Being a stay at home dad has its upsides. Most of my days I am in shorts or sweats all day. We have a wide open calendar most days (ending soon as we signed up for spring “Daddy and Me” classes) which allows us to have a “see where the day takes us” kind of attitude. So when BeefLoaf alerted me that Mike North was having an estate sale, I was in without even thinking about it. I mean, he has to have some really good stuff right?

So we packed up the car and I grabbed my checkbook. We drove north to The Norths’ and of course the Chicago traffic wasn’t friendly. So many damn trucks. Little Miss Shortstop (LMSS) was awesome in the car though and was happy to get out.

Yep, this is how we found the sale. There were tons of cars in the area so I braced myself to have to wait to get in, but alas it was no issue. Estate sales are a crapshoot, I went to a few last fall and vowed to never go to another. I did have some luck last fall, hit a house with 6,000 Starting LineUp Figures most selling for $1 each. But usually you hit sales where they charge Ebay high prices. With the build up in the paper I was expecting to see collectors as far as the eye could see. But do you know who is at an estate sale at 10:30 on a Thursday? OLD PEOPLE. We saw several going in as we entered the garage.

In the garage we picked up some stuff, including a set of White Sox and Bears bean bags (for $1 each) and a custom bat made for Mike. I was met by a very lovely lady at the door who asked me to put on some booties like you see in CSI. Which given the foot traffic I fully understand. We entered the kitchen.

It’s a dope house. Lots of character. And in the kitchen you could get any type of kitchen device, utensil, container, whatevs for a pretty cheap price. But the blender was sold, or was on hold rather, till the little old lady came back to see if she had the missing piece at home so she could purchase the blender. I wanna have time like that. I wasn’t really into the kitchen stuff so I moved to the living room.

At this point I noticed a lot of the older crowd carrying bottles of booze around. I was like “shit, I just missed the booze sale”, which I didn’t even know was an option. Luckily I only drink beer and there was no beer. On the couch pictured above, they had tons of jerseys which I went through. Lotta Bears, but not my size. There was an old school 670 softball jersey which was a XXL (that I almost bought for BeefLoaf) but alas they wanted too much money. Which was a totally reasonable price, but just a little more than I wanted to spend. We hit the den and grabbed the holy grail, a MIKE NORTH BOBBLEHEAD. $3! SCORE. I was looking at some mini helmets and my daughter spotted it. And she wouldn’t let it go.

I knew of this doll’s existence. I had never seen one, but there it was. A 3ft “Mr.Playboy” bunny, holding a martini glass and a pipe. Dressed in a smoking jacket, tux shirt, pants and slippers. It was pretty awesome and my daughter kept yelling “Bunny! Bunny!” So being the great father I am, I grabbed the bunny and my daughter embraced it and gave it a kiss. I also grabbed a Ditka mini helmet and left them with the lovely lady watching the door. We headed downstairs which I had been told had all the sports stuff.

AHH-MA-ZING. Now, it didn’t look exactly like this, but it was pretty damn close. Everything left on the walls was for sale and there was some pretty damn interesting stuff. I was made aware that only cash was accepted and I was only holding $80 so I was being picky. Saw some great White Sox stuff that would have looked good in the house, but this caught my eye.

How fucking cool. Found another bobblehead too, and at this point Little Miss Shortstop was thrilled as there were toys and coloring books! So she got what she wanted and we went behind the amazing bar. IT WAS HUGE. Like, the size of my kitchen. When I talked to the boys later, I said it was “we wouldn’t go to games” nice. I could see Mike holding court there back in the day and what an amazing upgrade on a sweet house. 6 GODDAMN TV’S. Simply awesome.

After we went though all the stuff, we made our way upstairs to make our purchases. I asked if Mike was there, they said he was, but he was upstairs. I brought some 108 gear for him and wanted to pass it on, which I did. I didn’t feel like it was important enough to get him, so we just gave it to one of his buddies working the sale. We loaded up our gear and LMSS decided that she was ready to take a walk. Being a lovely day we decided that we’d walk the block a few times. Thank you to Mike’s neighbors that didn’t yell at me or my daughter (who has no desire to walk on the sidewalk) for walking in your grass.

After we picked up 3 pine cones and chased a squirrel we decided (me, just me) that it was time to go. As we walked back to the car, Mike’s buddy yelled at me to come in, Mike was in the kitchen. So being a guy who never misses his moment, I grabbed the bobbles and the bat. Mike was holding court in HIS kitchen. My first memory of Mike was the infamous Ozzie Guillen call. Same voice. Looked great! Before he even finished his conversation with another fan he bounced over to us and thanked me for the gear. Just a natural conversation and he took some pics with us. He also signed the bat and the bobbles and I am not joking shot the breeze with us like we’ve known each other for years.

I asked if he still goes to games, he said nah, he’s got all the packages. But I let him know that if he ever wanted to come to a Sox game with us, we’d love to have him. I dropped that Kittle had spent some quality time in the 108 and that seemed to peak his interest. He asked if we had season tickets, I said yes, and he said that if we ever have an extra to message him and he’d come down. FUCKING AWESOME. I don’t know if we can handle both Mike and Ron, but goddamn how sweet would that be? BeefLoaf would mess himself. I might get a few questions in, but I am sure they would control the conversation. So let’s hope (and pray if that is your thing) that Mike was serious and will grace us with his presence this summer.

It was a great day. LMSS loved it and was a peach all day. Thanks for opening your house Mike and doing it right. If you wanna buy some of his stuff, they are there today (Friday March 16th) from 9am til 3pm and Saturday from 9am to 1pm. The address is 631 Austin Ave. in Park Ridge. Swing by and say hi. He’ll love it and you will too. Thanks again Mike, see ya this summer.

-MSS

So our good friends at 4th Shift Printing made us some damn fine hoodies! They are a “PREMIUM” black hoodie, look cool as hell. We’ll have them up the shop soon, so if you want one, go buy one!