The Royko Thread

[21]

I'm sorry, but it's an an insult to Royko to make him into digression on a Mariotti thread.

If this doesn't work, i apologize in advance.

this is a funeral, and it ain't ozzie's.

we're talking about chicago, a tough city, royko's city.

average chicago sports fan identifies more with loudmouth ozzie or the loudmouth guy in the newspaper who is afraid to go into the locker room?

this is no contest. we're not talking about frisco. we're talking chicago.

Jason --
Why "Frisco"?
Jack London's town?
The town that rebuilt after the earhquake?
Couldn't be that a lot of gay people live there, could it?
I ask since me and Drew Bledsoe know that you have a fondness for invective similar to that beloved by Ozzie Guillen and, as you say, 80 percent of the people you know.

could i hold a comfortable conversation with ozzie? absolutely. i grew up in the same locker-room environment that made ozzie the idiot he is today, and so did many of my friends. my dad has owned a neighborhood bar my whole life. monkey-@$ mofo-er is a term of endearment at the masterpiece lounge. i am who i am -- college grad, sports columnist, spokesman for big brother big sisters, drug-free, a non-drinker 350 days of the year, and many other things.

it's 2006, and most people realize that gay people live absolutely everywhere.

i chose frisco because i tried to think of the no. 1 place where royko's style wouldn't have worked as well. came up with frisco.

Royko works anywhere because he was Royko. He'd have found those same stories anywhere. Chicago just takes newspapers more seriously.

Royko works anywhere because he was Royko. He'd have found those same stories anywhere. Chicago just takes newspapers more seriously.

Royko was a hero of mine. And he might have been a great reporter in San Fransciso. But I don't know if he'd have been, well, "Royko."

Part of who he was was uniquely Chicago.

Royko works anywhere because he was Royko. He'd have found those same stories anywhere. Chicago just takes newspapers more seriously.

This is undoubtedly another thread, although I'd guess most of the posters here never actually read Royko except in anthologies, and it was the day-to-day drama of 'what's he gonna say?' that made him great....

...but Royko worked in Chicago because Chicago politics was better than any sitcom, any soap opera, any script you could concoct.  He never screamed, he was never shrill, he just drove by and left everyone on the roadside with their hoods up waiting for the tow truck. 

Worked in Chicago because Chicagoans love their politics. Would it work in San Diego, or Houston, or Denver? He would still be great....not sure if people would care as much.  Didn't Downey try that column in LA? It's just a different landscape.

Sorry for the digression.

Excuse me for returning to Royko a minute. I just opened his anthology, "Sez Who? Sez Me." The first column has a section of reporting and writing that could be pertinent here, considering that Jay has said that Ozzie once went nude on him....

Royko wrote about a streaker who screamed from the entry stairs at the Billy Goat Tavern one midnight in 1974. After the streaker left, the offended proprietor Sam Sianis said he hoped more streakers came. He had a plan, and Royko reported Sam's plan...

        He extended his hand, waist high and with the palm upward. Then he clenched his fingers into a tight fist, as if squeezing. And he rotated his wrist as if twisting.
       "That's what I gonna do to that sommabeesh. And when I get done with him, he won't streak no more. He won't do nothing no more."
       A printer flinched at the thought and said: "You can't do that, Sam."
       Sam looked indignant. "Why not? He deserve it, don't he?"
      "Yeah," the printer said, "but you serve food here. I wouldn't let you serve me nothing after you do that."
       Sam considered that. Then he reached behind him and grabbed a pair of canvas gloves he sells to circulation truck helpers for seventy-five cents a pair.
       "I'll put on one of these," he said. "OK?"
       "OK," said the fastidious printer.
       Sianis put on the glove, snapped his hand shut, and looked happy. "I hope he come back."

 

[DyePack]

Overrated.

 

[Dave Kindred]

And Royko once suggested, during the Harding-Kerrigan feud, that Chicago's sportswriters, including Mariotti, should stop typing long enough to take some Prozac.

Incidentally, "Sez Who?" includes 9 columns on sports that are both funny and perceptive.

 

[daemon]

I've never read anything by Royko.

But instead of outraged replies, anyone know where I can find a selection of his work? Preferably online?

 

[tonysoprano]

21... I suppose it's a little form of journalism blasphemy to throw around a legend's name so loosely, but it didn't bother me.

The mere thought of putting Jay's name in the same sentence with Royko would be like mentioning John Daly with Nicklaus, Lindsay Lohan with Katharine Hepburn or Flea with Eric Clapton. Just doesn't make any sense, and never will.

 

[Ace]

Mariotti should have at least sent Slats Grobnik into the locker room for him. That could have been funny.

 

[Orange Hat Bobcat]

I've never read anything by Royko.

But instead of outraged replies, anyone know where I can find a selection of his work? Preferably online?

Here a few columns from one of his books. Just go to any library and you're bound to find some collections (my local library has three).

 

[Ben_Hecht]

At least you knew that with Royko, Slats Grobnick was fictitious.

You had no such assurance with Breslin's myriad, god-how-convenient sources of "quotes" . . .

 

[wickedwritah]

Try <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/104-1400998-6998363?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=stripbooks%3Arelevance-above&field-keywords=royko">this</a> link, Daemon.

 

[PopeDirkBenedict]

I own One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko and it is easily one of my favorite books. A lot of his columns hold up really well. I wish I could find online somewhere the column Royko wrote when Sinatra sent a flunky to deliver MR a letter basically telling him to stop lying about him. Royko wrote a hiliarious column, where he used a finely-sharpened scalpel to give Sinatra death by a thousand stilletto cuts.

Here is a column of Royko's about Jackie Robinson's debut that I found online (it's the second column). Enjoy -- it is a masterpiece.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/730719.html

 

[slappy4428]

I've never really thought about it until now, but he and the Detroit News's Pete Waldmeir were probably the reason I got into journalism.
When I was a freshman in college, I used to have talks about Chicago with my suitemate.. one day he turned to me and said I knew more about Chicago than he did and he lived there -- all from reading Royko...
"Boss" is priceless; his columns were better...

 

[Terd Ferguson]

I love Mike Royko.
Royko was syndicated in my local paper (located many moons away from Chicago) and I read him whenever I could. He and Lewis Grizzard were both huge influences in my love of newspapers and eventual pursuit of a career in journalism. They both ran locally and I started reading the paper because of them.

Glad to see Royko get some shout outs.

I owe a lot to that guy - a guy I never met who wrote from and about a city I've never set foot in. Funny how that works, huh?