There are metropolitan and community newspapers. During my active career I preferred working for community papers. I had spells on some larger papers, but having a desk in a corner of a big newsroom and knowing more of my fellow workers by face than by name seemed to lack something.
However, there was one job on a metropolitan that once I would like to have had and very well may have had if I had remained in sports. I would have liked to have written “In the Wake of the News” in the Chicago Tribune sports section. Ring Lardner was one of the first to write the “Wake,” and may have originated it.
That was a bit before my time. Arch Ward was the one I remember the best, and Dave Condon was the only one that I ever met personally. Yeah, I was jealous of Condon because, an adequate writer, he was not in the same category with Ring Lardner and Arch Ward.
The Chicago Tribune logo reads, “The World’s Greatest Newspaper,” also noted by its radio station WGN. In many ways that is a pretty good description of the Tribune, when one excused the rather biased far right editorial position of long time owner and publisher Colonel McCormick. I think the Colonel would have endorsed Benedict Arnold if he had run for office on the Republican ticket.
It was news coverage where the Tribune really excelled, and still does. As proof of this the Tribune has long been the premiere of Chicago papers though, under McCormick, Tribune endorsed candidates won fewer victories in the local political arena than the New Orleans Saints win on the gridiron. Now I only read it on the web, but it seems that while the “Wake” logo still appears on the sports pages, it is shared by several writers. And it is different from the offerings of Lardner, Ward and even Condon.
The earlier “Wake” writers liked to cover subjects on which other columnists were passing. Regular readers in these papers hopefully see the same practice in “From the Back Porch.”
Back in the early 1960s I was the sports editor of the LaPorte, Ind., Herald Argus. Being an hour’s drive from the Loop on the west and South Bend on the east my position also had me covering the Chicago pro teams and Notre Dame. Apparently some of my stuff caught some eyes at the Tribune, probably because I had multi-millionaire sportsman friend who had his main business office in Chicago but lived on a farm just outside of LaPorte.
He was Charles O. Finley, a steelworker who spent some time in a sanitarium with tuberculosis where he got the idea for an insurance company that took off like Superman when leaping tall buildings. He is best known for once owning the Kansas City-Oakland A’s baseball team. Charles claimed he never missed reading my daily “From Off The Field” column in the LaPorte paper.
I first met Dave Condon at one of Finley’s parties at his LaPorte estate. My wife and I were always invited to his shindigs. I was the only newsman in his house the Sunday night the news hit that he had made peace with the City of Kansas City after a long verbal battle.
He would have the radio broadcast of A’s games piped into his home telephone in LaPorte. Several times he called me at night and had me listen to the Kansas City A’s game on the telephone with him. In fact, Charles Finley died owing me five dollars he borrowed one night in order to buy me a drink at the LaPorte Moose Club.
When Charles introduced me it was evident that Dave Condon had participated heavily in the “spirits” of Charles’ hospitality. In a syrupy voice, he said, “I know you. You’re after my job.” So, maybe if I had stayed in sports at the Herald-Argus, I might have gotten my chance to write “In the Wake of the News.” Who knows?
Do I regret not going that way? Not really. Chicago is my favorite big city, and the Cubs, White Sox, Bears, Black Hawks (there were no NBA Bulls in those days) and, of course, the Fighting Irish, have always been my favorites. But I seriously doubt that this past June I would have celebrated 47 years of marriage to the same woman had we ever moved into Chicago proper.
Besides, Satchel Paige showed some wisdom when he said, “Don’t look back.”
Fame and fortune are not the only things. An enjoyable life surpasses those things, and nobody can say I have not enjoyed the first 75 plus years, and plan to continue to do so as long as I am around, even without ever having written “In the Wake of the News” in the “World’s Greatest Newspaper.”
Trivia Time
One of Ring Lardner’s most popular stories, made into a movie, involved a brash outstanding rookie for the Chicago Cubs. What was the name his teammates gave the young player that has become a rather common term to describe individuals like the rookie?
Answer to last question. The top salary both Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle received from the Yankees was $100,000, the same as the President of the U.S. received in those years.

George Frasher, an independent columnist, is a retired News-Leader Inc. editor and may be reached at 337-238-3433, E-mail frasher@cebridge.net.