Alfons and "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request" by Steve Goodman

If there were ever a bigger Cub fan than Alfons, I'd sure like to know who that might be.

So, it was kind of strange Monday morning, while I was listening to Len Braemer on Chicago's WXRT and he played Steve Goodman's "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request."  That is a very fitting song to remember Alfons by, who took a lot of grief from all the Sox fans at Donovan's Reef in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin.  But his devotion never wavered. 

Just about every day you could find Al at the bar, sucking down beers and playing that NTN game.  And, if there was a Cub game on, woe be the person who tried to change it as it would be the Wrath of Al.

And, there he would be with that blue Cubs jacket.  Well, seasonally.  If not the Cubs jacket, it would a Bears jacket, his other team.

The words to the song hit home.  WXRT is celebrating its 40th year of broadcasting Chicago's Finest Rock and going back to one year each weekday and spotlighting it.  Monday was 1981.  Braemer dedicated the song to Steve's mother, Annette Goodman, who still lives on Chicago's Northwest Side.  The song payed at 9:33 AM.  It sent shivers down my spine, having learned that Al had just died the day before.

Some of the words that hit home:

"Do the Cubbies still play
In their ivy covered burial ground"

Give me a double header funeral in Wrigley Field
Make six bullpen pitchers carry my coffin
and six groundskeepers clear my path.
Have the umpires bark me out at every base
in all their holy wrath.

It's a beautiful day for a funeral
Hey Ernie let's play two

Build a big fire on home plate out of your Louisville Sluggers baseball bats
and toss my coffin in
Let my ashes blow in the beautiful snow
From the prevailing 30 mile an hour southwest wind.

That Pretty Well Covers It for Ya, Alfons.