When I wrote earlier this month about the joys and tribulations of being a Saint Louis native and rabid Cardinals fan in Chicago, I had in mind a more complex story. I wanted to add to the mix my opposite: a Saint Louis writer who’s an unabashed Cubs fan. And I knew who I wanted that fan to be: Bill McClellan, a Chicago native and the longtime city columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Alienation has kept my faith strong, and I wondered if McClellan would say the same thing.
McClellan half-disappeared into semiretirement a few months ago. But during the years he wrote every few days I thought he was the best local columnist in the nation. The only reason he hasn’t won a Pulitzer, I assumed, having no knowledge of the actual facts including whether he even entered his columns, was that Pulitzer judges assume superior narrative can only emerge from locales whose folklore is deemed a national treasure. Any columnist so gifted he could make a “nine o’clock town”—as McClellan called Saint Louis—sound interesting would have moved on to Chicago or New York.
“Throw in the Cubs winning the World Series, and it’s a deal.”
