If you thought Chicago had explored every avenue in celebrating the Cubs winning the World Series, think again. Coming soon to a theater in the Windy City is a musical about the team's long-awaited victory in the Fall Classic: "Miracles Do Happen."
The show is the pet project of Billy Marovitz, a lawyer, former member of the Illinois House of Representatives and die-hard baseball fan who claims that his project predates the team's championship season. He says he came up with the concept last spring, a month before the first pitch was thrown out.
"The Cubs were picked to win it all and I thought what a great story this would be, what a great show," Marovitz said. "I know politics, and I also know sports."
As a legislator, he was involved in getting the new ballpark for the White Sox in 1991 and mediating between the Cubs and nearby residents to allow nighttime games at Wrigley Field.
Though there is a very short list of successful musicals based on baseball — can you name another beside "Damn Yankees"? — Marovitz was determined and also understandably emboldened by a previous baseball-musical experience from 2003. That is the year he persuaded Dennis DeYoung, the former lead singer of Styx, to record a Marovitz-inspired song called "The Voice Above the Crowd." It was about baseball announcers.
"There is a generation of us who, when we came home from school, didn't hear the voices of our mothers," said Marovitz. "We listened to the voices of great baseball announcers."
So he went to see another of his friends, Jerry Reinsdorf, chairman of the White Sox and the host of that summer's All-Star Game.
"I said, 'Jerry, I think this song would be a tremendous hit at the game, a way to honor the great voices that turned us on to baseball.' "
