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Song Makes a Comeback Along With the Cubs
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"He sort of represented to me that whole period of bleacher bumdom," said Dan Fabian, the WGN program director at the time who asked Goodman to write the song after listening to him give an interview in 1984.
That much was clear to anyone who had heard Goodman speak about his childhood or heard a song he wrote and performed a few years earlier: "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request."
Fabian said Goodman, though obviously frail from his leukemia at the time, jumped at writing "Go Cubs Go," and within days he was back at WGN, guitar in hand, playing what he'd written. He recorded the song, with some Cubs players later adding the chorus. WGN then put the song out as a single, with the proceeds going to charity. It sold more than 60,000 copies over the next three years.
Goodman never took the field to sing either song. The closest he came with "Go Cubs Go" was in 1984 when he stood in an aisle to sing it during a game.
The new song came out the same season the Cubs were on their way to winning their division -- something Goodman did not live to see, as he went into a coma and died four days before the Cubs clinched the NL East in 1984.
Goodman did, however get back to Wrigley. A few years after his death, Goodman's brother, David, took some of his ashes to Chicago.
"They donned blue caps and went to the bleachers, and they sang 'A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request,' and scattered some ashes," his mother said.
