In one way, I'm not surprised. After the Dayton Daily News and Hal McCoy decided to split after this season, we kind of figured that Chick Ludwig wasn't going to last long. After all, if they let McCoy go, then the Chickster didn't have a chance, right? On September 30th, 2009, Ludwig will pen his final posts and pieces, accepting the newspapers offer for early retirement. He writes, in the comments section of a post after the Ohio State Buckeyes lost a heartbreaker:
Hal and I are going out together. After 30 years as a sportswriter at the Dayton Daily News, I have accepted the company’s offer for early retirement. My projected final day at the Dayton Daily News — and my final “Ludwig At Large” blog — will be Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009. Cheers, Chick
The Chickster was one of Cincy Jungle's favorites, mostly for his to-the-point questions during press conferences that made a rather secretive Marvin Lewis squirm. Not that we want Lewis to squirm, but he keeps things close to the chest, and Ludwig would ask the same question several times to wrestle that information from him to the point that you could visually see Lewis boil.
In the past year or two, we've lost Mark Curnutte, Chick Ludwig, C Trent Rosecrans (though he popped back up with CNati), the Cincinnati Post, and, if you want to include radio guys, Alan Cutler, Richard Skinner and Tom Gamble as the Two Angry Guys (there was no better radio program than the original Two Angry Guys on Homer). I know a lot of Cincinnati fans don't care for some of the writers or radio personalities, but we're losing guys that feeds us information, or has a local flair for topics of discussion -- such as losing Cutler for a nationally syndicated Fox Sports morning show.
Anyway, good luck Chickster. Cincy Jungle will miss you.