This doesn't happen often. Before I wrote Tuesday's blog post, I suspected the subject could be a column in the newspaper. Then I shrugged and wrote it for EGD — I don't like to save all the good ideas for the paper. The next day, talking with my editor, we decided the approach merited adapting it for the paper.
This isn't the same as Tuesday's post. But there are similarities. Students of my work — as if such a thing exists — might enjoy seeing how repeated reworking refines a piece. Or if you don't want to read a polished version of something you just read yesterday, you can read this, from over a dozen years ago.
Well, well, well, if it isn't the Chicago Bears, rushing past me on their way to the suburbs, for real this time.
Let me just slide my ample suburban backside over to make room on the Bench of Shame. Welcome to the club, boys. "One of us! One of us!"
It's truly happening.
“Moving outside of the city of Chicago is not a decision we reached easily,” Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren wrote in a letter to season ticket holders. “This project does not represent us leaving, it represents us expanding.”
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Sure looks like "leaving" in the traditional "go away from" sense.
The Bears won't play Downtown anymore, right? Fans who hope to see them play within Chicago city limits will need a television, or a very active imagination. Yet, through some alchemy of branding, they won't become the Arlington Heights Bears. The name "Chicago," they intend to keep. Too good to actually play in the city, but gripping the city's name hard, stiff-arming anyone who would take it away.
Allow me to savor this moment.
Ahhhhhh ...
Honestly, as someone who has had his chops busted continually for 25 years for the moral crime of writing about Chicago while not living in the city, I'm not sure how to feel about this development.
Gleeful? Sure. Nothing we flailing-around-in-the-status-ditch like more than to see our betters knocked off their high horse. This move might even be helpful to my situation. Now I've got the Chicago Bears football team standing foursquare behind me, arms folded across their brawny chests, hands tucked in sweaty armpits, nodding. Now I can reply: "It's good enough for the Chicago Bears, it's good enough for me."
Or is it just harmful to them without necessarily benefiting us scorned suburbanites? Trust me here: Chicagoans love lording their residency over those whose pillows rest beyond the city limits. If the Bears go on some White Sox-like swoon — and they've certainly stumbled out of the gate — will the general weakness and inauthenticity of the suburbs be blamed? Or will they bluster, "No, no! We sucked before!"
Maybe "Chicago Bears" is just another brand. Americans respect branding. Philadelphia Cream Cheese was not created in Philadelphia, nor is it made there. "Chicago" is hog butchers and Bronko Nagurski. The Bears are like Home Run Inn Pizza — a taste of Chicago you can enjoy anywhere. The Chicago Bears can go back to playing in Decatur, where they started, and still keep the name.
Or can they? My experience says that Kevin Warren can spin the move however he likes. It won't help. The suburban stain doesn't wash off. Believe me, I tried reminding folks: Mike Royko lived in Winnetka. Nelson Algren fled to New Jersey. Saul Bellow wrote "The Adventures of Augie March" in Paris, Rome, Salzburg — everywhere but Chicago. "Not a single word of the book was composed in Chicago," Bellow later confessed.
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