The Friday Flashback: Jim Shorts

By Chuck Sudo in Miscellaneous on Apr 25, 2008 1:00PM

Last week's flashback about The Loop AM 1000 stirred something with you born-and-raised readers. Specifically, we were reminded of when Kevin Matthews was absolutely on top of his game. This was before he went all Ted Nugent wacko conservative on us.

Jim Shorts was Matthews' most endearing character and his ability to switch between his actual voice and Shorts' fooled even the most astute listeners. It was truly theater of the mind and stayed that way through the first few episodes of "The Jim Shorts Cavalcade of Sports for You," a show that ran on the old Sportschannel in 1995. After those first few episodes someone got the bright idea to make up Matthews as Shorts and put him in front of the camera. The whole routine subsequently lost a good amount of its luster.

We found two clips to show the difference. The first clip, an "interview" with former Tribune sports columnist Bob Verdi, makes inventive use of a telestrator and Shorts' physical ailments. The second one features a Harry Caray impersonation (by Jim Volkman) that might make one long for those AT&T commercials recently pulled from the air.