CHICAGO – The Coomers lived in a house near Midway Airport on the South Side of Chicago. This near:
"When I was kid, I would throw rocks in the air, swing at them with a bat, and try to hit the rock over the Midway fence," Ron Coomer said. "When I did that, it was a home run."
The South Side was primarily White Sox country for baseball fans, although not for young Ronnie Coomer in the 1970s.
"We had one of those old TVs where you twisted the dial and could get the regular channels," Coomer said. "There were also the UHF channels, 26 through 44, and the White Sox games were up there.
"On our TV you couldn't get those channels. You could watch the Cubs on WGN, Channel 9. I would get home from school, and the Cubs were on, and Wrigley Field looked like such a great place for a ballgame."
Coomer's father, also Ron, was a baseball fan, but not pro-Sox and anti-Cub as were a good share of the Coomer relatives and neighbors.
"I was a Cubs fan, so we would go to games at Wrigley Field," Coomer said. "There was a ritual: As soon we got in the ballpark, I would run up the steps and look at the field, take it all in like it was the first time I'd been there, and my dad would get in the concession line.
"He would get a hot dog and a beer, I'd get a hot dog and a Coke, and we'd be ready to watch the Cubs."