It was 1984. I was still working as an ad copywriter and Terry Runté and I were writing filler for Fred Graver at National Lampoon — and we were ABSOLUTELY SURE the Cubs were headed to the World Series… So we set about creating “Yet Another Unofficial World Series Souvenir Program Parody.” With a cover price of two dollars, we figured we’d make five times what we made on our Sun-Times parody, “Rupert Muroch’s Son-Kills-Father Times.”
We once again assembled our talented friends: Bill Mericle, my next-door neighbor growing up (we used to play “announcer-catch,” taking turns as Jack Brickhouse), Mitch Coleman, Dave Jaffe, Joe Fodor, John Pintar, Tom Mannis, John Moore, Bob Schwoch… Mario Macari and Robert Staszak illustrated the cover, and Al Vey did a top-notch two-page-spread comic.
Apple had introduced the Macintosh, but there was no LaserWriter yet, and we had been busted previously for sneaking in to use (and break) the agency’s $100,000 typesetting computer — so we had to use our Juki 6100 daisy wheel printer for output. When the Cubs won their second straight home game against the Padres, we decided to print our first run. They only needed one more win. Even if they didn’t make it past the playoffs, I figured people would still want a good laugh — maybe even more so.
On October 7th, the Cubs lost their third straight game in San Diego. Nobody in Chicago was in the mood to laugh. Nobody wanted to hear a goddamn thing about the Cubs. We lost pretty much exactly what we’d earned selling our Sun-Times parody.
If you want to check out this artifact of the ’80s — complete with Michael Jackson two-page center spread — you can download it here: