Mike Ditka has died at 86, just as Chesterton Radio publishes The Bears Came Down from Chicago, our new American epic poem about the extraordinary 1985 Bears.
This morning from the Little Station on Commercial Street, we remember Ditka and the team that became something larger than football—and ask why some events simply become history while others become legend. Along the way, we consider epic poetry, Chesterton and Lepanto, the strange power of communal memory, and an October 10 calendar that brings us Verdi, Thelonious Monk, Harold Pinter, and Orson Welles.
Plus: hear The Bears Came Down from Chicago in full on Chesterton Radio.
