Behind The Music

The story of "Go Cubs Go"

Twenty-three years ago, a dying Cub fan wrote and recorded an anthem to North Side optimism called "Go Cubs Go."

The song became a local sports standard, but it's enjoying a big revival this season as part of a new tradition after home victories.

[...]

Fabian said his first plan was to ask Cub fan Jimmy Buffett to change the words of his hit "Margaritaville" for a song called "Wrigleyville."

But Fabian said this idea wasted away when he heard program host Roy Leonard interviewing Steve Goodman one morning in February 1984.

He realized that not only did Goodman have better hometown-fan cred than Buffett (who grew up in the Deep South), but also that commissioning Goodman to write the theme would be "a fun, good-natured tweak" at the excessively earnest Dallas Green.

Goodman had the musical bona fides. He'd been recording, writing and touring on the folk circuit for more than a dozen years, and was best known to casual music fans as the composer of "The City of New Orleans" ("Good mornin', America, how are ya?"), a Top 20 hit for Arlo Guthrie in 1972. (Music video link)

Fabian didn't have to ask twice. A week later, Goodman, for whom experimental leukemia treatments had failed, was back at the station, guitar in hand. The sunny, bouncy, infectious "Go Cubs Go" "flat out blew us away," Fabian said.

"For all its exuberance, the song was merely the alter ego of `Dying Cub Fan,'" wrote Clay Eals in "Facing the Music" ($29.95, ECW Press), a Goodman biography published earlier this year. "In its fatalism (`Dying Cub Fan') was as devoted and affectionate as `Go Cubs Go' was in its blind faith."

Team and station executives loved it and so did the fans, particularly when the 1984 team began more often than not making good on the song's promise that "the Cubs are gonna win today."

WGN released a charity single that sold 74,000 copies, more than any other album or song Goodman ever recorded, Eals (left) said in an interview this week. "But as the team and his song were going uphill, Steve was going downhill. It became a race to the end of the season."

Goodman lost that race.

He died on Sept. 20, 1984, four days before the Cubs clinched the National League East Division title with a victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. The only consolation was that death spared him the agony of watching the Cubs blow a two-game lead in the league championship series.

[...]

Meanwhile, one Cub fan who is particularly savoring the "Go Cubs Go" renaissance is Minnette Goodman, the singer's mother.

At her home in the city she watches on TV at the end of games as the players dance joyously on the field where her son's ashes were scattered many years ago.

"It blows my mind," she said. "The Cubs win a game, and I get to hear my kid sing again. It's rewarding and comforting at the same time."

Behind The Music