Ten thoughts for the price of one:
1. While speeding off to a small restroom at the top of Solider Field’s pressbox during a timeout in Bears-49ers playoff game, I was stopped by an official-looking guy in a CBS-TV jacket.
“Hey, could you hold up just a minute?” he asked. I think it was an ask.
I gave him a bewildered look but nodded. And then TV analyst John Madden came by me like a charging bull.
“Hey, thank you very much,” said Madden to me over his shoulder.
I said sure and then squeezed my legs together. Fortunately, he was in and out in a speedy manner. He then smiled at me, shouted “Next!” and made it back into the booth and beside his broadcast partner, Pat Summerall, before play resumed.
My Madden moment.
I thought of that when I heard the news that Madden, also a Hall of Fame coach with Oakland, had died earlier this week at the age of 85.
John Madden was the face of pro football for many fans because of the way he both entertained and enlightened us with his commentary on the games. He often resembled a mad scientist working on a complicated formula when he drew plays on a chalkboard.
He also loved the players who gave their all. Tough guys. Blue-collar guys. Like him.
And like a lot of us, he hated flying. He eventually traveled to his assignments around the country in a motor coach.
For me, Madden was what Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman should have looked like as a grown-up — with his mop of red hair, goofy smile and bellyful of mirth. He was often bigger — and better — than the game we watched with him.
He will always be No. 1 in my book. And on one wintry Chicago afternoon … ah, that’s enough about No. 1s.
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2. Without any notice, workers came through our neighborhood a month ago and dug up big holes in our front yards while putting in high-speed optic fiber, presumably for AT&T. The holes and piles of dirt are still there with orange netting around them.
Maybe they think it will be “out of sight, out of mind” when the big snows finally come. Can’t wait to see how our yards look in the spring.
Don’t you just love that kind of corporate caring?
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3. Noisiest road in these parts? How about the St. Joseph Valley Parkway — or “the bypass” to yokels like me — where it crosses into Elkhart County from the west. It’s as if it is singing to us.
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4. Has a highly-successful coach — in any sport — left for another job with as little fanfare as Brian Kelly got while scooting out of the shadow of the Golden Dome.
Kelly had more victories than any of Notre Dame’s holy football trilogy — Rockne, Leahy and Parseghian — but it feels as if he is going to be relegated to the second tier in Notre Dame’s “legend and lore” department.
I guess that’s what you get when you dare leave the most beloved (and berated) college football team in the universe with no forewarning. What nerve!
No statue for him.
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5. Yeah, I love movie trivia. If you don’t, you should probably skip the following segment.
So here’s the question: Which Western had in its cast two future Oscar winners for Best Actor … a former Chicago Cub first baseman … the guy who sang “A Holly Jolly Christmas” to the top of the charts … and the actor who had said in an earlier movie one of the silver screen’s most famous lines — “Badges? We don’t need to show you any stinkin’ badges.”
Answer to follow … somewhere.
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6. OK, I need to make at least one New Year’s Resolution: Write down all the passwords for my devices and accounts. Gosh, I hate having to mess with them. But I hate forgetting them when I need them even more.
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7. Those silly Caesars Sportsbook TV ads? I sort of like the new ones with the Manning football family and Caesar with an apparent man crush on Peyton and Eli’s older brother, Cooper. And the beautiful Cleopatra? She is played by Halle Berry. Yes, that Halle Berry — a Bond girl and Oscar winner among other things.
Those are fun to watch, although I’ll never use Caesars Sportsbook. But thanks, Caesar, for entertaining me.
At least I know what he’s hawking. Some ads are so “clever” that I’m not even sure what they want me to buy.
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8. My big prediction for 2022: The Chicago Cubs will have a better record than … drumroll, please … the Pittsburgh Pirates.
And although I’m not predicting it, I’m thinking maybe they’ll beat the Reds … and the Brewers … and — what the heck — the Cardinals, too. Who else can I rile up.
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9. Trivia answer: The movie is “The Big Country” from 1958.
— Gregory Peck (“To Killing a Mockingbird”) and Charlton Heston (“Ben Hur”) won the Oscars — Heston the following year in 1959 and Peck in 1962. And they have a hellacious fight in the movie. A draw, in my opinion.
— Chuck Connors, later “The Rifleman,” was the Cubs’ first baseman in 1951.
— Burl Ives sang “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” and also “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer” almost as famously as Gene Autry. He also won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for “The Big Country.
— Alfonso Bedoya said, “Badges … We don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges,” before the shooting started in “The Treasure of Sierra Madre.” He died of a heart attack before “The Big Country” was released.
Too much information? I could do “Caddy Shack” next time.
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10. 2021. A little better for you than 2020? I hope so. And may 2022 put the last two years to shame.