Bleacher Bums Forum

Continuing the Pat Hughes Cubs Hall Of Fame discussion

WGN had a number of things that were staples of most broadcasts:

• Wayne (and sometimes Kathleen) Messmer singing the national anthem
• Who was the guy who then walked out to the mound and placed a ball on the pitching rubber?
• Showing Dorothy during the Seventh Inning Stretch
• Arne Harris and his white shoes
• “Lake” shots
• Birthday announcements
• Steve Stone and Arne saying they’d visited the local library when Harry knew they’d been to the racetrack
• Stone and his pharmacist “Howard”
• “Deuces are wild” whenever the scoreboard allowed
• Attractive young women in the bleachers
• Garden Claw commercials
• The ball hawks on Waveland
• A tow truck hauling another car away on Waveland
• The Waveland fire station
• Eamus Catuli
• The 20 minute Leadoff Man show that was 15 minutes of commercials
• Games starting at 1:20 instead of 1:05 because WGN was able to charge prime time ad rates during the daytime
• Harry going to the radio booth for the middle three innings
• Ronnie Woo Woo
• Last, but certainly not least, the Shawon-o-meter