Yes, I am taking credit for this one.

In March, I did a column asking why MLB didn’t take advantage of the Sunday in between the Final Four semis on Saturday and the national championship game on Monday.

I wrote:

MLB has scheduled 14 openers on Monday, and all but three are at night. Many of those fans will be working or commuting home during those games. It never made sense to me that this glorious day always is on a weekday.

Here’s a way to remedy the situation: MLB should schedule a grand Opening Day festival on the Sunday between the NCAA Final Four semifinals on Saturday and the title game on the following Monday. Start with noon games in the East and go through ESPN’s Sunday night telecast.

Technically, there will be an opener on Sunday night, as St. Louis-Cubs kick off the 2015 season on ESPN. That’s great, but what about the rest of the day?

From a TV perspective, the Sunday afternoon on Final Four weekend might be the deadest of the year. It definitely is my least favorite. After several Sundays of March Madness, there’s the letdown of not having any big college basketball games to watch. It is the Sunday before the Masters, so no compelling golf. The NBA and NHL are grinding down their endless regular-seasons, desperately waiting for the infusion of the energy that comes with the playoffs.

Meanwhile, if the weather holds true to form, the false spring will prevent a significant portion of the country, including those stuck in Chicago, from enjoying outdoor activities. Like me, they are homebound just dying to watch some interesting sports programming on this empty Sunday.

Given all those variables, it makes so much sense for MLB to go with wall-to-wall openers on that Sunday. Baseball fans would devour a slate of Sunday Opening Day games, and a high volume of non-traditional viewers likely would tune in because the sports TV programming is so weak on that day. Who knows, perhaps some of them would get hooked and become more avid baseball fans?

*******

Well lo and behold, somebody liked my idea. This just came in from ESPN:

ESPN will televise seven 2016 MLB Opening Day Games during the first two days of the regular season, highlighted by an exclusive national presentation of the New York Mets at the Kansas City Royals in a World Series rematch on SundayNight Baseball, Apr. 3, at 8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

ESPN’s Opening Day coverage on Sunday, Apr. 3, will include two new afternoon windows. ESPN will televise a NL Opening Day showdown at 1 p.m. as the Pittsburgh Pirates host the St. Louis Cardinals. ESPN2 will then showcase a meeting between the Toronto Blue Jays and Tampa Bay Rays from Tropicana Field at 4 p.m.

On Monday, Apr. 4, ESPN will be home to an Opening Day quadrupleheader, beginning at 1 p.m. when the New York Yankees host the Houston Astros in a rematch of the 2015 AL Wild Card Game. From there, the Texas Rangers will host the Seattle Mariners at 4 p.m. (ESPN), and the Los Angeles Dodgers will visit the San Diego Padres at 7 p.m. (ESPN).  The seven-game, two-day Opening Day slate will conclude at 10 p.m. when the Chicago Cubs visit the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (ESPN2).

******

Now I still would do more openers on Sunday, when more people are home. But at least there will be two afternoon games to watch on that day.

If MLB needs more assistance, they know where to find me.

An excerpt of my sports book roundup for the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row book section.

*******

Pudge: The Biography of Carlton Fisk by Doug Wilson, Thomas Dunne, 358 pages, $26.99

Carlton Fisk takes center stage every fall. During baseball’s postseason, there are multiple replays of his iconic homer in the sixth game of the 1975 World Series. It ranks as one of the game’s most memorable blows and was Fisk’s defining moment. Yet there was much more to Fisk’s Hall of Fame career. Doug Wilson’s book details how the catcher seemed to defy age, still squatting behind the plate at 46. He writes how it started with an old-school New England work ethic that he brought to the Midwest when he came to the Chicago White Sox in 1981. As was the case with Fisk’s career, the book is essentially split into two parts: his 11 years with the Boston Red Sox and his 13 years with the White Sox. In both places, Wilson writes, Fisk not only battled opposing players but also management. Wilson makes a strong case that, for a player of his caliber, he never seemed to garner the respect he deserved. Yet Fisk persevered, playing in the 1991 All-Star Game at the age of 43. Wilson did not get to interview Fisk, forcing him to rely on old quotes. However, he does to talk to old teammates and managers in painting a mostly reverential portrait of him. His years in Boston laid the foundation for his career, but White Sox fans will be interested in the inside details of his years in Chicago.

Best wishes to a couple good guys and excellent journalists.

Here is Chris Dufresne’s Facebook post:

******

Well, my dream of being paid by the LA Times on June 17, 2016, will come true. That date will be the 40th anniversary of my hiring on June 17, 1976, just a week after high school graduation. There was one short interruption in 1981, where I left transportation for a “real” job at the Fullerton Trib before getting hired back in same calendar year, as you see from my start date in Editorial on Dec. 29, 1981. I was awarded continuous service which is why I will be leaving with five more years than Bill “Kid” Dwyre.

My five years on the loading docks were fantastic, even the bundles that fell on my head. At lunch I would sneak up to third floor to see if I could see Jim Murray. I never did and can tell you now I know why since I haven’t been in the office in almost two years. (But go count my bylines in that time).

That newspaper loader imagined some day working beside Murray. And it happened. Are you kidding me? I sat next to Murray at his last Rose Bowl on Jan.1 1998. I treasured that moment and a million others with mentors and colleagues.

Oops…buried the led.

My buyout offer was accepted today. I am honored to be going out with Bill Dwyre and Chris Foster and 100 total years of service at the only paper I have ever wanted to work for.

So, yeah, no matter how you slice it and how much things have changed in our business, my dream came true. Nothing can change that.

I could go on and on but that would be Chris Foster’s Facebook goodbye post. I’ll tell you all my stories in person.

Did you know I picked up Rick Reilly at the airport when he was hired in the OC edition? Picked him up in my Mazda RX7 but it turned out he had a much faster car.

Oh, enough…

That’s all for now. Thanks to the hundreds of great people who influenced and inspired. Forever grateful to Bill Dwyre, the sports editor kingpin who took a chance on me even when I screwed up the final score of a high school football game.

This is only goodbye from the Times, not from writing or the world.

My exit date is not yet firm but reach me in future at chris.dufresne3@gmail.com.

Almost final LAT count: 6,000-ish bylines, 6 million words. All worth it.

Enjoyed this observation in Richard Deitsch’s post on SI.com today. He asked beat reporters what it is like to cover the Golden State Warriors.

Not surprisingly, Steve Kerr, a former member of the media, gets it. But it goes even deeper according to Ethan Strauss, who covers the Warriors for ESPN.

Praising Kerr might sound like an affront to journalistic objectivity, but I think he’s objectively great to deal with. There aren’t many coaches with whom you can discuss Arabic dialects one second, and motion offense the next. Kerr was raised by academics, so he’s inclined to share and educate — more than most coaches, I think. Kerr’s a Popovich disciple, but his public persona stands in contrast to Pop’s opacity. That’s the difference between an academic background and a military background, I suppose.

And here’s another observation from Strauss on the Warriors being media friendly.

 The staff prides itself on attentiveness, PR head Raymond Ridder is indefatigable and the players comport themselves well in public. Also, they’ve had so much practice trying to wring positive coverage out of this formerly awful team. It’s like Raymond’s been swinging with the batting donut on for years. Now the weight has been lifted and then some.

There’s another aspect to this, though: Kerr allows his assistants to talk. Some coaches don’t, fearing that they might be undermined by their subordinates. Kerr’s secure enough in his position to ignore the paranoia that’s usually endemic to coaching.

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports media:

Not sure what got into Bryant Gumbel, but he did a takedown of sports coverage in an interview with Neil Best of Newsday.

“Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” was viewed when it premiered on HBO 20 years ago as a vital addition to the mostly barren landscape of sports journalism on television.

All these years later, with so many more outlets for such work available, is Gumbel pleased with how the genre has evolved?

Sports media

Um, no.

“I wish I could say, boy, there’s a lot of folks doing it now and we’ve really taken a serious look, but I’d be lying,” Gumbel said Wednesday at a dinner in Manhattan to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary. (It premiered on April 2, 1995.)

“I still think so much of what passes for sports coverage is so sycophantic it’s nauseating. But that’s me. You tune into any Sunday and watch before the football games, and come on. I mean, really. Really.”

Many thanks to Steve Bennett for having me on the latest edition of The Sports-Casters. We discussed my Babe Ruth Called Shot book coming out in paperback; the Cubs and Patrick Kane.

John Skipper tells James Andrew Miller in Vanity Fair why he shut down Grantland.

Throughout the 36 years of its existence, ESPN has weathered many a dramatic event—comings and goings of stars, programs, executives, and properties—but the intensity surrounding Grantland’s demise caught many at the network by surprise. Skipper admits to underestimating the effect Simmons’s exit would have, conceding it affected Grantland personnel more than he or perhaps anyone else on his management team anticipated.

“We lacked a full understanding of the bonding nature between Bill and those guys,” Skipper says now. But along with management failing to appreciate fully the bond between Simmons and his staff, it also misunderstood the Grantland culture—enough to imagine that turning the site over to Chris Connelly, brought in as a temporary Simmons replacement, would sit well with the staff.

“Chris was only going to be interim,” Skipper says. “It wasn’t his desire to be a long-term manager there. He made that clear to us. Chris is nothing but a good guy. This has been hard on him.”

Ben Koo of Awful Announcing thinks ESPN closing Grantland is an incredibly dumb decision.

Michael Mulvihill, the director of research for Fox Sports, attempts to put the World Series ratings in context.

The first reviews for the new concussion movie starring Will Smith.

On the media firestorm over Greg Hardy.

The Red Sox have hired long-time beat reporter Gordon Edes to be their new historian.

Jeff Van Gundy does a podcast with Richard Deitsch.

Jane Leavy discusses her career with the Povich Center.

George Solomon, the head of the Povich Center, reflects on his tenure as sports editor of the Washington Post, which had one of the greatest sports sections of all time.

As expected, the Cubs officially announced WSCR-AM 670 as their new radio outlet for 2016 yesterday.

However, during an appearance on the station, Crane Kenney, the Cubs’ president of business operations, dropped a bombshell. He said the Cubs will launch their own TV network in 2020.

“2019 is our last year with Comcast, so we’ll move over and launch our own channel in 2020,” Kenney said on the “Mully & Hanley” morning show.

Now there had been plenty of speculation that the Cubs would go this route after their deal with Comcast SportsNet expires in 2019. But this marked the first time that the Cubs said definitely that they will air their own games.

At the GM meetings, Theo Epstein even hinted at the possibility that the Cubs could launch sooner than 2020. It likely would mean them getting out of their CSN deal early, which would require the exchange of a lot of money.

The Cubs have the brand to pull off their own network. Their timing couldn’t be better with the team poised to have a long run of success.

However, the media landscape is changing by the day and things could be much different by the time they flip the switch in 2020. As the Dodgers situation in LA has showed, a one-team TV network hardly is a sure thing.

Stay tuned.

Looking forward to watching this documentary on one of my favorite athletes to cover. Even in an interview, you could feel Mike Singletary’s intensity. Of course, he had perhaps the most famous set of eyes in football.

Check out the trailer.

The write-up from NFL Network:

*******

Mike Singletary: A Football Life premieres Thursday, November 12 following Thursday Night Football on NFL Network with a look at the playing and coaching career of Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Mike Singletary. Mike Singletary: A Football Life re-airs Friday, November 13 at 9:00 PM ET. The one-hour documentary produced by NFL Films features interviews with Singletary, his family, former teammates and coaches, business partners and more.

Singletary was selected by the Chicago Bears in the second round of the 1981 NFL Draft out of Baylor University. While many teams considered the 5’11 Singletary to be too short to play middle linebacker, he went on to have a Hall of Fame career that included 10 Pro Bowls, eight All-Pro selections, the NFL Defensive Player of the Year awards in 1985 and 1988, and a Super Bowl championship.

Following his retirement in 1992, Singletary was called back to the game in 2003 when he was hired as linebackers coach with the Baltimore Ravens. From there, Singletary went to the San Francisco 49ers where he was named interim head coach in 2008 and head coach in 2009, a position he held until December of 2010.

Emmy-nominated actor Josh Charles narrates.

Mike Singletary: A Football Life includes interviews with the following people and more:

Mike Singletary

Kim Singletary – Wife

Matt Singletary – Son

Brooke Singletary – Daughter

Becky Singletary – Daughter

Jackie Singletary – Daughter

Jill Singletary – Daughter

Kristen Singletary – Daughter

Joe Theismann – Former Redskins quarterback

Vernon Davis – Former 49ers tight end

Grant Teaff – Former Baylor University head coach

Dan Hampton – Bears teammate

Al Harris – Bears teammate

Jeff Fisher – Bears teammate

Mike Ditka – Former Bears head coach

Gary Fencik – Bears teammate

Brian Billick – Former Ravens head coach

Ray Lewis – Former Ravens linebacker

Mike Nolan – Former 49ers head coach

Takeo Spikes – Former 49ers linebacker

Provided below are some select quotes from Mike Singletary: A Football Life:

– “There was an intensity about Mike Singletary like you saw with no one else…You saw the fire in his eyes, the passion in his eyes.” – Joe Theismann

– “Everyone has such a hard idea of him but he’s such a teddy bear.” – Becky Singletary

– “Everything that I did – playing as hard as I could play, hitting everything as hard as I could, working out as hard as I could – it was sort of a fear of failure.” – Mike Singletary

– “Buddy [Ryan] was the one that created that environment where Mike had to do everything possible and Mike did it.” – Jeff Fisher

– “That was his strength and has always been his strength: leadership. He wanted to be the leader, he expected to be the leader. He was the middle linebacker. He was the quarterback of the defense, per se.” – Al Harris

– “I think that there have been many teams that had more talent than the Bears’ ’85 team, but I have not seen a team that had the heart.” – Mike Singletary

– “He was the true leader of our football team no question about it because of the effort he put in and the attitude. He never quit.” – Mike Ditka

– “The expectation was he wanted you to be great and he was going to push your button and call you out until you responded.”– Takeo Spikes

– “I want everything you know. Give me everything.” – Ray Lewis

Time for a little pluggorama:

Just in time for the holidays: My book, “Babe Ruth’s Called Shot: The Myth and Mystery of Baseball’s Greatest Home Run,” now is out in paperback. Here is the link on Amazon.

Frankly, I can’t think of a better gift for your favorite sports fan.

The book, which came out in 2014, examines all the angles of The Called Shot. It begins with an interview with former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who was 12 when he attended the legendary Game 3 of the 1932 World Series at Wrigley Field.

Much of whether The Called Shot is true is left up to interpretation. When people ask me, I always reply it isn’t as simple as a yes-no, black-white answer. There is much gray area in there. Obviously, I have my own views. You’ll have to read the book.

One thing is for sure: Something of considerable magnitude occurred during the fifth inning of Game 3. There is a tendency by people who dismiss the the Called Shot to make it sound as if this was a normal at bat with Ruth merely facing Cubs pitcher Charlie Root.

Far from it. Ruth was being taunted by Cubs players who actually were standing on the field. The crowd was in a frenzy, as the Cubs finally seized momentum to tie the game at 4-4. Ruth responded vehemently with not one but several dramatic gestures, suggesting he was going to do something bad to the Cubs. Then he hit one of the longest homers in Wrigley Field history, which effectively sealed the World Series for the Yankees.

Quite simply, this was the most unique at bat in baseball history. A seminal moment by the greatest player and showman ever to play the game. There’s good reason why we’re still discussing it more than 81 years later.

*****

For more here is my interview with Harold Reynolds and Fran Charles on MLB Network.

A long write-up on the book in the New York Post.

A Q/A with Yahoo’s Post Game.

HIGHLY recommend this story by Neil Best of Newsday. To get around the paywall, here is the link to Best’s Twitter. Scroll down and find the tweet with the story.

It is an enjoyable read about one of the all-time greats in any press box:

Stan Fischler enjoys the subway ride to Madison Square Garden from his apartment in upper Manhattan. He enjoys the ride to Barclays Center twice as much.

That is because it takes twice as long.

“The more you’re on it, the more fun it is,” he said. “I’m getting double my money’s worth. I’d ride it all day if I could.”

Fischler, 83, who also answers to “The Hockey Maven,” was speaking on the No. 3 train en route to Brooklyn on Tuesday for a Devils-Islanders game on which he would appear for MSG on both teams’ telecasts.

That includes working the Islanders’ locker room doing postgame interviews, a job customarily filled on local networks by neatly coiffed young women and men.

Fischler was born during the Hoover Administration, and he arrived at Barclays wearing green pants.

This young, transitional Islanders season has been one of mixed emotions for him. “Mixed, mixed, mixed,” he said.

On one hand, he has covered them on TV for 40 years, counts their first Stanley Cup in 1980 as his greatest hockey memory and is a traditionalist who will miss the people and history at Nassau Coliseum.

On the other, Fischler happens to be an expert not only on the history of hockey — the subject of most of his more than 100 books — but also on subways, about which he has written a half-dozen books.

So it has been a serendipitous blessing suddenlyto have the team he covers move to his native borough, within subway distance, at this late stage of his career.