Latest news with #MikeDitka
Forbes
31-07-2025
- Sport
- Forbes
‘85 Bears Built Legacy That Is Still Felt By NFC North Opponents
Chasing greatness in the NFC North has left every team with the most difficult challenge in the league. Forty years ago, the Chicago Bears had the greatest team in their history, and arguably the greatest one-year champions the NFL has ever seen. The 1985 Bears went 15-1 in the regular season with a marauding group that included the nastiest defense the game has ever seen – with no apologies to the Steel Curtain of the 1970s or the 2000 Baltimore Ravens. The '85 Bears had a relentless defense that included Hall of Famers Dan Hampton, Mike Singletary, Richard Dent and Steve McMichael along with an angry and motivated defensive coordinator in James David 'Buddy' Ryan. The defensive coordinator thought owner George Halas should have named him head coach in 1982 but the nod went to the legendary Mike Ditka. There was resentment in both directions and the two men were definitely not friends. But they worked well together and built the best defense in the history of the sport. That includes the Steel Curtain defense of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the late 1970s and the 2000 Baltimore Ravens. Fans of those teams may argue, but the ferocity factor gives the '85 Bears the edge every time. Offensively, the combination of Walter Payton, Jim McMahon and an offensive line led by left tackle Jimbo Covert was the perfect complement to the defense. The Bears brought a ferociousness every week of the 1985 season, and they were particularly effective against division opponents. It was known as the NFC Central through the 2001 season and also included the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but the Bears performance against their current NFC North opponents was particularly informative to the team's legacy. Vikings had Bears on the run, until they didn't It started in Week Three against the Minnesota Vikings in a rare Thursday night game. The Bears were getting outplayed in the Metrodome by Tommy Kramer and Anthony Carter and trailed 17-9 deep into the third quarter. That's when McMahon came off the bench and fired three TD passes -- a bomb to Willie Gault and two to Dennis McKinnon -- and turned defeat into a 33-24 victory. The Vikings had no idea what hit them. Four weeks later, the Bears introduced themselves to the nation in a Monday Night Football game against their archrivals, the Green Bay Packers. There was a genuine dislike between Ditka and Packers head coach Forrest Gregg, and the Bears punished the Packers all night long. They forced 5 Green Bay turnovers and Ditka fired a shot across the bow when he put 335-pound rookie defensive tackle William "The Refrigerator" Perry in the backfield and had him run into the endzone for a third-quarter touchdown. The play would help turn Perry into a national phenomenon and a huge part of the Bears legend. Perry would catch a TD pass from McMahon when the Bears and Packers met in Green Bay two weeks later. The Detroit Lions may be the most dynamic NFC challenger to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2025, but they were a 7-9 team in 1985 and could not compete with the Bears. Chicago's defense was simply too mean and brutal for the Lions offense. This point was driven home in the final game of the regular season when ultraviolent linebacker Wilber Marshall obliterated Detroit quarterbacks Joe Ferguson and Erik Hipple with brutal hits that would be ruled illegal in today's game. The Bears have not been close to putting another team on the field that comes close to matching what they did 40 years ago. They dominated the NFL during the regular-season and were even more devastating in the postseason with one-sided victories over the New York Giants, Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots. They served notice of what kind of year it would against those three divisional opponents, who were forced to go through the nightmare of playing the Bears twice in that memorable season. The NFL has rarely seen the kind of devastation and domination displayed by the 1985 Bears.
New York Times
29-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Ryne Sandberg, the MVP of the '84 Cubs, will live forever at Wrigley Field
In 1984, the Chicago Bulls drafted a young star named Michael Jordan. Mike Ditka's Chicago Bears were on the precipice of greatness. No one knew it then, but Jordan's Bulls and Ditka's Bears would go on to win seven championships and create legacies that have yet to be topped. But in 1984, it was the Chicago Cubs who ruled the city, and it was Ryne Sandberg, a 24-year-old second baseman who had neither Jordan's aura nor Ditka's image, who was the biggest star in Chicago. Sandberg, who won the National League MVP Award in just his third full season in the majors, went on to make the Hall of Fame, have his number retired and get a statue. He was a legend in a city of giants. A year and a month after attending that statue dedication outside of Wrigley Field, Sandberg, one of the most beloved athletes in Chicago history, died Monday of complications from metastatic prostate cancer. He was 65. The news came midway through the Cubs' 8-4 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers. The Cubs clubhouse was quiet after the game. Every player had a T-shirt honoring Sandberg on their chair. Advertisement Cubs manager Craig Counsell found out about Sandberg's passing shortly before the game began. He addressed the team after it was over. 'We knew how much he loved being a Cub,' said Ian Happ, the longest tenured Cubs player. 'And we're really lucky in this organization to have legends that want to come back and want to be around. He was a special man and we'll miss him very much.' Sandberg had been suffering from cancer for more than a year. On July 16, he released a statement that presaged his passing. Ryne Sandberg provides a health update. (via rynesandberg23/IG) — Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) July 16, 2025 With all the excitement and tension over a pennant race and the trade deadline, the stark reality of Sandberg's health lingered over the Cubs. Jon Lester and Kerry Wood wore his jersey to games against the Boston Red Sox, and Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer offered a pre-eulogy during an inning in the team's broadcast booth. On July 23, Sandberg's teammate Bobby Dernier sang the seventh-inning stretch and wore a Sandberg jersey to the booth. Sandberg couldn't be at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Sunday in Cooperstown, but chairperson Jane Forbes Clark invoked his 2005 induction speech in her address. Two decades later and Ryne Sandberg's words still echo throughout Cooperstown. — Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) July 28, 2025 In that speech, written with Daily Herald columnist Barry Rozner, Sandberg said: 'The reason I am here, they tell me, is that I played the game a certain way, that I played the game the way it was supposed to be played. I don't know about that, but I do know this: I had too much respect for the game to play it any other way.' The speech, seen as a rebuke of the steroid era, struck a nerve because Sandberg was never a big talker. He didn't have Rick Sutcliffe's larger-than-life personality or Larry Bowa's sharp tongue. But he was the baseball player whom people pointed to when they talked about how to play the game. His statue outside of Wrigley Field captures him in his defensive crouch, ready to make a heads-up play. Advertisement 'The statue reflects '80s, '90s baseball for me,' Sandberg said then. 'It's got the old vintage flip-down glasses, which were a must every single day game at Wrigley Field. The gold patch on the glove signifies the Gold Gloves that were won. The vintage pullover jersey, not the button-down, and the elastic pants right on down to the stirrups. The fans will recognize that as '80s style. They might even call it retro.' Sandberg never went out of style in Chicago, where his very presence thrilled fans and reminded them of glory days gone by. Before 2016, the history of the Cubs was dominated by what could have been. But Sandberg stood out. He made 10 consecutive All-Star Games, earned nine Gold Gloves and won the 1984 NL MVP as a 24-year-old kid. 'He was kind of just really good at everything,' Counsell said. 'He was fast, he was a great defender, loved triples. Once a week, we'll talk about, 'How did he hit (13) triples in Wrigley (in 1984)?' Literally once a week, (bench coach) Ryan Flaherty and I will talk about that. But he loved the game and he played it in a way that was fun for me to watch.' For all that was wrong with the Cubs over the years, Sandberg, like Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Fergie Jenkins before him, was all that was right. More than a compiler of statistics and a turner of double plays, he made Cubs fans feel something. There's no greater honor for a ballplayer than to inspire hope in others. The entire Cubs team watched his statue dedication, and both Happ and Counsell said they will never forget it. 'I think those are the moments that kind of connect you generationally as baseball players,' Counsell said. 'They connect you to a city and you get an understanding of the impact that you can have on people if you live your life in a positive manner.' Advertisement After his cancer diagnosis, Sandberg found a new way to connect with people around him, from friends and family to fans. 'I've learned about the people in my life,' Sandberg said about making his condition public. 'From my family to my friends to my neighbors to my teammates to the Cubs fans, it's all about the relationships I have with people, and there's a lot of them. So just a reflection on that, and to see everybody here today, that's what I'm talking about, how special it is. I've felt it.' A year after his viral Hall of Fame speech, Sandberg decided he wanted to be a manager. He interviewed for the job Lou Piniella got before the 2007 season. With openings in the Cubs' minor-league system, he went down to Class-A Peoria. A Hall of Famer in the bushes was an interesting story. He worked his way up the chain to Triple-A Iowa, but when he didn't get the nod to replace Piniella, he left for the Philadelphia Phillies organization and eventually got the big-league managing job there. 'It's been living the dream all over again,' he said before a game against the Cubs in 2013. 'From making my way up the minor leagues to getting to the major leagues this year as a coach and getting the chance to manage, it's full circle in a lot of ways.' But this time, the story didn't end in success. The job didn't fit, the losses piled up, and he left the Phillies midway through the 2015 season. His in-uniform baseball career was over. But Sandberg then settled into the role he was best suited to play: Ryno, Cubs legend. Just seeing Sandberg, just shaking his hand and taking a picture, was enough to make a Cubs fan's day. Maybe their year. He made kids feel special and adults feel like kids. 'There's a whole generation of Cubs fans that just absolutely adore Ryno, and you could feel it,' Happ said. 'You could feel that when he was around, whether it was people yelling at him in spring training, or just when he would come on the field in those last few first pitches that he threw.' Advertisement Much like how Wrigley Field represents something more than a baseball stadium, Sandberg is more than just a Baseball-Reference page and a flag on the foul pole. You can't overemphasize what he and the '84 Cubs meant to this franchise and the city. That team created a generation of fans who then raised their kids as Cubs fans. Before '84, the Cubs had never drawn 2 million fans to Wrigley Field. The team hadn't been in the postseason since 1945. But everything changed in 1984, with Sandberg leading the way on the field and Harry Caray in the WGN-TV booth. It was as if the Cubs went from black and white to Technicolor. Wrigley Field became a tourist attraction. The only times the Cubs have failed to draw 2 million in a season since '84 were the two strike-shortened seasons and the two COVID-19-restricted ones. In 1984, they won 96 games behind the second baseman from Spokane, Wash., who collected 200 hits and hit as many triples (19) as home runs (19). Sandberg put up a .314/.367/.520 slash line that season. He was one vote shy of being the unanimous MVP. He hit .368 in the playoffs that year, and in 1989, when the Cubs returned to the postseason, he was even better. In his career, Sandberg played only 10 playoff games, and he collected 15 hits, seven of which went for extra bases, and six walks. Imagine him playing in a World Series. I'm sure that he did as he watched the Cubs finally do it in 2016. His most indelible moment came in the regular season in 1984. 'The Sandberg Game' remains etched in memory in the days when a regular-season baseball game could capture a country's interest. On June 23, 1984, with a young Bob Costas on the mic on NBC, Sandberg hit two home runs that tied the score in the ninth and 10th innings off Hall of Fame closer Bruce Sutter. 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟐𝟑, 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟒 In the famous 'Sandberg Game' at Wrigley Field, Ryne Sandberg hit a home run in the 9th to tie the game at 9, then hit another in the 10th, knotting the game at 11. The Cubs would go on to win 12-11. — This Day in Chicago Sports (@ChiSportsDay) June 23, 2025 Sandberg is in the top five of most offensive categories for the Cubs, including home runs. He hit 282 of them in a Cubs uniform, and in 1990, he led the NL with 40 homers and somehow also won the Home Run Derby at Wrigley Field with a whopping three. (The rules were different back then, but the wind at Wrigley Field was still vexing.) He hit 30 homers in 1989, when the Cubs made the playoffs, making him the first second baseman in major-league history to hit 30 homers in consecutive seasons. Advertisement 'How would you like to be a manager in the major leagues and have a guy who makes all the plays, hits .300 and gets 30 home runs?' Cubs manager Don Zimmer said. A lot has changed since Sandberg hung up his spikes for the second and final time in 1997. The Cubs won it all — I was on the local pregame show with Sandberg that night — Wrigley Field has giant TV screens and high-end luxury clubs. Every inch of the area around the ballpark has been commodified and monetized. Day baseball is still around, but mostly just on the weekend. The lights are used more than ever. 'The Sandberg Game' replays on a team-owned TV channel. It was men like Sandberg who made all of this possible. Cubs players will wear a patch honoring him on their jerseys for the rest of the season. Cubs fans will wear his memory in their hearts forever.
USA Today
10-06-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
We hit 89 in our Raiders countdown to kickoff. Who wore it best and who's wearing it now
We hit 89 in our Raiders countdown to kickoff. Who wore it best and who's wearing it now We are now inside 90 days until the Raiders season opener at Foxboro against the Patriots, Our countdown hits 89 days so let's look at who has brought it in Silver & Black wearing that number. No. 89 Who's wearing it now: TE Brock Bowers Bowers was the Raiders top pick at 13 overall in the 2024 NFL Draft. The Napa native and University of Georgia product was one of the most anticipated tight end prospects to come out in years. And he lived up to every bit of the hype. The two-time Mackey Award winner had a rookie season for the ages. His 1194 receiving yards broke Mike Ditka's six-decade old rookie tight end record and his 112 receptions set the all-time NFL rookie record along with the Raiders single-season receptions record. Another season like that and he will quickly become not just who is wearing 89 now, but the best to ever wear it. I mean, unless he changes his number. Who wore it best: WR Amari Cooper Coop was the Raiders' pick at four overall in the 2015 draft. He began his career with consecutive 1000-yard seasons and made the Pro Bowl both seasons. In the middle of his fourth season with the team, the Raiders traded him to Dallas fo a first round pick.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Paul Sullivan: George Wendt's ‘Super Fans' character endures in a long tradition of on-screen Chicago sports nuts
CHICAGO — George Wendt didn't just play a rabid Chicago sports fan on TV. He was one, albeit not nearly as deluded as his 'Saturday Night Live' character, Bob Swerski, of the 'Super Fans' sketches. Wendt, who died Tuesday at age 76, gained fame for the iconic role of Norm Peterson on the 1982-93 sitcom 'Cheers,' before his popular caricature of Swerski, a Chicago sports fan who enjoyed beer and sausages with his friends while lauding 'Da Coach' Mike Ditka and the Bears and Bulls franchises. Advertisement But Wendt also was an old-school Chicago fan from Beverly who grew up watching the Bears, White Sox and Notre Dame football, the sports pyramid of almost every kid on the South Side or in the south suburbs. When I was the Sox beat writer back in 1996, I met Wendt at a game at what then was called new Comiskey Park and interviewed him for a story on the team's attendance woes. 'I wish I could come up with some cute little sound bite that could explain it, but it's sort of inexplicable,' he said. 'Has it ever been a hot ticket, really? … Maybe you could put it on the free TV versus cable TV thing a few years back (when the Sox moved to pay channel SportsVision in 1982), but now they're on WGN, so I don't know. 'It seems emigres to Chicago, the postgraduates who settled here in the suburbs, north or south, become Cubs fans. It seems like to be a Sox fan, you have to be born and raised on the South Side.' Advertisement Wendt starred in a commercial for the Sox in which he huffed and puffed his way to first base, slid headfirst and was handed a beer. He also narrated a documentary on the old ballpark in 1991 called 'Eighty Years of Celebration — Old Comiskey Park.' The Sox honored Wendt with a tribute on the video board Tuesday night at Rate Field, and team executives acknowledge he was perhaps their third-most famous celebrity fan behind former President Barack Obama and the new leader, Pope Leo XIV, aka 'Da Pope.' Wendt never really spoke like his character on 'Da Bears' sketches, but his succinct delivery of an exaggerated Chicago accent, along with the funny scripts written by fellow 'Super Fan' Robert Smigel, who played Carl Wollarski, have endured for more than three decades. Many forget that the image of the meatball Chicago sports fan was panned by some cultural elitists at the time. Former Chicago Tribune critic Blair Kamin wrote in 1992 that 'the low-brow repartee is bugging Chicago's high-brow temples of culture, perhaps because they feel it indirectly associates them with the blue-collar argot of Mayor Richard Daley's Bridgeport.' Advertisement 'People are going from Al Capone … to 'Da Bears' and 'Da Bulls,' ' Susan Lock, deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Special Events, told Kamin. Lock complained that the success of the Michael Jordan-led Bulls was 'eclipsing all these other wonderful programs that are going on in the city.' Another spokesperson for an organization that promoted Chicago architecture and design complained that 'Da Bears and Da Bulls' skits showed 'Chicagoans to be really dumb. … Our point is that there really are a lot of smart people in Chicago.' Some people clearly lacked a sense of humor in the '90s. Few fan bases from other cities have been portrayed on screen as much as Chicago's, including cameos during director John Hughes' movies, such as Ferris Bueller taking in a few innings of a Cubs game with friends Cameron and Sloane in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' or Hughes adorning the bedroom of John Candy's 'Uncle Buck' with a framed Chicago Sun-Times front page from the Cubs' loss in the 1984 National League Championship Series. The headline simply read: 'OUCH!' Advertisement An episode of 'The Conners' featured actor John Goodman and the Conner family trying to explain their loyalty to the Bears to a smug Green Bay Packers fan. Local sports themes are an occasional topic in 'The Bear,' the most Chicago show of them all. In one episode Oliver Platt's Uncle Jimmy character explains to Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) the scapegoating of Steve Bartman during the Cubs' Game 6 loss to the Florida Marlins in the 2003 NLCS. Bartman was widely ridiculed, but Uncle Jimmy fingered the true culprit: former Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez. Another episode of 'The Bear' featured Richie, a White Sox fan, ripping Carmy's brother-in-law Pete (played by St. Charles' Chris Witaske) for 'probably' being a Cubs fan. The age-old narrative of Sox fans accusing Cubs fans of being poseurs who don't know baseball was explored when Richie challenged Pete to name the Cubs first baseman. 'Alfonso Rivas,' he correctly replies, to Richie's chagrin. Maybe no one outside of Chicago got the joke, but we did. The all-time Chicago sports fan character on TV was Bob Newhart's Dr. Bob Hartley in the 1972-78 sitcom 'The Bob Newhart Show.' Hartley and his buddy, Jerry the orthodontist, always were trekking to Bulls, Cubs or Loyola basketball games, or driving to Peoria to watch a closed-circuit telecast of a blacked-out Bears-Packers game. I once referred to Newhart in a 2021 column as 'the indisputable godfather of celebrity Chicago sports fans,' a title he did not take lightly. Advertisement 'I will wear it proudly, until of course it is eclipsed by someone else,' he wrote in a letter. Wendt followed in Newhart's footsteps, popularizing the stereotypical loud, opinionated Chicago sports fan who always seemed assured of victory while ignoring the team's storied failures of the past. Wendt's Bob Swerski had nothing in common with Newhart's brainy psychologist, other than their passion for Chicago's teams. But you can picture them watching a game together, cocktails in hand, while voicing optimism that things eventually will get better, despite evidence to the contrary. It's a Chicago story that never grows old.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Paul Sullivan: George Wendt's ‘Super Fans' character endures in a long tradition of on-screen Chicago sports nuts
CHICAGO — George Wendt didn't just play a rabid Chicago sports fan on TV. He was one, albeit not nearly as deluded as his 'Saturday Night Live' character, Bob Swerski, of the 'Super Fans' sketches. Wendt, who died Tuesday at age 76, gained fame for the iconic role of Norm Peterson on the 1982-93 sitcom 'Cheers,' before his popular caricature of Swerski, a Chicago sports fan who enjoyed beer and sausages with his friends while lauding 'Da Coach' Mike Ditka and the Bears and Bulls franchises. Advertisement But Wendt also was an old-school Chicago fan from Beverly who grew up watching the Bears, White Sox and Notre Dame football, the sports pyramid of almost every kid on the South Side or in the south suburbs. When I was the Sox beat writer back in 1996, I met Wendt at a game at what then was called new Comiskey Park and interviewed him for a story on the team's attendance woes. 'I wish I could come up with some cute little sound bite that could explain it, but it's sort of inexplicable,' he said. 'Has it ever been a hot ticket, really? … Maybe you could put it on the free TV versus cable TV thing a few years back (when the Sox moved to pay channel SportsVision in 1982), but now they're on WGN, so I don't know. 'It seems emigres to Chicago, the postgraduates who settled here in the suburbs, north or south, become Cubs fans. It seems like to be a Sox fan, you have to be born and raised on the South Side.' Advertisement Wendt starred in a commercial for the Sox in which he huffed and puffed his way to first base, slid headfirst and was handed a beer. He also narrated a documentary on the old ballpark in 1991 called 'Eighty Years of Celebration — Old Comiskey Park.' The Sox honored Wendt with a tribute on the video board Tuesday night at Rate Field, and team executives acknowledge he was perhaps their third-most famous celebrity fan behind former President Barack Obama and the new leader, Pope Leo XIV, aka 'Da Pope.' Wendt never really spoke like his character on 'Da Bears' sketches, but his succinct delivery of an exaggerated Chicago accent, along with the funny scripts written by fellow 'Super Fan' Robert Smigel, who played Carl Wollarski, have endured for more than three decades. Many forget that the image of the meatball Chicago sports fan was panned by some cultural elitists at the time. Former Chicago Tribune critic Blair Kamin wrote in 1992 that 'the low-brow repartee is bugging Chicago's high-brow temples of culture, perhaps because they feel it indirectly associates them with the blue-collar argot of Mayor Richard Daley's Bridgeport.' Advertisement 'People are going from Al Capone … to 'Da Bears' and 'Da Bulls,' ' Susan Lock, deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Special Events, told Kamin. Lock complained that the success of the Michael Jordan-led Bulls was 'eclipsing all these other wonderful programs that are going on in the city.' Another spokesperson for an organization that promoted Chicago architecture and design complained that 'Da Bears and Da Bulls' skits showed 'Chicagoans to be really dumb. … Our point is that there really are a lot of smart people in Chicago.' Some people clearly lacked a sense of humor in the '90s. Few fan bases from other cities have been portrayed on screen as much as Chicago's, including cameos during director John Hughes' movies, such as Ferris Bueller taking in a few innings of a Cubs game with friends Cameron and Sloane in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' or Hughes adorning the bedroom of John Candy's 'Uncle Buck' with a framed Chicago Sun-Times front page from the Cubs' loss in the 1984 National League Championship Series. The headline simply read: 'OUCH!' Advertisement An episode of 'The Conners' featured actor John Goodman and the Conner family trying to explain their loyalty to the Bears to a smug Green Bay Packers fan. Local sports themes are an occasional topic in 'The Bear,' the most Chicago show of them all. In one episode Oliver Platt's Uncle Jimmy character explains to Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) the scapegoating of Steve Bartman during the Cubs' Game 6 loss to the Florida Marlins in the 2003 NLCS. Bartman was widely ridiculed, but Uncle Jimmy fingered the true culprit: former Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez. Another episode of 'The Bear' featured Richie, a White Sox fan, ripping Carmy's brother-in-law Pete (played by St. Charles' Chris Witaske) for 'probably' being a Cubs fan. The age-old narrative of Sox fans accusing Cubs fans of being poseurs who don't know baseball was explored when Richie challenged Pete to name the Cubs first baseman. 'Alfonso Rivas,' he correctly replies, to Richie's chagrin. Maybe no one outside of Chicago got the joke, but we did. The all-time Chicago sports fan character on TV was Bob Newhart's Dr. Bob Hartley in the 1972-78 sitcom 'The Bob Newhart Show.' Hartley and his buddy, Jerry the orthodontist, always were trekking to Bulls, Cubs or Loyola basketball games, or driving to Peoria to watch a closed-circuit telecast of a blacked-out Bears-Packers game. I once referred to Newhart in a 2021 column as 'the indisputable godfather of celebrity Chicago sports fans,' a title he did not take lightly. Advertisement 'I will wear it proudly, until of course it is eclipsed by someone else,' he wrote in a letter. Wendt followed in Newhart's footsteps, popularizing the stereotypical loud, opinionated Chicago sports fan who always seemed assured of victory while ignoring the team's storied failures of the past. Wendt's Bob Swerski had nothing in common with Newhart's brainy psychologist, other than their passion for Chicago's teams. But you can picture them watching a game together, cocktails in hand, while voicing optimism that things eventually will get better, despite evidence to the contrary. It's a Chicago story that never grows old.
