):
to be together for the first time in hell twenty
twenty five years, and they're probably going to play that cut.
And I am so tired of it, and I'm sure
he is too, So I might have to retire it,
because you don't want to hear how you were twenty
five years ago in d Vane. He was a great manager.
Me and him at times are the same people, type
(14:42):
A personalities. We've both shot ourselves in the foot a
couple of times, so we have a lot in common.
And that day that he called, it wasn't a manager
in a radio host. It was basically two Chicago neighborhood
guys going at it. And it was admire him for calling,
and I admire him for taking it down. But as
(15:04):
it turned out, Toby Hall had two pants balls that
day and he had just an awful outing and he
was cut down the line. There you go.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
But that's and it's nice that you know, when you
run into him, he did say, you know, this is
what we do. What you've done your whole you know,
life is harder than managing in the major leagues, which
I agree with that people you're talking about doing the
job every day. And I often will say, Mike, like
anybody could probably do what will you do? And what
I do during football season when there's stuff going on.
(15:33):
But the problem is day in day out, like people
don't realize, Like I'm sure there's some days, Mike, you
go in there even though you have the gift for gatt,
you're not really feeling it, but you still have to
do the show. You have to present the show, and
those are the days where I feel like you make
their money. Anybody can go in there when there's a
ton of stuff to talk about yes days when there's
not much and you can create something out of nothing.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
That to me, that's what separates.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
And you've been doing it forever.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
So yeah, thirty three years. But I'll tell you, Ben,
I know what you have to go through working overnights,
and it's not easy. Some of the great overnight guys Chicago,
Whity Schwartz, a lot of overnight guys I listened to
in Chicago. It wasn't easy. Not less. Robstein a great
a great voice and a good friend of mine back
in the day, one of the great overnight guys. So
(16:17):
what you do is not easy. But I'll be the
first to tell you. In ninety two we were the
first of our kind, an all sports station. We never
had a meeting, me and Dan Jiggets or our producers.
We would write down who we want for the next day,
whether it be Tom Glavin because the Braves are in town,
bring on an Assie gee in, or bring on this
(16:38):
guy or that guy. We never had a meeting. Jiggs
Dan would get there about a quarter two. I'd get
there a little bit more earlier. I was already prepared
the night before, so if Dan came on and he said,
welcome to the scores. You know, sports radio ladies and gentlemen.
I'm Dan Jiggets. We're the monsters of the mid midday.
(16:59):
Mike is along with me. Mike, how you doing? Good Dan?
But that cub game last night? Or good Dan? That
Bear game? Boy? I'll tell you, I'll tell you what
I mean. Irlacker just didn't get it done yesterday, and
he was ready and I was ready. He led the show.
I loved being a second banana because that's where you're
you don't have to worry. And I did read commercials.
(17:20):
You do it all your solo a lot. That's tough.
I did solo at Fox two on weekends, brutal, but
going off of somebody, okay, is the best because we
turned into and he was a He was a Harvard
educated black man and I was a high school dropout
(17:41):
white man. And do you want to know how many
people thought it was reversed just because of the color
of our skin until people found out. So it was
a great thing. And Andy Furman was the same way.
Andy is one of the greats, as you know how
I feel about him. And I think that Andy and
I and Jonas Knox had one of the best shows ever.
(18:02):
Unfortunately we weren't on Next Time like you guys are
at the time. But I thought that was a great show.
I just feel like I was like Hyman Roth then
you know, all my partners are going to make money,
you know, and.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
And and Jonas has followed in your footsteps.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Oh yeah, morning guy, now the great. I am very
proud of him. I do know this. If he asked me,
I'd tell him our show was better. And that's nothing
against Brady or or or or anybody else a lovar,
nothing against them, nothing against Jonas.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
I love you and a couple of great radio characters
because you're the Chicago guy, Andy Fight. It was fun
and you just you really played well off each other.
You mentioned though Less Cropsy. I know Less passed away
a while back. But yeah he did, Yeah he did
recorded and this is actually the week the anniversary the
other day on this Yeah. I mean, did he ever
(18:57):
get into that and tell you some of the behind
the scenes.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Oh absolutely, I mean, give me some That was.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
The greatest rant in the history of rants. I've never
there's nothing that can match Lee Ilia attacking the cub.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
No and to let people know, you could go to
and then listen to the Yauzie in North tape and
it's not close to what Lee Elia was with Les Grobstein.
What happened was somebody asked him a question. I believe
it was less. They had the gang of reporters down there.
He had the tape recorder going and he just lost
his mind. Unless was the first guy to put it out,
(19:29):
and lee Elia went on a tirade, you're ten people
are all fifteen percent of your unemployed. That's why you're
at the ballpark. You guys are a bunch of losers.
You know. He was, you know, and so to nobody's
surprised he didn't last long after that, but he he
was a fiery guy, Lee Elia. He'll always be famous
(19:52):
for that, and Les Cropstein will be famous for that.
If you folks get a chance to listen to the
Lee Ilia tyrae and you haven't heard it, it's up
there with the Bobby Knight tirade? Did I used to play?
Or the yazzie It's better than yes well? Which which no?
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Which Bobby Knight one? Because he had the one about
Purdue and then he do you do it?
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I played it every day and then Jesse Rogers, my
producer at the time, who's one of the great baseball guys,
and we're still best friends. Indiana was playing Northwestern. At Northwestern,
I said, and I used to make I used to
give Jesse a bounty and I was making a lot
of money, so I shared it because I was. Some
(20:33):
of them didn't. So I used to put a bounty
on Jesse. If you can get Bobby Knight. Now this
is like early nineties, if you get Bobby Knight on
the radio with me tomorrow, I'll give you five hundred dollars.
Five hundred dollars to a producer that was like twenty
five years old back in the nineties. Okay. He goes
(20:54):
to the game, Bobby Knight's coming out. They won. He goes,
mister Knight, I worked for a host, Mike North and
he goes, I know who he is. I heard the tape.
Now Jesse's walking with him, and he goes, I'm not
doing it. I won't do it. That's it. I mean,
(21:15):
but the guy loves you, Mike loves you. But it's
an entertaining thing. He goes, yeah, well snuck in on me,
you know. And I didn't appreciate it, and he keeps walking.
Jesse follows him onto the bus. You gotta help me.
I can make five. Anyone do it for him. But
Jesse got thrown off the Indiana bus. He followed him
in after night, told him fifty paces back. That's what's following.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, yeah, that is outstanding.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Well, hey, you gotta make the money man, that's even
he was. I mean he it was like he found
a gold mine and he wanted to mind it. But
the gold mine was Bob was Bobby Knight. My favorite story,
Ben and I don't even know if you know this.
Dave Steep nineteen ninety three. Yeah, he got picked up
(22:02):
by the White Sox.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
No, the White Sox got you.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Okay, I'm on the radio and he hears me say
he's washed up. I love the guy. He's a competitor,
but he's not going to help this White Sox team. Period,
end of story. Okay. I'm at Gibson Steakhouse that night.
It was a hangout of mind. Who comes walking in
(22:28):
just got in the day before, was told by the
White Sox where I hung out, walks in to the bar,
somebody says, somebody wants to see you. I walk into
the vestibule of the place. He goes, I'm Dave Steep.
You have a little problem with me. I go, I
have no problem with you, Dave. First of all, it's
good to meet you. He goes, well, I heard about
(22:51):
what you said on me on the radio. I said, Dave,
nobody loves you as a competitor, one of my favorite
role players. But you're you've got to know that what
I was saying has to be half true. He goes,
you know what he says to me. Then he says, well,
why don't you try to help me? I go, what
are you talking about? Well, the team's on the road.
(23:12):
I go, yeah, and I need to throw tomorrow. I go,
where are you're going to throw? He goes, We'll find
the park somewhere. He goes, I'm staying where the White
Socks keep all the new players on the on Lake
Shore Drive at this building. Can you come by tomorrow?
I go, sure? What time? He goes seven o'clock? I
go in the morning. Now it's already nine at night.
(23:35):
He goes, yeah, and I've already had a few belts.
I go, okay. He gives me the address. I get up.
The rain's going sideways or I call them up. Dave,
too bad? Huh. He goes, where are you coming or not?
I go, what are you talking about? He goes, I
need to throw because they're coming back, and I got
(23:55):
to be ready. I need to throw sixty five sony pictures.
I go, there's nothing open. It's born like that. He goes, well,
find a viaduct. You know viaducts around here. I go in,
know the whole city. So I go get him and
I take him to Grand Avenue where there's a viaduct
by the Chicago River. He stands on one side. I
stand on the other side. I got a catcher smid.
He had a chest protector and a mask, okay, And
(24:19):
he threw sixty five pitches between cars going by from
one end, from one side to the other. And I
caught all of them but three period. And the story, true,
true story. It would never happen. I couldn't make that up.
And it actually happened because the white Socks said no
love for me, and they thought they could start something
(24:40):
and it n ended up being a good thing. And
Dave's one of the great guys.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
That's awesome, a great story.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
I always think about that yeah, that is.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
That is wonderful.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I love the guys.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Well, you know, a lot of them will say they
don't listen. I had a guy years ago that was
with the Dodgers who I was ripping, and then I
was in the law. I was in the clubhouse the
next like the next day, and the guy came up
to me. He was ranting Mike. He's like, I don't
listen to sports radio and I said, well, how do.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
You how do I know? How do you know that
I said anything? He said, well, my wife does you know?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
And then he was giving me the whole, you know,
the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
About well, you know, Brian Harlan was the pr man
for the White Sox for the Bears, and he's now
an agent. And when we were rolling, uh, we ran
into each other and he says to me, I heard
the station didn't have that good of ratings. And I said,
I heard your three and seven and we kept walking.
I mean, that's how it used to be in Chicago.
You know, a lot of ball busting going on. But
(25:36):
it was the teams hated us because at the time
we had no teams discourage of any local radio station.
If you want your people to be absolutely free is
to have no teams, and we ended up getting the
team and the station changed a little, but it's now.
I was told we were going to last six months,
and Dan Lee took my vision made it into something
(25:57):
big and now the Chicago Cubs. When I'm I'd been
in my car around that station. Yeah, I gotta ask you.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
I've been to Wrigley Field a number of times over
the year there, but it seems last time I was there,
it just felt like I was at Disney or something.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Well, yeah, you should have been with me in the seventies.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Well, I did get I didn't go in the seventies obviously,
but I did go back in like the nineties. It
was sure, sure the way it was, I guess then
it wasn't as crazy, But.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Are you kidding me? We could have bought the buildings
across the street with the change we have in our pockets.
Back in nineteen seventy, it was a heavily it was Hispanic,
it was a mix white Hispanic. They had gang problems
down farther down the street. But then it just changed.
(26:49):
Harry Carey came, okay from the White Sox, and as
soon as Harry Carey came, and then they got some
people who were Dallas Green came, and then Wrigley Field
Old became cool like Fenway, and they lived off that,
and then they lived off Harry And now when you
(27:10):
go down there, I swear to god, I hadn't been
down there for like ten years after, you know, because
I live way out now. I went down there. You're right,
I couldn't even recognize it. I didn't have a clue.
They used to have Murphy's Bleachers. Used to be a
bar with twenty five stools at a pool table in
the middle. So now it's this massive bar all there.
(27:34):
You know what, I knew a guy that lived across
the street. We took lawn chairs in the eighties and
sat on top and watched the games. Now they got bleachers,
you know, and they got clubs inside and everything. So
it's just a gigantic difference.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I think the Cubs, I think the ownership, like bought
a lot of the land around there, and they just
own like that that whole area. But it does feel
very corporate, and that's to me, that's not the essence. Obviously,
we're getting times right, Mike. But that's as you said
when you were going there. Back in the day, it
was just sodom and gomorra.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Right, well, I was a vendor. I was a vendor
in sixty nine and seventy. I told my father there's
no way I'm going to school. I'm not tober. He goes,
what are you talking about. We're having enough trouble getting
you to school as it is. I go to, Cubs
are going My dad wasn't really sports oint. I go to,
Cubs are going to go to the World Series. I'm
going to be making nothing but money. And I was
when I was sixteen, making its where doubleheaders, forty Bucks,
(28:26):
selling cokes, twenty five cent cokes. Hey, coke, get your
coke here, get coke care? I remember like it was yesterday.
And then I remember to collapse, which I could not believe.
The sixty nine Cubs, not that they played badly, but
the Mets were just so good. So, you know, it's
the greatest sports to me. I mean from the time
(28:47):
I'm nine and I you know, Howard Stern said it best.
Anybody can go to Amazon and be a podcaster. And
this is nothing against podcasting, because I have a couple
of great podcasts, and he says, but it takes unbelievable skill,
and I don't always agreeing with Howard Stern unbelievable skill
(29:11):
to do what any radio guy does, any radio guy does,
And he's absolutely right, because I've had guys come into
the studios you have that thought they could knock it
down and get it down, and it didn't happen. Then
you know that as well as I do. And then
there's others that it just flows, like yourself and like
other people that we know and love. So yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And the other dudes. You'll see guys professional athletes or something.
They'll come off the field and think they can just
get on a microphone because they played and they can
start yep, And it's not that easy. You gotta as
you said, there's an art to it. There's you've got
to know what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And if why doing two o'clock in the morning, if
you're Ben mallor in July, in July, why do it?
Why do it? Mike North while the Indianapolis Cults are
playing the Packers at eight o'clock on Sunday, Okay on
Sunday night. I had no problem when when I was
with the team, you know, with Dan jiggots, and you
(30:10):
had somebody to bounce off of. Okay, but doing what
anybody does, I've had so many people think they can
do it and they can't. It's it's an art. It's
it's how much work are you going to put into it?
You have to come up with stuff. My buddy and
you brought up a Dan Lee, the owner. He passed away,
(30:31):
and before he passed away, I had a three hour
contrave with you talking about the days, and he said
the thing about you that set everybody apart, Mike, and
it's the highest compliment that I could have been paid.
You never had an offseason. If there was hockey, you
knew every black clock. If it was football, baseball, basketball,
(30:51):
we didn't worry about you. We worried about the others.
There was a couple of football players like you just said,
a baseball player that worked with us, a couple of journalists.
So that was probably one of the great things he
ever said, amongst many things. He gave me changed my
whole life. He was going to give me weekends and
I said, I can do every day, and the other
guy they were not going to give it to me.
(31:13):
And the one guy turned it down. They gave me
a six month trial, and here I am thirty three
years later, and you know, it's the roller coaster ride.
Ben ups downs in all rounds. I mean, talk show
hosts for the most part, folks, and even Ben, at
some point we're wackos. We are. We're wackos, no doubt
about it. But we put our heart and soul into entertainment, entertainment,
(31:36):
and you get it for free.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Well, and there are very few that I've met along
my journey that have passion and energy, and you're one
of a kind. My congratulations, you got that lifetime achievement
of word, which will be next Friday. There's a big
galo there in Chicago. Thanks for doing this, dude, I
appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Thank you. You know what, Ben, I hope to see
you soon the next time in Chicago. We got to
hook up. I know you were in Chicago not too
long ago. I believe if I'm not right, you want
to that is true.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
But my brother lives in Wisconsin. My younger I do go.
You know, I usually try to go through Chicago.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
You know what's funny. I live right by Wisconsin. I
live right by Lake Geneva now, but I live in Illinois.
But I'll tell you what. Yeah, when I see a
picture of somebody and the first thing I said is boy,
I'd like to see him and go to the ball
game with him. Because if you've never been to Wrigley, folks,
and you drive down the street, you go, where the
hell is this park? And then all of a sudden, boom,
(32:30):
Oh it's wonderful.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Yeah, but I mean to go to That'd be awesome
to go to a Cub game with Mike North.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Now that's the most we will have to do it
and say hi to everybody over there, and I will.
I enjoyed being on and thanks so much.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Now let me tell you I see jonas your old protege.
I love them every day and we will occasionally randomly
there'll be a Mike Norse story that we will tell
and it's it's just a cluss. But but thanks to
Thanks Mike, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
You're the best. Ben, thank you, and thank all the listeners.
Thanks guys,
Host
Ben Maller
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!