Jim O'Donnell: 'Mongo' McMichael set for move to 'more friendly' home in Romeoville
FOR CLOSE TO 40 YEARS, Steve McMichael has been one of the most outrageously vibrant personalities on the Chicago sportscape.
News of his gallant battle with ALS this spring has captured the positive vibrations and prayers of football fans spanning the globe.
Now comes word that "Mongo" and family will be stepping up their fight with a move to a "more friendly" home in Southwest suburban Romeoville.
Ol' No. 76 will also be better positioned to work on a new Power Plate, a high-tech workout platform that stimulates the central nervous system, enhances bone density and assists with muscle atrophy.
Among the quiet laudables in the change of residences is William Myers Moving of Itasca. The firm is comping its services.
A "GoFundMe" organized by friends of the McMichael family continues to rise with over $200K already in. (Search "team mongo gofundme.")
And what a gesture if George McCaskey and executive associates were to schedule a halftime salute at Soldier Field this autumn simply featuring Super Bowl XX's "Bears of Stone - The Front Four":
William Perry ... Dan Hampton ... Richard Dent ... and "Mongo" McMichael.
It's a no-brainer.
STREET-BEATIN': Al Michaels - age 76 - has emerged as a leading candidate to handle p-b-p when Amazon Prime Video's Thursday night streaming NFL games kickoff in 2022. The final call of Michaels as NBC's No. 1 voice will come next Feb. 13 on Super Bowl 56 from SoFi Stadium in airport suburban Los Angeles. ...
Great that Wayne Gretzky is now signed, sealed and delivered as a studio centerpiece for Turner's upcoming NHL deal. But where do they find the back bacon to turn "The Antiseptic One" into a puckish Charles Barkley? ...
The St. Louis-based Gretzky, incidentally, has just added another role as "a brand ambassador" for BetMGM. (Single-sport betting has yet to be legalized in Canada.) ...
Mark Giangreco and Bruce Wolf together in afternoon-drive on a Chicago sports talker? (Second coming of Steve Rossi and Marty "Hello 'Dere" Allen but awfully expensive for the times - although Wolf reportedly does a dynamite Cheryl Burton.) ...
Bob Baffert did a Hall of Fame job in trampling the 2021 Triple Crown trail. Do his other six Kentucky Derby wins now merit scrutiny? (Start with War Emblem in 2002.) ...
Producers of WTTW-Channel 11's "Chicago Tonight" are badly missing a beat if they aren't booking Chris Placek of The Daily Herald post haste. His micro-reportage on the sale of Arlington Park is lapping the downtown news laggards. ...
Speaking of AP and that imperious castle of greed in Louisville, from crack Jay Hovdey - long the nation's premier thoroughbred columnist for The Daily Racing Form: "Thoroughbred race tracks should not be owned by publicly traded companies, whose prime directive is to maximize shareholder profit." (Where was that wisdom in 1999?) ...
Final note on St. Viator's 1965 state baseball runners-up: Chuck Heinrich - the team's scrappy second baseman - confirmed that sophomore Bob Stevens no-hit Peru St. Bede in a state semifinal. (Heinrich's a natural-born investigator; the Mount Prospect-bred had a long career with the Arlington Heights Police Department.) ...
Mike Conklin - the Chicago Tribune's perennial All-Pro sports dot-dot-dotter - has a superb new coffee table book out about his recent times working at a school for disabled K-7 in Tanzania. "Miracle by The Mountain" ($49) is available at amazon.com and yes, the titular mountain is Ernest Hemingway's volcanic Kilimanjaro. ...
Dick Vitale - one of the most consistently congenial men in American sports - turns 82 this week. (His improbable rise to national prominence began with an ESPN telecast of a DePaul win over visiting Wisconsin at Alumni Hall in December 1979; the network was three months old and Teddy Grubbs led Ray Meyer's Blue Demons in rebounds.) ...
And for Tom Myers and The Summer Trios League at Poplar Creek Bowl in Hoffman Estates, a techno-trancing story at Wired.com "One Man's Amazing Journey to the Center of the Bowling Ball." (It is a fascinating read - CBD gummy or not.)
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.