•April 4, 2018•

By Dennis Anderson
Of the Peoria Journal Star

Bill Veeck wasn’t your typical baseball team owner.

He was listed in the Chicago phonebook. He often walked the Comiskey Park concourse shaking hands as he limped on his wooden leg that he retrofitted with an ashtray.

As a young man he planted the ivy on the outfield walls at Wrigley Field.

He hired Larry Doby, the first black to play in the American League just months after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. And he owned the Cleveland Indians when they last won a World Series in 1948.

In later years, he was a regular on Chicago sports TV talk shows offering reasoned arguments on politics and society, and was often seen on WGN broadcasts of Cubs games shirtless with a beer in his hand sitting among the fans in the Wrigley Field bleachers.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.