Walter's Perspective: A Memoir of Fifty Years in Chicago TV News

1. Once a Cubs Fan . . .

1 1 Once a Cubs Fan . . . (Walter—on-camera) Election time! Challengers versus incumbents . . . challengers looking for money, incumbents looking at their payrolls to find jobs they can hand out in exchange for support in their campaigns, looking to hire people who will man the precincts . . . and fire those who won’t . . . (Videotape: Coconate) Like Frank Coconate, for example. Fired from his job after twentyseven years on the city payroll. Here’s his story . . . a Chicago story . . . Frank Coconate is an independent kind of guy, a whistle-blowertype who discovered waste, he says, and corruption in the city’s highly touted $75 million program to prevent flooding in our basements . . . (Wide shot: blockers stacked behind a city warehouse) . . . the “rain blocker” program. The blockers didn’t work and were an embarrassment to city hall, says Frank. So city employees were instructed to hide the blockers or throw them away. Frank Coconate blew the whistle . . . (Hidden-camera pix: Coconate and Jackson walking, separately, into restaurant) . . . then hooked himself up with US congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. in a downtown restaurant to talk quietly about Jesse running for mayor. Well, you can imagine what happened next! Frank received . . . 2 O N C E A C U B S F A N . . . (Dissolve to: the letter with list of charges) . . . this letter from his boss listing some charges. And even though Frank emphatically denies those charges, and in twenty-seven years has an extraordinary record of good behavior . . . (Dissolve to: Coconate) . . . he’s been fired for . . . (Dissolve to: letter with quote) . . . quote, “conduct unbecoming a public employee” . . . (Walter on-camera) . . . proving once again that in city hall in Chicago conduct unbecoming a public employee is not corruption, but exposing it. Or (long pause) . . . supporting the wrong candidate for mayor. —excerpt from “Walter’s Perspective,” Fox News at Nine, January 19, 1995 I’ve always had a warm spot in my heart for underdogs like Frank Coconate. Maybe it’s because I’m somewhat vertically challenged. Okay, short. Maybe it’s because as a child I often felt chastened by my dear but domineering mother. Or because early in my career, I was—due to a mistaken identity, I swear— tagged with the nickname “Skippy,” which has stuck to this day. It’s an uphill battle to be taken seriously when you wear a moniker like that. In my “honor,” Her Honor the playful Chicago mayor Jane Byrne once anointed the symbol of the city’s snow-removal program “Skippy the Snowball.” I’m still turning around when I hear “Hey, you. Hey, Skippy.” Or how about this—maybe I identify with underdogs because I’m a Chicago Cubs fan (been one since I was eight years old). As most people know, certainly most Chicagoans know, the Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908, haven’t even played in a World Series since 1945, when they lost to the Detroit Tigers in seven games. It was during game 4 that year that Billy Sianis, a guy who ran a neighborhood tavern, placed the infamous “curse of the billy goat” on the Cubs. Sianis was angry about being barred from his box seats, along with his pet goat Murphy, who was smelled at a gate by Mr. P. K. Wrigley himself and was declared to be “too stinky” to be allowed in, let alone sit in a box seat. When the Cubs began the losing ways for which they are now well known, Sianis is reported to have exclaimed, “Who stinks now?” O N C E A C U B S F A N . . . 3 I remember when I was eight, listening to the ’45 Series on the radio with my mother at her ironing board in our apartment in Rogers Park on Chicago’s far north side. The Cubs lost, but I was hooked, probably for life. When I was ten or eleven, I began taking the el after school, a fifteen-minute ride to Wrigley Field, where I ducked the ticket-takers to get into the bleachers to catch the last few innings of the games. When I was fourteen, in the winter before the 1951 season, I wrote a letter to Mr. Wrigley, a chewing-gum magnate who owned the Cubs, asking if I could please be his batboy. Cliff Jaffe, the team’s publicity chief, wrote back thanking me for being a Cubs fan, adding: “We’re sorry...