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Can Miss
Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 10:31AM Randy Richardson: Author & Essayist
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By Donald G. Evans
When I started the Lovable Losers Literary Revue, I didn’t know where it would go, how it would turn out, or whether, honestly, it would ever materialize. It was a concept. My first move was to contact a few friends and allies I thought would be interested in the concept, and who might band together to make the thing a reality. Randy was at the top of that list.
“It definitely surpassed my expectations,” Randy says. “It’s just so hard to do a reading series, I didn’t think we’d get anywhere near the level of talent we were getting, and then build on it every month. That sort of carried on to the book. It started out as a small idea…”
Randy was at the top of the list in part because I’d admired his Wrigleyville murder mystery Lost in the Ivy, and in part because I was impressed with his efforts to lead, as president, the Chicago Writers Association. I knew him as somebody who would silently dedicate himself to a cause he believed in, and I thought he might come to believe in this cause. His countless duties included designing and maintaining the Web site, helping plan each event, recruiting guests, promoting the series to local media, and editing blog essays.
But right from the start, more than anything, we needed material. If we were to have a blog that would be a farm system for an eventual anthology, we needed quality posts to represent the concept. One of the first blog essays was Randy’s “Of Fairy Tales and Felix Pie,” which found its way into Cubbie Blues.
As self-appointed editor of that essay, I offered Randy extensive criticism and advice. The first draft I saw was good. But my hope was to work through multiple drafts in an attempt to match the piece to my vision for the series and anthology, and to help Randy hit all the high notes. He worked through a half-dozen drafts—each draft getting a little more personal, more focused, and tighter as regards the loser’s theme.
“All my non-fiction writing is based on my journalism background,” says Randy, who earned a graduate degree from University of Illinois before attending law school. “The way I learned as a journalist pretty much drives my non-fiction writing, I’d started doing a lot of essay writing, especially about my son Tyler. [“Pie”] was the first real expansion of my non-fiction writing.”
Randy is the kind of Cubs fan who really cares about the team. He gets his hopes up, and when the inevitable fall comes he takes it hard. Randy, who moved with his family to Chicago’s south suburbs in 1969, adopted the Cubs and never faltered in his decision.
The “Pie” essay begins with his obsessive interest in prospects. His baseball card collection divides, essentially, into two phases: childhood and law school. While grinding his way through law school in DeKalb, Randy used the flexibility of his schedule and his precious disposable income to acquire a vast quantity of Cubs cards, in particular those “future stars” that might someday appreciate in value—providing the prospects become real stars. While other law students were indulging in weekend keg parties or hitting the books, Randy and a fellow Cubs fan/would-be lawyer were traveling to card conventions to supplement their growing collection.
“For me, the only valuable cards were Cubs cards,” Randy says. “I was always attracted to any hot prospects coming up. I was like a gambler looking for hot tips, always looking for a scoop. I would almost always lose my shirt. The cards would be worth nothing because the players would never pan out.”
These rookie players, even more so than big free-agent signings, embody the renewable hopes of Cubs fans. If an unknown quantity coming up through the system can realize his expectations, fulfill his promise, then a suspect lineup can all of a sudden become formidable. Randy’s essay resurrects the ghosts of those rookies past—Don Young, Matt Alexander, Joe Wallis, Kevin Orie, Scot Thompson, Earl Cunningham, Lance Dickson, and so forth—while focusing on the latest, greatest rookie—Felix Pie.
“This essay brings that all together: my love of baseball, Tyler, my journalism research,” Randy says. “The quirky bio brought it full circle. I like to see baseball the way it was when I was a kid, not as I do now.”
Randy’s enthusiasm for his baseball card collection has waned, though he still has dozens of Brooks Kieshnick cards collecting dust. Anybody want to make an offer?
“When I was in college, I had all that spare time,” Randy says. “Now I don’t have whole Saturday afternoons to spend at card shows. I kind of realized it was immature, but I might start again with Tyler.”
Working so closely with Randy on the essay, I had natural doubts about my ability to judge the essay objectively. I was heartened when the Chicago Tribune’s William Hageman singled out Randy’s essay, which he read at the debut Lovable Losers Literary Revue, as “especially touching.”
Randy read his other contribution to the anthology, a humorous sketch of three forgettable 50s-era Cubs coincidentally named Moe, at the final Lovable Losers event in June, as a fill-in for Jonathan Alter, who got called away at the last minute by Newsweek to cover an important speech by Sen. Barack Obama during his campaign for president.
The Moe essay, while not as ambitious as the Pie piece, is a perfect fit for the anthology’s theme and takes on an era in Cubs’ history that no other writer had tackled.
“I was doing research for the Cubs history timeline for the Web site,” Randy says. “I have this book of Topps baseball cards of Chicago Cubs that was put out by Surf laundry detergent and I kept coming across the name Moe, when I was searching through the late '50s and early '60s. I thought it was weird, and thought there has to be a story here." In the Topps book, Surf advertises itself as The Laundry Detergent That Removes Both Dirt and Odors. It couldn't remove the stink from those dreadful Cubs teams of the late '50s and early '60s, though.
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Reader Comments (2)
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