A few weeks ago, I saw in a local paper that the former police station at 1940 W. Foster Avenue, here in Chicago, that was shuttered a couple of years ago when a larger, more modern facility was built about a mile away, was going to be taken over by the Griffin Theater company. I was happy to see that; it’s a handsome old Art Deco building that’s about a mile from my home and not far from the popular Hopleaf Bar and Restaurant. It also has a big role in Chicago’s history.
According to Richard Lindberg's book "Return To The Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Infamous Places in Chicago," (1999, Cumberland House Publishing), one night in 1958, Chicago police officer Frank Faluci ran into Richard Morrison. Faluci demanded a cut of Morrison’s take—Morrison was quite a successful burglar, hitting safes with payrolls in them. He was thought to have taken in about $100,000—quite a haul in the late fifties.
Officer Faluci specifically requested a nice set of golf clubs. This set the pattern in motion—police officers requesting specific loot from Morrison. It would go from police officers overlooking Morrison’s crimes, and veer into far worse territory—police officers actually participating in the burglaries.
Soon, Morrison tried to fill that order, heading up into one of his favorite places to pilfer, Evanston, a well-to-do suburb just north of Chicago. What he didn't know was that the Evanston police correctly suspected him of being behind a rash of burglaries there, and as luck would have it, had set up a stakeout with a bag of golf clubs prominently displayed in the back of a station wagon as bait. As Morrison attempted to take the bait, the police tried to nab him and a wild shoot-out broke out at Forest Avenue and Sheridan Road. Morrison managed to escape, ditching his car on the way back to Chicago.
Morrison was arrested by the Evanston police. A wiser man might have cut his losses and found another profession. But not Richie Morrison. He decided that he needed money and clout, and agreed to commit burglaries-to-order for a group of Chicago policemen, including Faraci and seven others.
The cops who were involved were in what was then known as the 40th, or Summerdale police district. They knew Morrison because he used to deliver them free pizzas from the pizza joint he worked at, at 1116 W. Bryn Mawr, right under the Red Line Bryn Mawr El stop. They were all assigned to the night shift, midnight to 8 am.
Their first hit was at Western Tire and Auto Store, which was at 5100 N. Broadway, in the Uptown neighborhood. Morrison and an accomplice, Robert Crilly, piled the items that had been ordered-- television sets, guns, tools, tires and radios-- near the loading dock of the store. The items were picked up in four squad cars. Morrison and Crilly were told that they could keep the cash they got in the burglary as their part of the haul.
There were ten more burlaries in the Uptown and Edgewater neighorhoods over the next nine months. Toward the end of it, the cops involved were actually helping the burglars carry the stuff out of the stores.
Fortunately, the corrupt cops were in the minority in the department. Dectectives Jim McGuire, Howard Rothgery, Pat Driscoll and James Heard entered Morrison’s home at 4332 N. Sacramento, which is just a few blocks from my own home, to arrest him. According to Lindberg, Morrison pulled a gun, but thought better of it. He threw it down and the detectives arrested him.
At first, Morrison kept his mouth shut. He appealed to his police accomplices to help him out. When this aid was not forthcoming, Morrison lost no time in ratting out the cops to save his ass. He came to be known in the press as "The Babbling Burglar."
In the wake of the scandal, which got nation-wide attention, Mayor Daley brought in O.T. Wilson, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking man who was the Dean of the University of California’s Criminology department to clean up the Chicago police department. One of the biggest changes was the end of "political" appointments of police officers. Advances were to be earned by merit and testing.
There were some expected-- and unexpected-- changes. Since the name had become notorious, the Summerdale district had its name changed—it became the Foster Avenue station. The eight cops were all convicted. Two paid modest fines and the other six spent prison time.
There was, however, one change that was unexpected. For decades, Chicago bars had made their money largely on "numbers" games. The booze was sold basically at cost or even a loss. Bars were the center of social life for Chicago neighborhoods. The bars paid a part of the take from the numbers games to local cops in order to have them overlook it. With Wilson's reforms, this ended, and so did the numbers, largely. This began a decline in the tavern as a social center in the neighborhood, and combined with the increase in car ownership, along with the pull of the suburbs, many would say that this was part of the decline of Chicago neighborhoods.
And what of Richard Morrison, the “Babbling Burglar?” According to Lindberg, he continued his ways, the way of the rat. He was testifying about mob-hired physicians who treated gunshot wounds without reporting them to the police, when he was shotgunned outside the Chicago Criminal Courts building on March 20, 1963. He lived, but one of his arms was shattered. After he healed, he was dropped at the Illinois-Indiana border and told to beat it. He made his way, according to Lindberg, to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where in a humorous bit of irony, he worked as a police photographer for a while, and then disappeared. Nobody has seen or heard from the “Babbling Burglar” for decades.
I was taking a moment from the family reunion to catch up on my favorite blogs, and discovered, while reading Kristi's blog that Blogger has taken Monkerstein's main blog down because some asshat reported it as spam. Never fear-- you can get your daily allotment of the good Doctor Monkerstein at an alternate site that will be up until he straightens this out with blogger. It's listed in my blogroll as "Monkerstein 2." 
1. Dancing In the Moonlight- King Harvest
The guys lost last 5-4, ending their championship run. That's the short version. 
In retrospect, the season was awesome-- the most fun we've had in years. As I've mentioned, Adam's coach last year stuck him out in right field all season last year. This year, he got to play first base, third base and even pitch. Adam got to show his mentor, Coach Mark, how much he's improved in his game by playing against him in a championship. His hitting and speed have improved dramatically. He played-- and pitched-- in a league championship. I'd say that's a pretty nice way to end his six year stint in the Welles Park League.
Tonight we played game one of the Senior League World Series. We entered it a player short: Mike, the head coach's son, and one of our pitchers, was hurt during Saturday's victory that got us here. The news was about as bad as it can be: he broke his leg on the play. He was coming into home plate and twisted his leg trying-- successfully, it turned out-- to avoid the catcher's tag. He will have surgery tomorrow, where they'll put a pin in.
The game was rough from the start. Our starting pitcher was pulled in the first inning after inadvertently hitting two batters (it's a league rule). We usually depend on him to pitch three innings. We gave up nine runs in the first two innings.
One of the things I've loved about this team is how there is not one big star on the team. Each guy has had vital contributions at key moments. Tonight, it was Brandon, a little pip of a guy who is the youngest guy on the team. He came in to pitch and held the damage.
Our guys tried to rally back, loading up the bases at one point, but they were unable to score. It was tough-- the Senior League Cubs, the team they played, are a damned good team. One of their coaches, Mark M. was Adam's head coach for two years. He's a great coach who has always seen the potential and the love for the game that Adam had, and encouraged him, and when he was head coach picked him in the draft over guys who had better stats.
It was fitting, then, that in what is probably his last season playing ball in this league, he got to face his old coach in the championship. It was Mark's encouragement that made him keep trying. Even last year, when he was stuck out in right field for the whole season, he never gave up working on his game. In a beautiful little irony, it was that coach and that team, the team that had been annointed to win it all, that got knocked out by the last-place team, paving the way for Adam to be in the championship series. I'll leave it to you to make your own conclusions about those with little faith in people. But I know that Mark, despite Adam being on the other team in what is likely to be the only championship that Mark will win in all his years in the league, looks on Adam with pride in the part he had in where he was today.
I heard on the radio that an appeals court has ruled that it is okay to prosecute Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was Osama bin Laden's driver for "conspiracy to commit war crimes, including terrorism." The Bush Administration considers this a huge victory.
A few weeks ago, I saw in a local paper that the former police station at 1940 W. Foster Avenue, here in Chicago, that was shuttered a couple of years ago when a larger, more modern facility was built about a mile away, was going to be taken over by the Griffin Theater company. I was happy to see that; it’s a handsome old Art Deco building that’s about a mile from my home and not far from the popular Hopleaf Bar and Restaurant. It also has a big role in Chicago’s history. 
Fortunately, the corrupt cops were in the minority in the department. Dectectives Jim McGuire, Howard Rothgery, Pat Driscoll and James Heard entered Morrison’s home at 4332 N. Sacramento, which is just a few blocks from my own home, to arrest him. According to Lindberg, Morrison pulled a gun, but thought better of it. He threw it down and the detectives arrested him.
We were happy about this. It meant that today we were playing the A's, a team we'd beaten twice during the season, rather than the Yankees, who'd beaten us twice. Also, they're just a much nicer bunch of guys than the Yankees, were were arrogant and cocky. Doug, the coach of the A's, had been Adam's coach for a couple of past seasons, is the nicest guy in the world. It was funny to see he and Adam chatting as Adam played third for the Red Sox and Doug coached third for the A's. 
One of our guys got on base, and then stole second. Then John came up and smacked a liner into center field. I'd had a feeling he was due for a hit and was ready to with the camera when the runner scored. And then it sank in; we'd won the game. We are going to the championships!
Not only was this the longest game I can remember in nearly six years of watching him play, but it was also one of the strangest. First off, were the jet fighters. The park that he plays baseball in, along with the rest of our neighborhood, sits beneath one of the main flight paths for jets landing at O'Hare Airport. Usually dozens of passenger jets fly over the game, largely unnoticed by us, since they are so frequent. During the game, however, we looked up because one-- or actually two-- of the jets were much louder than the jets that normally fly over. It turned out to be a couple of FA-18 jet fighters. We figured that they were arriving in town to be used in the Air and Water Show in a couple of weeks. 
A couple of innings later, we heard a loud "thump" in the street behind us, and discovered that a bicyclist had been hit by a car. The collision caused him to bounce off of one parked car and run into another parked car. He had unwisely chosen not to wear a helmet, so he banged his head on the pavement. A number of us ran to help him. One of the other dads ran down the street to get the license plate of the car that hit him. Happily, there was a squad car in the next intersection, and they were able to apprehend the hit and run motorist. There was also a couple of "tactical squad" officers in an unmarked car less than a block away, and they stopped to help the stricken bicyclist. Paramedics arrived within a couple of minutes. The bicyclist was soon concious and talking-- a good sign. They put him in an ambulance and took him away. 
As the game ended at 8:15, street lights were coming on. The coach gathered the boys together to congratulate them and to remind them that their next game was on Sunday. And then a bunch of tired, hungry and happy boys went home.
