It helps to know the song.

Leading the crowd in the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch, a tradition popularized by the legendary Harry Caray, has become a Wrigley Field institution.

Caray first sang on the South Side when he broadcast games for the White Sox. Then he brought the ritual with him to the Cubs and immortalized it at the Friendly Confines.

In the years since his death in 1998, the Cubs have continued the tradition of having “Guest Conductors” lead the stretch singing. It started as a tribute to Caray, but has morphed into an opportunity for any celebrity in town to promote an upcoming project or shill for some random product.

There have been many infamous renditions of the song by celebrities over the years where things have taken a turn for the worst. But we wanted to look back at the worst of the worst.

You don’t have to be a great singer — Harry definitely wasn’t — but some passing familiarity with the tune and/or lyrics is useful.

In general, to live in seventh-inning infamy, a celebrity must be memorable and screw up in some way. Mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor is the latest celebrity to serve up a less-than-stellar rendition.

Some tips for celebrities: Don’t be late (Ditka), don’t rush through the song (Mr. T), make sure you “root, root, root for the Cubbies” and not some other team, remember the correct name of the venue (Hi, Jeff Gordon!) and be somewhat coherent.

But when all else fails, enthusiasm masks ineptitude.

Here is our countdown of the worst all-time seventh-inning stretch guest conductors:

6. Sept. 21, 2021: Conor McGregor

The MMA fighter is originally from Ireland so he gets some slack because this was seemingly his first-ever baseball game. Not the best singer, he truly made the song his own — his own tune, lyrics and tempo — in this idiosyncratic rendition. However, the master showman had fun and his charm, charisma and enthusiasm won the day.

5. May 25, 2009: Mr. T

A less-than-tuneful version, Mr. T sped through the song and did give us the memorable line “One, two, three strikes YOU OUT!”

4. Aug. 7, 2001: Steve “Mongo” McMichael

The Bears great holds the notorious distinction of getting ejected by home-plate umpire Angel Hernandez after a call went against the Cubs. “I’ll have some speaks with that home-plate umpire after the game,” he said. His singing was fine, but his threatening the umpire will be long remembered.

3. May 24, 2005: Jeff Gordon

He started off with a cringe-worthy moment by calling it “Wrigley Stadium.” But the actual singing was worse. The NASCAR legend stopped singing in the middle of the song, but the music played on. He got hopelessly behind, lost the increasingly hostile crowd, never recovered and was booed out of the booth. Always remember “Wrigley Stadium.”

2. July 5, 1998: Mike Ditka

During the first year of guest conductors, the iconic former Bears coach was late, leaving Steve Stone and Chip Caray to momentarily filibuster, before Da Coach made his fashionably late arrival. When he did take the mic, he made up his missed time with a speedy 22-second version. Wrigley Field organist Gary Pressy called it his “most memorable accompaniment.”

1. Aug. 17, 2003: Ozzy Osbourne

The Black Sabbath singer turned reality star is the undisputed worst ever. His charmingly bad version had players in both dugouts rubbernecking to see the train wreck. You knew it was going to be memorable when he started “let’s go out to the ballgame.” He then mumbled and hummed his way through the majority of the song before somewhat finding his way at the end.

Still none can compare to the original — the great Harry Caray:

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NEW YORK — R. Kelly’s fate is now in a jury’s hands after weeks of lurid testimony in his sexual misconduct trial.

A jury of seven men and five women began deliberating racketeering and sex trafficking charges against the R&B superstar Friday.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys finished their closing arguments this week. The 54-year-old singer is accused of running a Chicago-based criminal enterprise that recruited his accusers for unwanted sex and mental torment.

The witnesses said Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Kelly “believed the music, the fame and the celebrity meant he could do whatever he wanted,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nadia Shihata said in federal court in Brooklyn in a fiery rebuttal to the defense’s closing argument that portrayed Kelly as a victim of false accusations.

But, she added, “He’s not a genius, he’s a criminal. A predator.” She added that his alleged victims “aren’t groupies or gold diggers. They’re human beings.”

After Shihata finished, U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly started her final instructions for jurors, who later began deliberating.

The 54-year-old Kelly, perhaps best known for the 1996 smash hit “I Believe I Can Fly, ” has pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges accusing him of abusing women, girls and boys for more than two decades.

He is also charged with multiple violations of the Mann Act, which makes it illegal to transport anyone across state lines “for any immoral purpose.”

Prosecutors say their evidence proves how Kelly, with the help of some loyal members of his entourage, used tactics from “the predator playbook” to sexually exploit his victims.

The tactics included isolating them in hotel rooms or his recording studio, subjecting them to degrading rules like making them call him “Daddy” and shooting video recordings — some seen by the jury at trial — of them having sex with him and others as a means to control them, prosecutors said.

In his closing, defense attorney Deveraux Cannick told the jury that testimony by several accusers was full of lies, and that “the government let them lie.”

Cannick argued there was no evidence Kelly’s accusers were never forced to do anything against their will. Instead, Cannick said, Kelly’s girlfriends stuck around because he spoiled them with free air travel, shopping sprees and fancy dinners — treatment that belied the predator label.

“He gave them a lavish lifestyle,” he said. “That’s not what a predator is supposed to do.”

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A person was killed and a man wounded in a shooting Friday morning in Grand Crossing on the South Side.

About 10:44 a.m., they were in the 1200 block of East 71st Street when someone unleashed gunfire, Chicago police said.

A male, whose age was not immediately known, was struck multiple times and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

A 34-year-old man was shot in the head and taken to the same hospital in critical condition, police said.

No arrests have been made. Area One detectives are investigating.

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REDDING, Calif. — Pacific Gas and Electric was charged Friday with manslaughter and other crimes after its equipment sparked a Northern California wildfire last year that killed four people and destroyed hundreds of homes, prosecutors said.

It is the latest action against the nation’s largest utility, which pleaded guilty last year to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in a 2018 blaze ignited by its long-neglected electrical grid that nearly destroyed the town of Paradise and became the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century.

In a news conference, Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett announced the 31 charges, including 11 felonies, against the company. She said in July that her office had determined that PG&E was “criminally liable” for last year’s Zogg Fire, which burned near the city of Redding.

Pushed by strong winds, the fire began on Sept. 27, 2020, and raged through the rugged Sierra Nevada and communities, killing four people, burning about 200 homes and blackening about 87 square miles of land.

In March, state investigators concluded that the fire was sparked by a gray pine tree that fell onto a PG&E transmission line. Shasta and Tehama counties have sued the utility alleging negligence, saying PG&E had failed to remove the tree even though it had been marked for removal two years earlier.

PG&E, which has an estimated 16 million customers in central and Northern California, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 after its aging equipment was blamed for a series of fires, including the 2018 Camp Fire near Paradise that killed 85 people and destroyed 10,000 homes, and it faced hundreds of lawsuits.

Company officials have acknowledged that PG&E hasn’t lived up to expectations in the past but said changes in leadership and elsewhere ensure it’s on the right track and will do better. They have listed a wide range of improvements that include using more advanced technology to avoid setting wildfires and help detect them quicker.

PG&E also remains on criminal probation for a 2010 pipeline explosion in the San Francisco Bay Area city of San Bruno that killed eight people, giving a federal judge oversight of the company. The judge and California power regulators have rebuked PG&E for breaking promises to reduce the dangers posed by trees near its power lines.

PG&E emerged from bankruptcy last summer and negotiated a $13.5 billion settlement with some wildfire victims. But it still faces both civil and criminal actions.

The Sonoma County district attorney’s office filed charges in April over a 2019 blaze that forced nearly 200,000 people to evacuate.

In the meantime, most of the roughly 70,000 victims who have filed claims for devastation caused by PG&E’s past misdeeds still are awaiting payment from a trust created during the bankruptcy. The trust, which is run independently of PG&E, is facing a nearly $2 billion shortfall because half its funding came in company stock.

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“Forever Plaid’s” final soliloquy about the joy of live music hits a little bit different in this, Our Second Year of the Pandemic, than it did when the show first opened here some 30 years ago. In its first production in over a year and a half, Drury Lane chose the 1989 commercial hit about a boy band taken out in a 1964 bus crash and reunited on present-day earth for a posthumous chance to do one last concert.

“Forever Plaid” is all ear-candy peppered with upbeat comedy and poignant glimpses into the Plaids’ thwarted teenage dreams, but three of the four Plaids are despondent when their big finale — “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” — brings them to their final curtain. The astral disruptions that brought the group back to Earth are waning; this will be their last chance to perform.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” says Francis (Michael Ferraro), trying to rally band mates Sparky (Bryan Eng), Smudge (A.D. Weaver) and Jinx (Yando Lopez). Francis continues: “We can’t be sure of anything except how we feel, that nothing on this or any other planet compares to the feeling of being inside a good, tight chord.” Just so.

Those chords — intricate harmonies that range from the Gregorian chant-ish opener to the manic DIY recreation of an entire “Ed Sullivan Show” episode — sound fabulous in director/choreographer Paul Stancato’s revival of creator Stuart Ross’ crowd-pleasing musical revue.

The cast of Drury Lane Theater’s “Forever Plaid” includes Bryan Eng (from left), Michael Ferraro, A.D. Weaver and Yando Lopez. Brett Beiner Photography

The Plaids marvel at the onset: They have bodies again! And voices! And their beloved Perry Como-inspired cardigans! And… hand sanitizer? They shrug, puzzled, as they discover small bottles in their pockets, but gamely rub it into their hands. They’re more flustered when the audience interactive portion of the show is nixed, red flashing lights and a loud, stern voiceover intoning “Danger! Do not cross!” when the Plaids move too far toward the stage’s edges in their search for volunteers.

Audience members will find the theater’s COVID-19 protocols similarly stringent. Opening night, vaccination proof or a negative COVID test was mandatory. Social distancing was non-existent, but ushers were quick to enforce the mask-over-your-mouth-and-nose-at-all-times, discretely and effectively both in the lobby and inside the theater. (The theater is allowed to sell to capacity, although opening night, the nearly 1,000 seat venue was roughly two-thirds full and markedly subdued, at least as compared to the raucous enthusiasm of pre-COVID opening night crowds.)

The cast’s charm and Stancato’s direction make it easy to be transported to the world of the Plaids. : Eng’s star wattage is undeniable and his mercurial, luxurious croon on “Wish a Falling Star” would elicit respect from Como himself. Weaver’s remarkable, percussive bass on “Sixteen Tons” goes deeper than a mine without losing its authoritative resonance. When Lopez unleashes “Cry,” it’s with a high-tenor belt that could fill an arena and pierce the clouds. He ends it on a note that’s pure money — on one knee, fist in the air — as he unleashes the last “cry,” a single syllable sent soaring by anguish and defiance.

“Forever Plaid” plays better in more intimate venues. On a stage like Drury Lane’s, there’s always the possibility of the four Plaids being swallowed up by the cavernous space around them. With an abstract set dominated by swirls of overarching plaid, set designer Kristen Martino does an excellent job making the stage accommodate the Plaids rather than the other way around.

With conductor/keyboardist Valerie Maze on the piano and a three-piece mini-band in the pit, “Forever Plaid” offers a retro-world of musical riches. Not to worry if you don’t yet know who Perry Como or Ed Sullivan were. The Plaids will fill you in, with charm and music that still sounds marvelous.

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When Christa Hamilton walked through the doors of UCAN Chicago (Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network) last week, she became the first African American and first woman to lead one of Chicago’s oldest social service agencies.

Founded as a Civil War orphanage, the 152-year-old North Lawndale organization serves more than 21,000 youth who have suffered trauma, either wards of the state or in the larger community, with a dozen programs supporting youth and families on the West Side and South Side.

Raised in Englewood, Hamilton feels an intrinsic connection to clients served by UCAN in communities impacted by poverty and crime. She was the first in her family to attend college. But now the 40-year-old is a star in the social services sphere.

“In the social services world, UCAN is a big deal. I’m extremely honored to be the person to pivot the history here,” said Hamilton.

“I’m grateful we have a board of directors bold enough to change the trajectory of the leadership and make it reflective of both the community that we serve and our workforce.”

She comes to the role after serving as CEO of Centers for New Horizons for seven years, passed the baton by that 50-year-old organization’s founder and education pioneer Dr. Sokoni Karanja in 2014. She joined Centers in 2011, previously managing its workforce development programs.

Under Hamilton’s leadership, Centers significantly expanded its programming, doubling its budget and staff — from $8 million to $18 million, and from 150 employees to more than 300.

“The services UCAN provides align with what I have done at Centers, the programs that I grew. So I felt qualified to lead this organization into its next chapter,” Hamilton said.

“Understanding its long history — 152 years of not having a woman or African American at the helm — I thought if any time was a great time to be in this position, that time would be now,” she said.

Casting a social safety net long before its more famous peer, the 132-year-old Jane Addams Hull House, UCAN, with a $46 million budget and 650 employees, originally was based on Chicago’s Northwest Side.

It relocated in 2015, building its $43 million, 7-acre Drost-Harding Campus at 3605 W. Fillmore, where it operates the 70-room Diermeier Therapeutic Youth Home for troubled wards.

The agency provides foster and teen parenting programs; transitional, independent living and other housing support; workforce and youth development programs. It runs two therapeutic day schools in Beverly and Humboldt Park.

Its sprawling North Lawndale campus has become a community anchor, with more than 80 groups using meeting space at its Nichols Center headquarters.

UCAN was founder of the North Lawndale Athletic and Recreation Association — community organizations collaborate to provide sports and extracurricular activities for neighborhood youth at its Arthur L. Turner Gymnasium.

And the campus hosts the Circuit Court of Cook County’s lauded Restorative Justice Community Court. First of its kind in Illinois, the initiative weekly brings nonviolent crime victims face-to-face with offenders to work out a resolution in a peace circle.

“Our Governing Board unanimously voted to appoint Christa Hamilton president and CEO. We firmly believe we have chosen the right executive leader for UCAN at the right time, given her demonstrated success as a nonprofit professional and career as a leader who is adept at addressing community needs and program efficiency,” said UCAN Board Chair Markell Bridges.

Hamilton, who holds an M.B.A., spent six years in management at Walgreens corporation, then three years as a workforce consultant with the U.S. Department of Labor, before feeling called to transition into nonprofit work.

“We are proud that Christa is the first African American and first woman to lead UCAN in our esteemed history,” Bridges said. “We believe her appointment is a significant milestone.”

A resident of Chatham and mother of two, Hamilton succeeds Thomas Vanden Berk, UCAN’s president of 28 years, who has served in an interim capacity since December.

Hamilton is zeroing in on violence intervention and prevention programs run by UCAN in North Lawndale and Roseland — two of 15 Chicago communities that account for 50 percent of the city’s gun violence.

Combating that violence is personal for her. Hamilton’s 21-year-old nephew, Jonathan Johnson, was murdered in Englewood in 2014.

“UCAN’s violence prevention programs are what pulls my heartstrings. When my nephew was killed, I saw how it tore our family apart. So I’m laser-focused on violence. I’ve lived through it and the trauma that comes after you leave the gravesite,” she said.

“My vision is: How do I lead in a way that can possibly reduce this violence, that can possibly stop other families from having to deal with the grief we went through?”

The nonprofit leader believes much of Chicago’s violence can be traced to lack of opportunities in those communities.

In North Lawndale, for example, nearly half the population lives below federal poverty level, and its 15.9 percent unemployment rate is double the city average, which doesn’t include the whopping 46 percent of its population considered out of the workforce.

“North Lawndale has high rates of crime and unemployment, and those are two areas that I spent the last five years of my life focusing on,” said Hamilton.

“Ultimately, the people I’ve met who are participating in antisocial or criminal behavior, they want the same things that we want. But they have behaviors that they need to unlearn. That’s where UCAN steps in,” she said.

“When you give them employment opportunities and mental health support, they can ultimately go on to become very productive members of society,” the millennial added.

“I have met too many young people that have been perpetrators of violence, and I have seen many of them change. So I know it can be done. But it really will take relentless engagement on behalf of organizations like UCAN that are out here doing the work.”

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The first college football game at Soldier Field was between Bourbonnais’ Viator College and Dubuque, Iowa’s Columbia College in 1924. It was scoreless, and Matt Nagy’s play-calling didn’t even have anything to do with it.

But 11 days later, the stadium hosted its first big game: Notre Dame — and its not-yet-nicknamed “Four Horsemen” — against Northwestern. The Fighting Irish won 13-6 on the way to a national championship, No. 1 of three for coach Knute Rockne.

What is this, a history lesson? Soldier Field is back in the big-college-game business, baby. No. 12 Notre Dame (+6 1/2 ) at No. 18 Wisconsin (11 a.m., Fox-32) even has ESPN’s “College GameDay” outfit in town for the first meeting between the schools since 1964 and the Irish’s first game on the lakefront since they pounded Miami 41-3 in 2012.

The 2012 Irish team was unbeaten all the way until the national title game. This one — a shaky-as-can-be 3-0 — doesn’t appear to have that kind of staying power. But an upset of the Badgers would mean victory No. 106 at Notre Dame for coach Brian Kelly, who’s tied with Rockne for the most in school history.

Can it happen?

Of course it can.

The broadcast undoubtedly will be focused on the matchup of Irish quarterback Jack Coan — former Wisconsin starter and graduate — against his old team.

“It’s definitely going to be weird,” he said. “It’s going to be a lot of my friends I’m playing against, guys I still talk to today.”

Guys like Graham Mertz, who watched from the sideline as a freshman as Coan and the Badgers made it to the Rose Bowl.

“Nothing but good things about that guy,” Mertz said. “He’s a great player, great teammate, great friend.”

But Mertz is the more interesting story. He arrived at Wisconsin as the school’s highest-rated quarterback recruit ever. So far, it’s not going so well.

Why is Wisconsin — technically the home team — a fairly heavy favorite? Notre Dame’s offensive line has pass-blocking problems that sound all the alarms against a ferocious Badgers defensive front. The Irish’s run defense has been unimpressive, too.

But, man, nothing in college football is as important as the quarterback — and Mertz has been stuck in neutral since his smash debut as a starter, a 20-for-21, five-touchdown gem in the 2020 opener. Is Mertz an NFL talent? That’s not the question anymore. Will Mertz last the season as the Badgers’ starter? That’s more on point. Irish, 21-17.

OTHER WEEK 3 PICKS

Ohio (+14 1/2 ) at Northwestern (11 a.m., BTN): What was I saying about the importance of the quarterback? The Wildcats are back at the intersection of don’t-know and don’t-want-to-know, a terrible place to be. Is it Andrew Marty? Is it Ryan Hilinski? Is it back (again) to Hunter Johnson? Ugh. Defense wins it, 16-10.

Illinois (+11) at Purdue (2:30 p.m., ESPN): The Illini have lost four of the last five in the Purdue Cannon series, and you can make that five of six if they don’t get after it a whole lot harder than they have since the opener against Nebraska. Coach Bret Bielema would love to see his players compete as hard as the Boilermakers have thus far. Sheesh, even the trophy has the word “Purdue” in it. Boilers, 34-20.

No. 7 Texas A&M (-5 1/2 ) at No. 16 Arkansas (2:30 p.m., Ch. 2): Arkansas officially is the home team at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, but Texas A&M owns the joint. Should this rivalry game still be called the Southwest Classic if the Aggies beat the Razorbacks for the 10th year in a row? Woo! Pig! Upset!

Rutgers (+20) at No. 19 Michigan (2:30 p.m., Ch. 7): Both teams are better than they were last season, when Michigan won a wild one 48-42. This one won’t be much like that one. Watch Blake Corum run the ball. Watch Aidan Hutchinson terrorize the quarterback. Watch the Wolverines win 37-14.

No. 9 Clemson (-10) at NC State (2:30 p.m., ESPN): Clemson’s offense is unrecognizable. Where’s the passing game? Where are the big plays? The defense is as good as any Dabo Swinney has had, though. The Wolfpack are 0-8 against the bullies of the ACC since 2011, when their QB was this really tall dude named Mike Glennon. Tigers, 20-13.

My favorite favorite: No. 20 Michigan State (-5) vs. Nebraska (6 p.m., FS1): Are we to believe the Huskers suddenly are good because they avoided getting blown out by Oklahoma? Give me the guys who went on the road and rag-dolled Northwestern and Miami.

My favorite underdog: West Virginia (+18) at No. 4 Oklahoma (6:30 p.m., Ch. 7): Maybe the Sooners have been saving everything for this prime-time ABC game and have a bunch of lightning strikes up their sleeves. We haven’t seen that customary brand of offense yet, though — and the Mountaineers can really bring it on “D.” Boomer in a close one.

Last week: 8-3 straight-up, 8-3 vs. the spread.

Season to date: 20-11 straight-up, 20-11 vs. the spread.

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Music director Riccardo Muti called Thursday’s Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert a “very special occasion.”

And so it was.

There were milestones aplenty. Not only did the concert mark the beginning of the 2021-22 season, it was also the first time the full orchestra gathered on the Orchestra Hall stage in any sort of normal way in nearly 19 months. (Mask and vaccination requirements were in place.)

The symphony did offer a live, three-concert series there in the spring, but those performances were presented in a much more restricted way because of COVID-19 protocols, with small, spaced ensembles on the stage and audiences limited to just 398 attendees.

But perhaps the biggest milestone was the presence of Muti himself, the artistic leader and international face of this ensemble who was back for his 12th season. The 80-year-old Italian conductor drew cheers and a standing ovation upon walking on stage at the concert’s start.

Muti’s last appearance with the orchestra was Feb. 23, 2020 — more than 575 days ago. And, indeed, the orchestra announced earlier in the day that it was extending his contract through the 2022-23 season in large part because of his lost time with the orchestra.

After leading “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a tradition at the beginning of each season, Muti walked off stage to get a microphone for a few introductory remarks that he said where unscripted.

Noting English was not his first language, Muti said it was hard to find the words to fully express the depth of emotions that he and the orchestra were feeling. But he went on to movingly and eloquently speak to the essential need for music and culture, especially during the enduring “disaster” of this pandemic.

In honor of the “heroic” actors, musicians, dancers and artists whose artistic voices were largely silenced during the coronavirus, Muti said the orchestra was presenting Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55, “Eroica (Heroic).”

But before it got to that program centerpiece, the orchestra offered something of another milestone. It began the concert with its first-ever performances of two works by once nearly forgotten but now fast-rising historical composers of color, including one who was a woman.

That these two compositions were featured on such a high-profile concert was another sign of the big changes sweeping the classical world as it, like the rest of society, responds to the Black Lives Matter movement and other pressing calls for greater inclusion and diversity.

The program opened with the Overture to “L’Amant anonyme (The Anonymous Lover),” the only intact surviving opera of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799). The mixed-race musician, who gained considerable famed during his lifetime, was born in the French colony of Guadeloupe and is the first known classical composer of African ancestry.

There is little that especially distinguishes this sprightly, solidly crafted 1780 work written in the familiar Classical-era style. The highlight was arguably the slower, softer middle section in which the interplay between the orchestra and harpsichordist Mark Shuldiner could be heard to advantage.

Of considerably more interest was the Andante moderato, a 10-minute work by Florence Price, who lived much of her life in Chicago but fell mostly into obscurity after her death in 1953. She has been rediscovered in recent years and is belatedly and rightly being recognized as one of the major American composers of the 20th century.

Much like Samuel Barber’s famed Adagio for Strings seven years later, the work was originally written in 1929 as the second movement a string quartet, and it was presented here in a version for orchestral strings that deserves to become a concert staple.

Muti reveled in the reflective first and third sections of this beautiful work, which have a spacious, flowing and innately American feel that presages Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” 15 years later. In between is a slightly jazzy, dance-like, more upbeat section that seems almost out of place at first but manages to fit in and complement the rest.

But the focal point of this concert was Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. Muti and the orchestra offered a towering, all-involving performance of work. There were highlights aplenty especially in the conductor’s exquisite shaping of the dark, slow second movement, as he mined the full power of its brooding, sometimes turbulent emotions.

Much more could be said, but the performance made one thing emphatically clear: The Chicago Symphony is back in full force.

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Barack Obama has now been gone from Chicago as long as he was here, if you count his election to the U.S. Senate as the end of his full-time residence in the city. Obama was a community organizer on the South Side from 1985 to 1988, took three years off for Harvard Law School, then returned here in 1991 to begin the political climb that took him to the presidency.

With that kind of historic distance, and with the Obama Center under construction in Jackson Park, it’s a good time to ask: What did Chicago mean to Obama, and what did he mean to us?

Obama still owns his Georgian manse on Greenwood Avenue, and uses it as a voting address, but he actually lives in an $11 million estate on Martha’s Vineyard, where he recently celebrated his 60th birthday with John Legend, Erykah Badu, and other celebrities. That’s a long way from running the Developing Communities Project out of a church basement on 113th Street, catering meetings from Subway. Obama will dedicate his Center, and visit it for important events, but he’s never coming back to Chicago to live.

“I don’t know if it would be a comfortable fit here, because he’s such an outside figure,” Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington once told me. “He’s not a Chicago creature anymore. He’s a world figure.”

Which raises the question: Was Obama ever a Chicago creature, or was the city simply a stepping stone for his ambitions? Few modern presidents have less connection to the state they represented politically. Obama was neither born nor raised in Chicago, and didn’t return here after his presidency. Still, he couldn’t have made it to the White House from any other city, and he’s the only Chicago politician who could have been elected president. 

I mean no disrespect to Obama when I say he’s the most calculating person I’ve ever met. I say that with all the respect in the world. No one becomes president by accident. His first calculating move was his move to Chicago. One reason he was attracted to the city: Harold Washington, whose election as mayor demonstrated that Chicago was a place where a politically ambitious young Black man could make it to the top. (In fact, when Obama first ran for office, he hoped to follow Washington’s path from the state legislature to Congress to City Hall.) Illinois has elected more Black politicians to Congress than any other state, by a wide margin. 

Chicago was the booster rocket to his rise, jettisoned once he reached the stratosphere.

Had Obama remained in New York City, where he graduated from Columbia University, “you would never have heard of him,” Lou Ransom, former executive editor of the Defender, once said. “He may have been a very good lawyer and maybe got elected to some office, but if he hadn’t come to Chicago, he would not have had the kind of support to push him where he is now.”

Obama’s effort to duplicate Harold Washington’s political journey was blocked by Bobby Rush, who defeated him in the 2000 Democratic primary for the 1st Congressional District — his only electoral loss. During that race, I interviewed Obama for the Chicago Reader. Even then, he made it clear that Chicago wasn’t big enough for his ambitions.

“I really have to want to be here,” he told me. “I’m like a salmon swimming upstream in the South Side of Chicago. At every juncture in my life, I could have taken the path of least resistance but much higher pay. Being the president of the Harvard Law Review is a big deal. The typical path for someone like myself is to clerk for the Supreme Court, and then basically you have your pick of any law firm in the country.”

Even Obama’s biggest fans will tell you he’s not a humble guy. Few successful politicians are. The thing of it is, though, the first (and probably only) Chicago president had to be an outsider. A traditional neighborhood politician — think Dan Rostenkowski, Michael Madigan, Richard M. Daley, or Bobby Rush — could never have made it on the national stage. During the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain released a TV ad that began “Barack Obama, born of the corrupt Chicago political machine,” then attempted to associate Obama with Bill Daley, Tony Rezko, Emil Jones, and Rod Blagojevich. 

The ad didn’t work because Obama didn’t look, talk, or think like a Chicago politician. He was, by then, a national and even international figure, as much a creature of Hawaii, Harvard or New York as of Chicago. British-Indian essayist Pico Iyer, who met Obama in Hawaii in 2006, described him as “so much like the kind of people we meet in Paris, in Hong Kong, in the Middle East: difficult to place and connected to everywhere. Like the air of his home island (not really Eastern or Western, but a vibrant mingling of the two), he spoke for the dawning global melting pot of today.”

Supposing Obama lives into his 90s, as most presidents do these days, he will have spent only a sixth of his life in Chicago. Chicago was the booster rocket to his rise, jettisoned once he reached the stratosphere. Still, we can always say we produced the first Black president, and we’ll always have the Obama Center. (Obama’s absence from Chicago has probably made the process of building the Center more acrimonious than it would have been if he still lived in Kenwood. In 2018, now-Ald. Jeanette Taylor pressed Obama for a Community Benefits Agreement to protect the neighborhood from gentrification. Speaking by teleconference from Washington, Obama told her no. “He forgotten who he is,” Taylor fumed later. “He forgot the community got him where he is.”)

Maybe Obama was never a creature of Chicago, but he needed us, and we needed him. I’d say we got our money’s worth out of each other.

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WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama officially break ground on their Obama Presidential Center on Tuesday while construction in historic Jackson Park in Chicago kicked off in August.

Groundbreaking celebrations for the complex, which will not include the official Obama Presidential library, will start on Monday with a gathering of Obama alumni and run through Tuesday with events to be virtual and in-person due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot will join Obama for the small groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday.

Obama, whose political career was launched on the South Side, and Michelle, who grew up on the South Side, intend for their center to spark a South Side economic renewal. The construction has started even as federal litigation opposing locating the project in Jackson Park is still pending.

In a video where the Obama’s are sitting side by side, Michelle Obama said, “This project has reminded us why the South Side and the people who live here are so special. And it’s reaffirmed what Barack and I always believed that the future here is as bright as it is, anywhere.”

On Monday evening before the event, Obama will host a fireside chat via Zoom with David Plouffe, who managed his first campaign and Obama Foundation chief Valerie Jarrett, a longtime confidant of the Obamas who served in his White House for the entire eight years of his presidency. The chat is for alumni from the two Obama presidential campaigns — both headquartered in Chicago — and administration.

The Obama Center, on 19.3 acres in Jackson Park, will take about four years to build. The latest price tag is $830 million. The most striking structure will be a chunky 235-foot-high museum tower. The complex also includes an athletic and event center, a forum with a restaurant, an auditorium, recording studios, garage and a Chicago Public Library branch.

In July 2016, then-President Barack Obama selected Jackson Park, the site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, for his center. Nearby Washington Park was also in the running and would likely have spawned less opposition if the center was located there.

Obama’s decision to locate his presidential complex in a landmarked park automatically triggered a federal review. Foundation planners did not factor in that a federal review typically takes years and, at one point, predicted groundbreaking would be in 2018. The review started in 2017 and concluded last spring.

The complex will not house the official Obama Presidential Library run by the National Archives and Records Administration. Artifacts, some records and NARA staffers are located in a nondescript northwest suburban Hoffman Estates building.

In 2017, Obama jettisoned the official presidential library from the project to be free of NARA’s expensive design, endowment and security mandates, saving himself the need to fundraise millions more. If the Obama Center included the NARA-operated Obama Library, the endowment under NARA rules would be 60% of the library cost.

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