That tidbit from the 1980s is another piece of radio history with McNeil, who twists through sports-talk radio in Chicago more than anyone.

To get a handle on Chicago sports talk, you need to wrestle the idea of McNeil.

His decision to switch from The Score, WSCR-AM (670), to WMVP-AM (1000) in 2000 was bizarre, yet maybe an apt stretch. WMVP, ESPN's foothold in Chicago, epitomizes the corporate sports gruel that is all things ESPN.

Many years at WMVP were rocky, though sometimes compelling. The return home to The Score seemed inevitable, and it came in 2009. McNeil is 15 months into anchoring from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. with Matt Spiegel. Spiegel is a pro, a plus for Chicago sports talk. Their pairing is good but not magic. (Their '80s-style parody songs make me want to bloody my skull against my office wall.)

No magic formula

Radio magic is bizarre. How do you explain Dan Jiggetts and Mike North? Or Terry Boers and Dan Bernstein? They simply add to their historically long pairing with every afternoon drive show on The Score.

Here's where it gets incestuous with McNeil and Chicago sports-talk radio.

When McNeil produced Chet Coppock's show on WLUP-AM in the late 1980s, I prayed Steve Dahl and Garry Meier would go past 7 p.m. so Coppock's show would be shorter. In those days, the Bears ruled Chicago, socially as well as sportingly. Dahl's show was more interesting as sports talk than Coppock's.

His puff-chested blowhole style of sports radio made me grit my teeth -- and switch. When Chicago sports radio took hold in the '90s, I feared it would be in the image of Coppock, especially when McNeil was picked up on The Score. But McNeil evolves, and that might be his greatest asset. He and Boers worked radio magic as ''The Heavy Fuel Crew.''
One of the boys

In his quarter century of Chicago sports talk, McNeil has figured out that magic comes from opening the heart as much as a photographic memory of sports and numbers (down to referees), a la Les Grobstein.

McNeil magic comes when he talks about hanging at Indy or Churchill Downs with high school buds. Or how he is the world's coolest dad for taking his boys to a concert. Guys connect to that.

He has enough magic that I put up with the clunkers in his show: Nothing stops sports talk like hockey, and McNeil does way too much; same for Teddy Greenstein, not only a typical pompous sort from the Tribune, but an expert on two subjects that almost never should be on sports talk: golf and college sports.

Yet, I listen to McNeil, even followed him on ''The Afternoon Saloon'' at WMVP. There was magic, even there.

Easy, difficult listening

Gladstone knows radio magic. She's the genius who put Kathy O'Malley and Judy Markey together as ''The Girlfriends'' on WGN-AM (720). It was a breakthrough pairing.

A couple years ago, two of us were relaxing after brunch with Gladstone at Mitchell's Original on North Clybourn. With the lioness of Chicago radio (former program director at WGN-AM, former operations manager at WMAQ-AM) spilling, I guided the talk to sports. She knows everybody who is anybody in Chicago radio. The gossip was delightful.

The nugget on McNeil stuck with me. Last week, I asked Gladstone to use it. She said, ''Sure -- as long as you also say he was as bright and talented as he was difficult!''

That nails listening to McNeil perfectly, too. We wait to hear his next evolution.