Aurora man’s book about Chicago baseball a trip down memory lane – Chicago Tribune
The inspirations for John O’Donnell’s two books about Chicago baseball are as different as the teams he loves.
The idea behind “Like Night and Day,” published in 2009, came as the Benet Academy English teacher was driving on the Eisenhower to his home in Aurora and saw a couple in a convertible — one wearing a Sox hat, the other, a Cubs hat.
O’Donnell, who has also taught in Plano, Aurora and Elgin over the years, focused that first book on the uniqueness of these two teams he’s enjoyed watching from the time he was a kid growing up with Mom as a Cubs fan and Dad as a Sox fan.
His second book, published this summer, came directly from his mother: Four years ago, she ran across an old suitcase in his childhood Chicago home stuffed with yellowed programs and scorecards from those many games he attended over the years — each with a story to tell.
“I would rather have seen that, then it stuffed with hundred-dollar bills,” O’Donnell said, as the memories — and data — came flooding back.
The focus of “From Banks to Blow-ups” is Chicago baseball in the 1970s, what 58-year-old O’Donnell describes as that “kind of forgotten time between hippies and yuppies, Woodstock and Starbucks.”
While North Siders and South Siders might want to forget that era, he insists “you would be missing out on a lot of fun” that included colorful characters, controversial managers and wacky uniforms.
O’Donnell bills his second book as “a transitional period” in baseball that went from old-school Leo Durocher, who tried managing players as if it were still the 1930s, to maverick White Sox owner Bill Veeck, who would try anything, including blowing up disco records to get fans into the stands.
O’Donnell, who also teaches creative nonfiction at Waubonsee Community College, wrote “From Banks to Blow-ups” with a “Christmas Story” bent — a young man coming of age who, no matter what else was going on in his life, viewed baseball as his safe place.
It was obvious in my chat with O’Donnell that his feelings for both teams and their fans run deep. Still, he also admitted to being more of a Cubbie these days, and not just because of win-loss records.
While saying “I had my doubts” about the long-term plan laid out by the new management, he says it has “passed with flying colors.” And manager Joe Maddon, he added, is the key to this turnaround as he figured out how to keep players’ heads in the game.
No matter what the score or standing in the league, he insisted, each and every game played in either stadium — no matter how far you go back — contains its own drama and uniqueness, which in turn is what pulls so strongly on our emotions.
While the book — for which sportscaster Pat Hughes wrote the forward — can serve as a refresher course for those who loved baseball through the 1970s, O’Donnell notes it can also be an entertaining history lesson for fans who came later.
The long-time teacher said he had a couple of goals in writing this second book, including selling enough copies to pay for at least one semester of daughter Julie’s second year of medical school.
And “as cheesy as it may sound,” O’Donnell added, he also wanted to simply make people happy.
“When we start talking about the stories in the book, it never fails,” he said.
People remember. And then they smile.
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