This is sports writing at its best, focusing on Piniella’s old-school style and baseball scientist’s mind; wild swings in the Cubs’ win-loss fortunes; the inside scoop on a Cubs’ front office that has been dramatically more aggressive than its predecessors; the byplay of daily clubhouse life and profiles of key players; and Piniella’s colorful proclamations and homespun philosophy, along with his interactions with his coaches, the team, ball-club executives, media, fans, and celebrity hangers-on.
George Castle has covered the Cubs and Major League Baseball since 1980 for a variety of newspapers and magazines, and for the Times of Northwest Indiana, the Chicago area’s fourth-largest daily newspaper. An author of eight books, he hosts and produces a weekly syndicated baseball show, Diamond Gems, which is broadcast on 41 affiliates in 14 states and podcast on the YourSportsFan.comsports site. Castle has become a multimedia purveyor of Cubs inside information and analysis that has been unmatched, using a network of close clubhouse and front-office relationships to continually produce scoops and informative pieces that outflank other media. He has gotten to know—and gain the trust—of almost all of the important figures in the franchise, including Lou Piniella. Castle has also appeared on a wide variety of network radio—including ESPN, Sporting News, and Sirius—and local sports-talk radio programs. He was tapped by producers as one of the historical experts on the Cubs for Wait Til’ Next Year: The Saga of the Chicago Cubs, the HBO 2006 special on the team. He lives in Chicago.