RIP to the original Sports Reporter, Bill Gleason

Remember watching The Sportswriters or whatever that show as called w/him and Telander and Bill Jauss and others around a poker table, smoking and talking sports well before ESPN took the idea and ran with it.

http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/01/former-sun-times-columnist-bill-gleason-dead-at-87.html

 

The show was called "Sports Writers on TV" I used to love that show when I could find it on the local Fox Sports Net affiliate.

 

That was a great show. So much smoke you could hardly see Telander's face.

 

this was the show of my childhood. i saw this long before sports reporters, for whatever reason, and the fun they had was part of the reason i wanted to go into the biz. is ben bentley still alive? he's got to be dead by now.

 

The radio version that aired on WGN and predated the TV show was just outstanding.

 

It was must-hear radio for a young sports fan growing up in the midwest.

 

Da Bears

I loved that show. RIP

 

Bill was the quintessential sportswriter, and when I was a teenager, I lived to catch that show on Sportschannel Midwest or whatever it was called on the satellite. Loved the clickety-clack sound of the typewriter that was its bumper music; loved how the cigar smoke lingered around Gleason, Jauss, Telander and Joe Mooshil; loved Gleason's voice. Part of me feels like a slice of my childhood has slipped away. RIP, Bill.

 

Bill Gleason caught the Chicago zeitgeist with his line about how when his father learned his daughter (Gleason's sister) had become a Cubs fan, the father replied, "I'd rather she woulda left da Church."

RIP, Bill.

 

Bentley's gone. Number of years ago. Believe me, I know: went to another service at the same home
that also handled the Ben
Bentley Goldberg service, the same week.

 

A longtime loyalist of the true Church of the South Side, Gleason understood
what the deal was.

 

If I'm a Chicago sports fan, give me Bill Gleason as a columnist every day of the week over some of the authors and artistes who hold down those jobs 'round the country. Shot and a beer guy in a shot and a beer town.

RIP.