I Win

My friend Mr. Cub called yesterday to pass along the news of Joe Pepitone’s death at the age of 82. “How much you want to bet he gets a nice obit in the papers tomorrow?” and I did not mean the New York Times. Mr. Cub had forgotten that Pepitone spent two full seasons and parts of two others playing on the North Side of town. Sure enough, today’s Sun-Times ran said obit, courtesy of the AP, which took up most of a page. The only local angle, probably added after someone at the S-T went through the clipping file on Pepitone, was that he once owned a bar on Division Street. The NYT obit offered more on Pepitone’s time on the North Side. If Pepitone was telling the truth, the Bleacher Bums showered him with joints and cocaine when he played the outfield at Wrigley. Pepitone told Rolling Stone in a 2015 interview that he would then hide his stash(es) in the ivy and retrieve his drugs after the game. Yup, that’s the guy a Chicago newspaper decided to remember rather than Dave Nicholson, Joe Horlen, Gary Peters….