He impacted my life…
November 20, 2008 6 Comments
I never met William P. Schirmang. I never even heard of him until a few minutes ago when wpbc friend Vehere sent me this link from the Bright One. William P. Schirmang is the man who brought Old Style beer to Chicago. He did it the old fashioned way:
Before the 1960s, the brew from La Crosse, Wis., was virtually unknown here. Then Mr. Schirmang started knocking on tavern doors and selling a case or two at a time out of the trunk of his car. By the 1970s, he had pumped up sales for the brand to more than 2 million cases a year, according to his son Ken, president of Skokie Valley Beverage Co., a beer distributorship in Wheeling.
The beer that I have always associated with the Cubs, Wrigley Field, WGN radio broadcasts of the Cubs, and the neighborhood Chicago tavern may never have found it’s way into the city if not for Schirmang.
“Eventually, they took on handling Old Style. He started delivering beer out of the trunk of his car. My dad was a sales guy, and he could talk to anybody and knock on any door. He would sell one day to bars and taverns. The next day, he would deliver what he sold. Eventually, they were able to get a single truck. From there, it grew into a 2.5 million-case operation.”
When labor problems hit AB in the 70′s he took advantage:
His beer got a big hold on Chicago in the 1975 when the St. Louis producers of Budweiser were hit by labor problems, Ken Schirmang said.
“Budweiser was not delivered to Chicago, and Old Style was being brewed in LaCrosse, Wisconsin,” he said. “They made sure we never ran out of Old Style. In 1977, he received an award for selling 1 million cases, and several years later, 2 million.”
The story wouldn’t be complete witout Mr. Schirmang being a Cub fan and he was just that:
He was such a big Cubs fan that in the 1990s, his company bought out the distributor who handled Wrigley Field so they could be one of the two beers there, along with competitor Budweiser, his son said. Skokie Valley Beverage now represents beers from 20 countries in addition to numerous small domestic labels.
I’d like to thank William Schirmang for bringing LaCrosse’s finest down to Chicago and hustling to get it into our hands. Next April 13th at Opening Day with friends V and gm we will toast Mr. Schirmang with one of our many Old Style’s on that day. Sometimes the guys who make a difference are fellas we never know…
I’m still amazed that the man singlehandedly sold a million cases in a year and then followed it up by selling two million a few years later.
Moral of the story: don’t fuck with the union, not in Chicago.
People think I’m crazy for liking Old Style. People are stupid.
Whenever I belly up and say “Old Style, bottle,” I always get the snide stares. I hope people keep hating, so it stays cheap for me. $3.99 for a six of talls? That’s my price point. Tonight I’ll hoist one or twelve for old Bill Schirmang.
amen, brother ccd. perhaps second only to gottlieb heilemann himself, the honorable mr. schirmang did more than anyone to make the seventh-inning stretch guest conductor bullshit we are now plagued with sufferable.
I posted this over in a different thread until I realized it was several days old. Wow! I go on hiatus from all things Cub for a few months and come back to find out CCD has started a new blog. Cool. Nice to see GM as well. I hope everyone is doing well in what has been a very tough few months and will most likely get worse.
I found it ironic that I began to lose interest in the Cubs once they became good. My interest began to wain towards the end of the year when the playoffs were in the bag. I barely watched the playoffs (though I was on a trip and it was hard to watch). I scream and yell and let them ruin my day/week/month/year when they suck but when they are good I barely pay attention.
Anyway, I think Dempster has been much better to the Cubs then decent GM, especially when you consider the year he had last year as a starter. And I couldn’t care less about the contract or any players contract on the Cubs as long as it doesn’t constrain them from paying someone else. The Cubs are one of a handful of teams where “is he worth the money” just doesn’t matter. The questions should be: is he any good? Or is he worth what they had to give up?
Answering the “is he any good” questions, I think Dempster has been solid (great this past year) as a Cub and the contract they signed him won’t hurt them in signing others, and lastly they didn’t have to give up anyone for him. Hopefully he puts together a few more years like last. I suspect he will be pretty good over the next few but not like ‘08.
welcome dc! glad you found the new digs. it’s great fun to be back.
i had a hardtime with the playoffs too. i went to game 1 with gm and that was a good time, besides the loss. but i quit watching game two in the second or third inning and game three i watched with little interest flipping to anything else i could. it was really a shame, because you want to see the cubs play in postseason games, but they have just played so poorly in the postseason through the years (9 losses in a row) that it is hard to really spend too much time nor energy on it.
anyways, glad to see you back here dc. stop by more often.