On the night of March 4, 2011, ESPN 1000 Chicago personality Harry Teinowitz was behind the wheel on the way back from a Chicago Blackhawks hockey game. The team had defeated the Carolina Hurricanes 5-2, the latest victory en route to a 97-point season and appearance in the NHL Western Conference Quarterfinals, and Teinowitz had thoroughly enjoyed himself at the United Center. He was used to drinking beer at sporting events, oftentimes being tasked by executives at the station to mingle over drinks with sponsors at various Chicago-based venues. Despite enjoying the beverage, he hardly drank too much, usually not finishing two beers on a given night.
Yet when the venues began serving alcoholic beverages, he was unable to control himself. The same went for remote broadcasts, which his show, Mac, Jurko and Harry, would conduct biweekly on Fridays across Chicagoland. Upon concluding the four-hour remote broadcast, he and his co-hosts would converse with the listeners over drinks. Once these events or games ended, Teinowitz was oblivious and took the wheel without waiting to sober up or even bothering to try to find an alternate means of transportation.
Two blocks away from his home on that March 2011 night, a police officer pulled Teinowitz over after a tow truck driver had seen him and called him in. While Teinowitz is grateful for that driver, he was irate towards him once he was told the only reason he was reported that night was so the driver could make money off of his vehicle once it was impounded. After police found that his blood alcohol content was .131, significantly above legal intoxication, Teinowitz’s driver’s license was immediately revoked. Moreover, he was charged with a count of DUI, along with a count of DUI greater than .08 and two counts of improper lane usage.
“If I don’t get pulled over that night, I’m long gone,” Teinowitz said. “…I should not have been driving and I blamed everybody but me. ‘The bartender served me so much. The second bartender served me so much. The valet shouldn’t have given me my car back.’ It was never my fault. I took full responsibility for what happened.”
Teinowitz was released from police custody and returned to the radio station where he was asked to draft a press release to be disseminated to major media outlets and others in the Chicago area. Furthermore, they requested he join an anonymous rehabilitation program and deliver a public statement about how he would work to correct his actions. Initially, Teinowitz was resistant to comply; however, his mindset quickly changed.
“At the time of my DUI, I said, ‘Guys, right now [and] the way I feel, I don’t think I was drinking that much,’” Teinowitz recalled. “Then I saw the tape of it and it was horrible. I said, ‘I don’t think I’m ever going to drink again.’ I went to rehab and I learned how I had to exist if I wanted to stick around not only at ESPN but with life itself.”
Aside from being an avid fan of Chicago’s various teams from his youth, attending sporting events afforded Teinowitz perspectives he may not have otherwise realized that he could then bring to the air. Despite ESPN 1000 Chicago being exclusively available on its AM frequency at the time, the show made a habit of being No. 1 in afternoon drive, beating out its direct competition from 670 The Score. Nicknamed “The Afternoon Saloon” because of the contentious debate that would take place between Teinowitz and co-host Dan McNeil. Joined by John Jurkovic, the trio cultivated a compelling and entertaining sound, and they tried to make light of Teinowitz’s DUI, which, of course, was a very serious matter. In fact, they recently reunited last month at ESPN 1000’s sold-out 25-year celebration event and reminisced on their time on the air.
When Teinowitz was young, he never foresaw himself working in sports talk radio solely because it did not exist. When The Score launched on AM 820 on Jan. 2, 1992, he took heed to what they were doing and thought he had the passion and skills to be a part of it. After all, he knew how to entertain audiences working as a standup comedian and was a skilled writer from his time as a theater major at the University of Kansas. He also performed baseball play-by-play and followed the local teams, presenting him as an on-air talent with deft versatility and someone who took pride in their work.
Teinowitz’s professional career in radio began at WLUP The Loop, a station initially broadcasting in the talk format featuring shows where he would update listeners on the latest news and information in sports. Jonathon Brandmeier and Steve Cochran, two established radio voices in the city of Chicago, hosted shows on the station on which Teinowitz would report on sports. Additionally, he was the co-host of a show with Spike Manton, eponymously titled Harry & Spike, which would later be reborn at ESPN 1000 Chicago in 1998.
Teinowitz and Manson’s show was broadcast on WLUP The Loop in the midst of the Chicago Bulls championship dynasty featuring superstars Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, a seminal time period in Chicago sports. While most shows attempted to interview a star player or head coach Phil Jackson, Teinowitz and Manton opted to book Jud Buechler for a recurring Saturday night appearance. Buechler was a reserve who averaged a meager nine-and-a-half minutes per game as a member of the Bulls on approximately 46% shooting, and he brought an unparalleled frame of reference listeners simply could not get anywhere else.
“Spike and I kind of committed to [having fun],” Teinowitz said. “If we’re having fun, the audience is having fun. [We thought], ‘Let’s do different stuff.’”
In order to be distinctive, Teinowitz and Manton adopted an assortment of different segments all around the premise of being able to make fun of oneself and craft a lighthearted atmosphere. When he began hosting with McNeil and Jurkovic on ESPN 1000 Chicago, that mindset remained important to him to carry over, so much so that they spent an hour just talking about the best place to get a burger in the city. While these types of idiosyncratic topics may seem extraneous to a sports talk radio show, including them in the program facilitated listenership and ratings success.
“The big bosses were in town one day, and we were talking about how cold it was in Chicago,” Teinowitz said. “I think we had a meteorologist on from ABC because they were in the same building as us. Eventually, they’re like, ‘Why are you guys talking about how cold it is?’ ‘Well, because in Chicago right now, that’s what everybody’s talking about.’”
Even before his time at ESPN 1000 Chicago, Teinowitz attended events for WLUP The Loop involving beer; however, a van would be sent for him just in case he drank too much. Part of the reason he attended these events was ostensibly because of his ability to connect with an audience, a skill he attained from his time in standup comedy. It provided him the confidence necessary to try new things and humor his audience, even if an idea he conjured proceeded to fail.
“There’s a lot of guys that know sports, and there’s a lot of guys that are funny, but there’s not a lot that are funny and know sports,” Teinowitz said. “To have that opportunity is really something…. I would encourage the powers that be at the different stations across America to give these people a chance.”
Alcoholism, however, remains no laughing matter. Its effects on health and wellbeing cannot be understated. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 140,000 people die in the United States annually from excessive alcohol use. It is the country’s leading cause of preventable death.
Teinowitz attended a rehabilitation program following his DUI arrest and found that his sports talk radio experience eased his recovery in that he was able to genuinely make fun of himself. When he entered the facility though, he was unfamiliar with what the intent of the program was, and obtained an education in the dangers and risks associated with alcohol consumption. Two weeks into his enrollment, Teinowitz took a physical examination where doctors discovered complications with his liver, the organ responsible for removing toxins from the bloodstream.
“I went into rehab without knowing what rehab was,” he said. “This is how aware I was; I literally didn’t know rehab meant [to] stop drinking. I thought [it meant] now you were going to drink like a gentleman; like James Bond [saying], ‘May I have a vodka martini, shaken not stirred?’ Not, ‘Hey, give me four shots of Cuervo.’ I drank a lot and I had a real need for rehab.”
Tom, who was Teinowitz’s best friend of 43 years, had passed away after he caught pneumonia following a liver transplant, rendering his weakened immune system unable to stave off the significant complications related to the infection. He and his friend saw the same doctor at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. and did not realize the severity of the condition they were facing. Once his friend passed away, Teinowitz protested seeing that doctor, as he figured the medical professionals were the cause of his death. When he mentioned this to his primary doctor, he said that the onus is on the individual to take responsibility for their situation and ensure they do everything possible to get better. It compelled Teinowitz to take his impediment seriously and lose 30 pounds, and he continues to actively try to lose more weight.
Teinowitz was eventually ousted from ESPN 1000, amidst a stretch of losses in the ratings to Dan Bernstein and Terry Boers on 670 The Score. Although he eventually landed at The Athletic as a writer and WGN Radio AM 720 where he filled in for various personalities and co-hosted both White Sox Weekly and The Beat, he remained aware of the changing landscape of sports media and how he nearly jeopardized his career.
His time rehabilitating, combined with struggling to find work, led him to revitalize his aspirations to become a playwright and begin compiling a play titled When Harry Met Rehab. The production, which originally started as a movie, evolved into a one-man play complete with maudlin retrospection on his journey and struggles with alcohol. The premise of the show was changed once his former co-host Manton read the script and offered to help Teinowitz complete it, pointing out how the concept revolved around the importance of collaboration and group therapy. Since the program he participated in was anonymous, the parts of the show pertaining to other members are fabricated to protect their identities and uphold standards.
“Spike is just a brilliant writer and we added stuff and took stuff out,” Harry Teinowitz says. “He said [that] my story was more of a manifesto than a play at some points. We wrote it, and the whole concept is it’s going to get real heavy at the end so it has to be real funny at the beginning.”
Teinowitz and Manton presented the script to Don Clark, Tom’s brother and an accomplished trial attorney who also produced plays. He offered to fund the scriptwriting and create a production that ran at the greenhouse Theater Center. Some of the show’s cast included Dan Butler, who famously played “Bulldog” on Frasier; Melissa Gilbert, who portrayed “Laura Ingalls” in Little House on the Prairie; and Elizabeth Laidlaw, who played “Vic Renna” on The Red Line. The tagline of the play is, “A comedy that takes sobriety seriously,” and has given Teinowitz a sense of closure on this chapter of his life while trying to honor and support those in recovery. The play opened to rave reviews in Chicago, aligning with Teinowitz’s success as a sports talk radio host, but had to close upon the spread of COVID-19. The show will be making an off-Broadway return next autumn in New York, and the show is in the midst of revamping its cast with hopes of reaching a large audience.
Clark offered Teinowitz the ability to depict himself in the production; however, he declined, stating that he had already done it and nearly died as a result. Nonetheless, he is excited for the play to make its return to the stage and hopes to receive more opportunities to re-immerse himself in the industry. It is a dream scenario – simultaneously working in sports media and the theater. It may not be possible though without a liver transplant, and fast.
Teinowitz is in desperate search for a donor and is urging people to email findharryaliver@gmail.com if someone or someone they may know could potentially be a fit.
“If you wanted to give me a liver right now, you would need to be blood-type A or O, and be 55 or younger,” Teinowitz said. “You could not be obese and there’s a day of testing – an MRI is a big thing – they want to check your history. When you have a living donor, you’re able to spend time testing specifically on what you want, and you can ask questions and interact; as opposed to when you get an organ from someone who had too much to drink coming home, and now we’ve got to get their liver inside of someone soon.”
Since he shared his urgent need for a liver donor over Twitter, Teinowitz has received support from those across the industry, including WFAN morning host Gregg Giannotti. At the conclusion of Boomer and Gio this past Friday, Giannotti, who had never heard of Teinowitz before reading an article on Barrett Sports Media outlining the situation’s exigency, displayed disappointment in the lack of engagement with the message. The way he phrased it in particular caught the attention of Giannotti, who retweeted the plea for help on his Twitter account. Although the message has been viewed over 200,000 times, he is aware of the uphill climb he faces in order to receive this life-saving procedure and receive a chance to reemerge in sports media.
“I’m not going to get a liver on Twitter, but I’ve been trying – on that last tweet specifically – on just getting it [in] front of people’s eyes,” Teinowitz said. “I’ve had friends come up to me [who] said, ‘What do [I] do to be [your] donor?’”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
