As the poet laureate of long-frustrated Cubs fans, the late Steve Goodman surely would have been doubly thrilled that his beloved team won the World Series and that his sing-along anthem “Go Cubs Go” finally charted for the first time 32 years after he recorded it, family members say.
Sadly, Goodman never heard the song played at Wrigley Field, where, after every Cubs victory, fans happily sing along, “Hey Chicago, what do you say? Cubs are gonna win to-day.” The Chicago folk singer and songwriter’s death of leukemia in 1984 came just weeks after he recorded the song.
Nor is his family reaping a fortune due to the song’s rising popularity — thanks to the Cubs’ success this year, it’s risen to No. 21 in digital sales, according to Nielsen Music, streamed more than 2.5 million times. They sold the publishing rights this year for Goodman’s entire song catalogue, according to his daughter Rosanna Goodman.
“I called it,” Goodman said by phone from her home in Austin, Texas. “We sold it, and I said, ‘This is the year the Cubs are going to win the World Series.’ ”
The singer himself probably never would have made such a bold prediction, according to his widow, Nancy Goodman Tenney.
“I don’t know if he ever considered it a possibility,” she said. “I’m sure that a World Series win was something he hoped for but never anticipated.”
RELATED
30 years later,’Go Cubs Go’ hits the Billboard charts
She said that, although Goodman elaborately outlined his ideal burial in the lyrics for “A Dying Cub’s Fan’s Last Request,” he never told his family what to do if the Cubs actually ever won the World Series — as they did this year for the first time in 108 years.
Born on the North Side and raised in Park Ridge, Goodman was obsessed with baseball and the Cubs but lived during some of the most futile decades in franchise history. The Cubs’ most recent World Series appearance, in 1945, came three years before he was born, and they wouldn’t make the playoffs again until 1984, clinching a division title four days after Goodman died at a Seattle hospital.
Goodman, diagnosed with leukemia in his 20s, approached life with the same cheery fatalism with which he viewed his team, according to younger brother David Goodman. Naturally charming, the singer seldom paid to get into Wrigley Field, relying on the goodwill of friendly gatekeepers at the bleachers entrance, his brother said: “It was a very Chicago thing, right? ‘I know a guy…’ And Steve, he knew a lot of guys.”
A few years after his death, an old friend on the security team let David Goodman in to the ballpark to scatter a vial of his brother’s ashes in left field. Another vial of ashes was scattered over Abner Doubleday Field, the diamond at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., after David Goodman sneaked onto the field under cover of darkness, with Nancy and Goodman’s three daughters looking on from behind a fence.
“I hear people say that he’s buried under home plate at Wrigley Field, which is one of my favorite rumors I’ve heard about my dad,” Rosanna Goodman said.
“Go Cubs Go” was never the most valuable song written by Goodman, who also wrote Grammy-winner “City of New Orleans,” made famous by Arlo Guthrie, and the David Allan Coe hit “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.”
The song that would become the Cubs’ anthem was commissioned by WGN, which, back then, broadcast Cubs games on TV and radio.
Its reemergence has been a fitting memorial to her father, Rosanna Goodman said. Hearing the song on TV or on the radio in distant cities during the Cubs’ playoff run, and then when Cubs players and fans sang it to conclude the team’s Grant Park victory rally, has been moving for his family.
Rosanna Goodman said the family still gets some money from the song — the songwriter’s share of royalties, rather than the larger sum that goes to the owner of the publishing rights.
More important, she said, “At this point it’s solidified as this team’s anthem. For me, that’s the ultimate. I think my dad would have been incredibly honored that that’s the song that rings out at the ballpark for his favorite team whenever they win.”
