Royko

By Jim Tuohy

Mike Royko was standing near the grill at the Billy Goat one afternoon talking to a rewriteman from the Sun-Times. The man had recently written a story that had appeared in the paper without his name on it. Instead the byline was that of the reporter who had gathered the facts.

The rewriteman, who was new at the paper, told Royko that a pompous editor had pointed out how well written the story was, not knowing who really wrote it. The editor was, in effect, giving the new employee a lecture in Journalism with his own story.

“So I told him I wrote it, thereby deflating him. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut, been a bigger man,” said the rewriteman.

“Fuck that,” Royko said. “Stick it to the asshole. Always call those mopes on shit like that.”

Then he told a story.

Writing “Boss, Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago” was as hard on him as any work he had ever done.

“Not writing the book,” he said. “I loved writing the book, but as the deadline approached I was spending more time on it. In the meantime I was putting out the column every day and I didn’t want the quality to suffer just because I was involved in a personal project. It wouldn’t be fair to the readers. I didn’t want to take a leave of absence to finish the book because that wouldn’t be fair to the readers either. So I had to work hard on the columns and hard on the book and when it was finished I didn’t even know what I had. I didn’t know if it would sell.

“Then the pressure was off and I’m just doing normal work and then the book comes out and it’s a hit and for the first time we’ve got some money and Carol and I take like a belated honeymoon to Europe.

“We go first class on a ship and one night I’m at the bar and there’s some guy in there talking about Chicago politics. He’s a blowhard, loud. I don’t say much, but finally he says something that is completely wrong. It’s just wrong, so I say ‘That’s wrong. I’m from Chicago and you’re wrong.’

“He says, ‘Your trouble is you don’t understand Chicago politics, how it really works. There’s a new book out by a guy named Mike Royko and if you read that, then you’ll know something and then come and talk to me.’

“I put my hand out, grab his and say. ‘My name is Mike Royko asshole.’

“Always stick it to them.”

***

One of the funniest promotions Royko ever worked out was The First Annual Mixed Breed (Mongrel) Dog show of 1967. It was conceived of shortly after the Westminster Dog Show had concluded at Madison Square Garden. In a column Royko described the purpose of the show and the judging categories, including Best of Show, which would resemble nothing ever seen in formal dog shows. Among other ribbons to be won were one to the dog that answered the least amount of commands and another: The Dog That Barks the Longest for No Known Reason.

Promotional events at which a columnist participates are a good way for newspapers to test his popularity. Royko always drew, especially in the early days, more than anticipated. There were hundreds of entries at Soldier Field on a sunny weekend afternoon, and with them some of the ugliest, ill-mannered dogs in the midwest (The dog that was eventually named Best of Show, an astoundingly unattractive animal, was described in the Daily News by Van Gordon Sauter as resembling a foot scraper). A writer doing a freelance piece encountered Royko on the infield, somewhere between dogs barking for unknown reasons and those disregarding instructions. Eager dog owners were holding their dogs for inspection and asking dozens of questions. He looked uncharacteristically discombobulated.

“This is the worst thing I’ve ever experienced,” he said. “All these people are serious about these dogs. They really want them to win these categories. They don’t see anything funny about it. I’m never doing this again.”

There never was a Second Annual Mixed Breed Dog Show.

***

Mike Royko and Marshall Field, the owner of the Daily News and Sun-Times, were friendly and often fished together. Deep sea fishing was a passion for both of them, but while Royko had other abilities, such as being the best newspaper columnist in America, Field had only a desultory interest in the business Royko loved.

In the early 1980s William Wrigley, whose family had owned the Chicago Cubs for years, was undergoing a messy divorce. Royko, as he did all stories everywhere and in many different publications, followed the Wrigley matter closely. He became convinced Wrigley needed cash and might be willing to sell the Cubs. He had an idea.

“See, I saw the Cubs as an opportunity to fuck the Tribune. I would arrange to buy them, and then take the radio and television rights away from WGN. I went to Charlie 0. Finley (the former owner of the Oakland A’s and a drinking buddy of Royko’s at the Billy Goat). I asked him how much he thought the Cubs would sell for if they were put on the market. He said around $21 or $22 million. I said if I could put a deal together would he be general manager. He’s the smartest baseball guy around. He said yes but he wants 15 per cent. I went to Marshall and said, ‘Why don’t you buy them. Then you take them off Tribune radio and television and put them on WFLD-TV (Then the Field-owned tv station in town, Channel 32). Without the Cubs, Channel 9 isn’t worth a shit. And it would have made something out of 32. He says he doesn’t want to spend $22 million but he will put up most of it, if I can get the rest. I went back to Finley and asked if he could get other investors and he said, yeah, easy. So I’m working like a son-of-bitch making all these calls, trying to do it in a hurry. I’m going to take one percent, just so I can say I own the Chicago Cubs. I’ve stressed the urgency to Marshall, telling him we don’t want anyone to find out. Well, I get it all arranged on a Friday and I call Marshall, and he’s gone. Deep sea fishing in the Caribbean and is unreachable.”

In the meantime, Don Rueben, the influential and shrewd lawyer who represents the Tribune, learned the Sun-Times might buy the Cubs.

“Rueben hears the rumor and immediately grasps what it all means. That was Saturday. On Monday the Tribune bought the Cubs from Wrigley for $21.5 million. I never could get hold of Marshall.

“Later that week, on a Thursday I think, I’m having lunch at the Tavern Club and Marshall is there, back from fishing. The Trib’s got the gaddamn Cubs. He saunters over to my table and says, ‘Well, Mike, maybe the Bears will be up for sale.’

“I said, ‘Marshall, get the fuck away from me.'”

* * *

Around the time the Chicago Daily News was folding, in March of 1978, a writer was sitting with Royko in the corner at the Billy Goat and Bobby Shriver walked in. The son of R. Sargeant Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Bobby had been at the City News Bureau when Royko had hired him as his legman.

Royko suddenly cut off the conversation with the writer and joined Shriver at the end of the bar.

“Hey, Royko,” said the writer, “you see someone more famous come into the room and you drop you’re old friends?” It was obvious the writer meant the comment as a joke, but Royko exploded.

“Don’t ever accuse me of being a starfucker,” he yelled. “This is my legman and I want to talk to him. He’s a good newspaperman.”

It turned out that what Royko wanted to talk about was Shriver’s job. Royko was going over to the Sun-Times and, in the complicated union-management arrangements at the time, had the ability to protect one job, his legman. His first legman, Terry Shaffer, was then a reporter at the Daily News and was going to lose his job. So Royko was telling Bobby Shriver that in order to keep Shaffer, who had a family, working he was making Shaffer his legman again, putting Shriver out of a job. Shriver took it well. Terry Shaffer became Royko’s first and last Daily News legman.

Royko made a lot of phone calls on behalf of Daily News people who would not be absorbed by the Sun-Times.

* * *

In the mid -1970s, Royko, out late drinking on Lincoln, got into an argument with a group of people, mostly actors, in a booth. It climaxed with his throwing catsup from a bottle onto the fur coat of a pretty girl. The tavern owner insisted the bartender call the cops. Royko was taken to jail and charged with battery, a felony. He stayed in jail until Sam Sianis arrived in the morning and bailed him out.

The matter dragged out in court longer than it should have, the owner and actors seemingly enjoying the publicity. It should have been an easy matter to settle.

“The woman’s not the problem,” said Royko on the phone one day. “She’s satisfied. I’ve written her a letter of apology. Christ, it’s a collector’s item. I said I was the worst piece of shit that ever lived. I groveled. We offered to buy her a new fur coat. She said she didn’t need a new one, just pay for the cleaning on the old one. We did. It’s the guys. They say, ‘He behaved very badly. He was drunk. Of course I was drunk. That’s what I thought saloons were for.”

In the end, that was exactly the defense used by Julius Echeles, Royko’s colorful lawyer. Dram shop laws require a bar to refuse service to an obviously drunken person who enters it. Royko had three witnesses who said they had drunk with him at various places through the night, and he was drunker at each place and blasted when he went into the Lincoln Avenue bar. The case was settled.

At about the same time there was another incident on Lincoln Avenue in which Royko cracked a window somehow.

Michaela Tuohy, who wrote a gossip column for the Reader called “Hot Tripe”, described the incident as follows: “Mike Royko, window shopping along Lincoln Avenue, found the one he wanted to break.”

Royko did not talk to her for a year, even though they were fairly good friends. Royko called Tuohy “Chicago’s broken nose beauty,” which was a Nelson Algren phrase for a particular look the city has.

* * *

Nelson Algren and Royko were close. A group, including Royko, had worked on getting a section of Evergreen Street in Algren’s old neighborhood renamed for him. Not those funny little brown vanity signs they have now, but the regular street sign. They were successful in getting a block renamed but the residents complained it was too confusing having one block named Algren and all the rest of the street named Evergreen. It was changed back.

Royko was also close to Studs Terkel. Royko got the new Mayor Daley, Richard M., to name a bridge for Terkel. The Division Street bridge just west of Halsted, crossing onto Goose Island, is now the Studs Terkel Bridge. Royko attended the dedication ceremony.

“Richie likes me, but don’t tell anyone,” he said conspiratorially. “When he was first running for state’s attorney he was visiting the Tribune editorial board, where they question candidates on their views. They asked me to sit in. I could see he was really nervous. So I asked the first question, a real soft one that he would have no trouble with, and he was relieved and handled himself well after that. He knew what I had done and we have gotten along o.k. since.”

How about getting a Nelson Algren Street again?

‘That’s next,” said Royko.

* * *

Royko was standing at the bar at O’Rourke’s on a Saturday afternoon making a list of the 10 Biggest Assholes in the United States and another list of the 10 Biggest Assholes in Chicago.

He was asking people for nominations but he was rejecting almost all of them, either because he already had them on the list or because of arcane reasons only he could decipher.

A man and a woman, out on a date, came in and talked to Paul Sequeira, a photographer who had worked at the Daily News with Royko. Royko’s wife Carol had died and he had not yet remarried. Royko asked the newcomers for Asshole nominations. They were polite and good natured but looked at Royko as if he were some kind of indelicate creature not to be approached. Then Sequeira introduced them and their attitude changed, especially the man’s. “You’re Mike Royko? Wow!” That sort of thing.

Royko, engaging the woman, for some reason did a 30-second denunciation of attorneys. He asked her occupation.

“I’m an attorney,” she said.

That exchange did not seem to get them off on bad footing, however, because as time went on the conversation became much more intimate. The man seemed unaware, so glad was he to be near Mike Royko and be able to say a word to him every once in a while. Finally, a newspaperman standing nearby began singing the lyrics to “Luck Be a Lady Tonight.”

“A lady doesn’t leave her escort. It isn’t fair, it isn’t nice. A lady doesn’t wander all over the room and blow on some other guy’s dice…So let’s keep the party polite…Stick with me, baby, I’m the fella you came in with…”

And suddenly they were gone, as the man talked to Sequeira. He looked around, and cognizance slid down his face.

“I think my girl just left with Mike Royko,” he said.

“Now you’ve learned something about the girl,” said the singing newspaperman.

* * *

Royko, who never did as much television as he could have, was a special commentator on Channel 7 the night of the mayoral primary in February of 1979. Mayor Michael Bilandic, who in a power grab had succeeded Richard J. Daley, was a heavy favorite to beat Jane Byrne.

The early returns as reported by television and radio gave Bilandic the expected lead. One by one the stations were declaring him the projected winner. Television political reporters were doing the same thing, explaining why it looked like Bilandic.

Except Royko. He sat on the outer edge of the set, beyond the big-voiced anchorman and political reporters, saying little, looking at scraps of paper, working figures on his wrist calculator.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think Bilandic has enough to do it. The strong Byrne areas are still to come in.”

He was the first person on television to go against the tide and call a Byrne victory. Later that week, sitting at the far end of the bar at the Billy Goat, near the VIP room, Royko talked to a writer from the Chicago Lawyer. What had he picked up that the television computers had not? asked the writer.

“I was just doing the usual thing,” he said. “Looking at the precinct-by-precinct results coming in from the City News Bureau, making some phone calls. Keeping an eye on the key precincts.”

A photographer from the Washington Journalism Review, which was doing a profile on Royko, was snapping pictures as he talked. Sam Sianis was called over to get into the photograph. The Chicago Lawyer guy, out of frame, asked why Royko did television that night.

“They called and asked. I don’t do anything election night, anyway, besides follow the results. I figured I could do the same thing on the set.”

They pay?

“Yeah.”

How much?

“Seven hundred and fifty. I know. They got a good deal.”

***

“You’re right,” said Royko in the Billy Goat early one evening as he stood near the angle of the bar under the always-on television. The Cubs were preparing to lose a night game. “Daley’s decision to run for state’s attorney and then against Byrne was a defensive one. The Daleys had nothing against Byrne at first. Sis Daley went to her inauguration and was all smiles with her. The Daleys were happy with Richie where he was, in the state senate. He was becoming more acceptable to the liberals since his dad died, making deals with Dawn Clark Netch and that shit. He was in no hurry. He was young and could run for almost any job in the state, including governor.

“Then Byrne listened to Vrdolyak who convinced her that Daley was the ultimate enemy and she began carving up his ward, firing his people, taking away patronage. To protect himself he had to take a counter measure, which was run for state’s attorney, a job I don’t think he ever thought about before. Mayors have to be careful with state’s attorneys or they’ll be facing a shitpot full of indictments.”

* * *

On a cold, snowy February night, Royko talked about writing books. “I wrote Boss because of my agent, who was really a great guy. He encouraged me. But he died, and I’ve never wanted to work with anyone else. I don’t think I’ll ever write another book.”

He never did, although his columns were published in several books, including “Sez Who? Sez Me,” which was sold at the Billy Goat. They were on a ledge near the television with a sign that said Mike Royko’s book was on sale here, autographed.

“They printed about 70,000 books,” Royko said. “Then the publisher calls me up and says they’re going to put it on remainder and do I want some at a low price. I say yeah, ship ’em all to me. I figured they’d send me a few boxes, but when they arrived the boxes of books filled my driveway. There were hundreds, thousands. I never saw so goddamn many books.

“So I brought them to Sam. I figure this is the natural place to sell the book because the first 10 columns are about Sam and the Billy Goat. I always did think the way publishers sell books is backwards. I think they ought to sell them in saloons. The author’s there, people are drinking and have money. They come up to you and say, ‘Where can I get your book? Right here. Twenty bucks. You don’t have to tell them to go to some bookstore. The next morning they’re not going to remember about some bookstore.”

Royko was good at inscriptions. Larry Green, a former Daily news reporter and editor, asked Royko to sign one of his books for his Jewish mother in Michigan. “Mrs. Green,” Royko wrote, “Larry’s a nice boy. But he’s kind of skinny.”

Royko often wrote introductions for other writers’s books, and sometimes blurbs for jacket covers. Publishers say one of the hardest things to get writers to do is write blurbs. For some reason they put it off, perhaps thinking it will take no time at all, and then the deadline for printing the jacket cover passes.

Once Royko had promised an author a blurb, and the deadline was fast approaching. The writer called Royko at his office.

“Mike, they’re pushing us; you want me to write the blurb for you, so you don’t have to fuck with it?”

“Yeah, you write it and call me back and read it to me,” Royko said.

The writer struggled for a while to say something terse and Roykoesque but not trying to top him. Fifteen words or so. He called Royko.

“Not bad. I’ll call you back.”

Twenty minutes later he called. He had written two blurbs, neither of which resembled the one the author had written. They were better and longer, both about 60 words. Pride of authorship.

A week later Royko saw the writer in a saloon.

“Which one did they take?”

The writer told him.

“I thought they would. You can keep the other one and use it some other time.”

“Don’t worry I will,” said the author.

When the book came out some months later, there was an autograph party and then a lot of people gathered at the Billy Goat. Royko was there and got into a long discussion on Christianity with the author’s very Catholic cousin. The discussion soon escalated into an argument and then into a potential fistfight as both men took off their coats. The author’s attractive daughter stepped between them, and Royko, with an eye for the ladies, began to chat with her, forgetting all about the fight, leaving the cousin poised to defend his faith but having an opponent whose restless mind had wandered onto other topics.

* * *

Mike Royko, who had left the Chicago Sun-Times when it was bought by Rupert Murdoch, stood near the stairs of the Billy Goat arguing with Bernie Judge, who had left the Tribune and become city editor of the Sun-Times.

The main points of contention in this alcohol-enhanced confrontation were: Royko said Judge was a sell-out for going to work for Murdoch, and Judge said Royko was a sell-out for going to work for the Tribune, the company Royko had so long and publicly despised. Voices rose, volume increased. Bad words. Sam Sianis went over and said to cut it out, they were acting like children. The contestants mumbled and parted. Judge considered the situation. He went to Royko.

“Mike, Sam’s right. We’re acting like children. I’m sorry,” He extended his hand.

“Fuck you,” said Royko.

Judge swung at him and Sam dashed over, got Judge away from Royko and out into a cab, taking his car keys away from him. The next day Judge asked Larry Finley, who was going to lunch at the Billy Goat, to get his car keys back.

“You tell Bernie I want to talk to him personally,” said Sam. Judge stopped in after work, creating the odd situation of the city editor of a major metropolitan daily getting a lecture from a saloon owner before he could get the keys to his car back.

Royko received no lecture.

* * *

The entire Tribune Tower was made a no smoking zone. There was only one exception. Mike Royko’s office. So if you were a good friend of his he would let you come in a take a smoke break.

Not long after the no smoking edict, Royko had a party at his house in Winnetka. All the big executives were there, and so were the working stiffs, reporters and former Royko legmen. Royko had his own edict: all non-smokers could gather out on the patio; all smokers could smoke anywhere inside.

“I loved it,” said reporter Susie Kuczka, a former Royko legman. “Every time I’d pass John Madigan, the guy who made the building no smoking, I’d blow smoke in his face.”

* * *

The day Mike Royko died a reporter sat in the Billy Goat by himself thinking how a good part of Chicago journalism had also died.

But maybe not. Guys like Mike Royko pass on to everyone who knew them a bit of journalistic integrity, sort of like Mr. Roberts and Ensign Pulver. And that can be passed on again.

Back in 1966, when Royko was moving into a position of prominence among the city columnists, a young reporter from the City News Bureau asked him if fame made it harder for him to get information; were people more guarded?

“No, it’s easier,” Royko said. “They know who you are, and you have some power. But you have to quote them accurately. If you’re accurate, even if you catch ’em with their pants down, they’ll accept it. As long as you don’t attack their family–you know, say somebody’s wife is ugly or something.

“See, politicians know how the game is played. If they fuck up, the press might catch them.  So if you’re accurate, they live with it. Just don’t make up shit, or get it wrong. They might even buy you a drink when they run into you.”

A few years later the reporter did a story on a politician that was not entirely favorable. The politician telephoned. He said he wished some quotes that put him in a bad light had not been used. Then he said:

“But what the hell, I said it. And you caught it. Let’s meet. I’ll buy you a drink.”

                                                                              

Editor’s Note: James Tuohy, an award-winning journalist, is a veteran of UPI, The Chicago Sun-Times and CBS News. He is the former associate editor of the Chicago Lawyer, an investigative monthly that broke many of the stories that led to the federal Greylord investigation. He is the Co-author of Greylord, Justice Chicago Style. He was a friend of Mike Royko for 30 years.

(This article was first published in the May 15, 1997 issue of New City).