In the summer of 2010, Jack Silverstein was chatting with friends at a Wicker Park bar when the subject turned to his writing.<\/p>\n
That March, he had published a book, \u201cOur President,\u201d a series of essays about Barack Obama. He was covering the Chicago music scene heavily for several outlets. But two of his buddies offered a suggestion.<\/p>\n
They told Silverstein that he should write about sports. They acknowledged his writing chops but said he reached another level when he wrote about sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought sports was too easy,\u201d Silverstein said this week. \u201cMaybe in a sense I was looking down on it. It came so naturally to me that I thought nothing this easy can be worthwhile. What I found was, I was terribly wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silverstein loved sports, especially Chicago sports. He grew up on the North Shore in the 1980s, when the Bears and Bulls were rising to power and the Cubs were returning to relevance. Sportswriting might have come easy for him, but there was a way to make it challenging and make his work stand out \u2014 become Chicago\u2019s sports historian.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a self-applied title,\u201d Silverstein said. \u201cMy father always said, \u2018Let them put you in a box,\u2019 meaning help people know who you are. I love history, I love sports. I thought that was good branding. I thought \u2018Chicago sports historian\u2019 was crisp and gave me something it live up to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which he has. Silverstein, 44, has broken news retroactively. In 2019, when the Bears had Kyle Fuller and Tarik Cohen model 1936 throwback uniforms, Silverstein discovered they were the first Black players to wear them because the NFL had banned Black players from 1934 to \u201945. His research drew not just the Bears\u2019 attention, but the late Jesse Jackson\u2019s, and the story was picked up by ESPN, Fox and even the BBC.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Silverstein led the Bears to correct their record book, making \u201cChuckin\u2019 \u201d Charlie O\u2019Rourke the then-record holder for touchdown passes by a rookie with 11 in 1942. When Caleb Williams broke it with 20 in 2024, O\u2019Rourke received his long-overdue recognition.<\/p>\n
Silverstein has appeared on Chicago radio, TV and podcasts. His work appears on the website Windy City Gridiron and his own site, A Shot On Ehlo, named in honor of Michael Jordan\u2019s buzzer-beating, playoff-series-winning shot over the Cavaliers\u2019 Craig Ehlo in 1989. Late Bulls radio voice Jim Durham said the words \u201ca shot on Ehlo\u201d on his call.<\/p>\n
Silverstein\u2019s Bulls research has led to his 2016 e-book \u201cHow the GOAT Was Built: 6 Life Lessons From the 1996 Chicago Bulls,\u201d and the series of posts on his website are leading to his book, \u201c6 Rings: The Bulls, The City, and the Dynasty that Changed the Game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c[\u2018How the GOAT Was Built\u2019] was really important because it formalized my position as a sports historian,\u201d Silverstein said, \u201cand it gave me something I could do shows on.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of this work isn\u2019t even Silverstein\u2019s job. By day, he\u2019s the director of content at WTWH Media, where he covers the business of senior living. By night, he\u2019s researching and writing about sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just write a lot. I have a gear,\u201d said Silverstein, who\u2019s married with two kids. \u201cThere\u2019s no good way to explain it. I have a gear that just goes. If I didn\u2019t get these stories out, I would break down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander noticed that gear early. As a sophomore at New Trier, Silverstein hosted a radio show and asked Telander to be a guest. Telander appeared and then invited Silverstein to sit in on a recording of the beloved show \u201cThe Sportswriters on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had this enthusiasm that kind of cracked me up,\u201d Telander said. \u201cHe knew all kinds of stuff about Chicago sports. He was deadly serious about this stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realized he had some writing skills. He had a book on Obama, I remember reading that. The enthusiasm affected me. There was a whole lot of optimism. And then he turned that same enthusiasm into writing about sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
That enthusiasm runs through his most recent book, \u201cWhy We Root: The Mad Obsessions of a Chicago Sports Fan.\u201d It\u2019s 500 pages of Silverstein\u2019s work as he rides a roller coaster of emotions that began in childhood. He explored not just big events, but their place in our shared culture.<\/p>\n
His current research project is on Paul Patterson, the Bears\u2019 first full-time Black employee. Silverstein said the Bears hired Patterson in 1967 but he wasn\u2019t in the team\u2019s media guide until 1969. He held titles of \u201cplayer relations\u201d and \u201ctraveling secretary\u201d before being lost to history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love to write, love to research, love to learn and love to figure out a way to tell stories that don\u2019t exist,\u201d Silverstein said.<\/p>\n
Said Telander: \u201cHe found something no one\u2019s doing. Doing research, journalism work, interviewing people, being persistent. Other people don\u2019t want to do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the summer of 2010, Jack Silverstein was chatting with friends at a Wicker Park bar when the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[7,920,919,329,3824,6],"class_list":["post-612351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-bulls","tag-basketball","tag-bulls","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-chicagobulls","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116099348252526805","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}