Bishop Rooks Pawn

(This piece was originally posted at "The Third City" blog on November 10, 2013)

I’ve practiced law in Chicago for twenty years. Before starting down that career path, I spent about a dozen years working as a golf caddie.

Caddying was, hands down, the best job I ever had -- so much so that I still can’t kick the looping life entirely. I last carried a bag just two months ago at the BMW Championship Pro-Am at Conway Farms Golf Club.

Movies about lawyers are a dime a dozen, but I’ve yet to see one that accurately captures the big-city law firm experience. Movies about caddies, however, you can count on one hand, and crazy as it may seem, Caddyshack tells it like it is.

It captured my caddie experience in spades: grew up in a big Irish family; won the caddie tournament (once); won the caddie scholarship; enjoyed an abbreviated "caddie swim" on off-days; looped for doctors, judges, CEOs, real estate developers, clergy, etc.

And by the end of my caddie career, I could even relate to some of the seemingly far-fetched scenes from the film.

Remember, for example, when a pitchfork-wielding Bill Murray delivered his wholly improvised monologue about the big-hitting Dalai Lama? Murray explained how the Lama had tipped him at the end of the round not with cash, but with the promise of "total consciousness."

Hell, I once caddied for a Roman Catholic bishop back in the mid-1980s and His Excellency, for all practical purposes, ran the same "Oh, uh, there won’t be any money" game on me.

That particular deal went down in the south end of the parking lot of Butterfield Country Club, just as His Mediocrity (I’m referring only to his golf game, of course) popped the trunk of his black Cadillac so I could put his sticks in the car.

The bishop had played the course earlier that day as a guest of one of the club’s members, and the parking lot was the place where I always had the best chance of scoring a post-round tip from the guest whose bag I’d just carried.

Why the parking lot?

If things went according to plan, I always had my golfer one-on-one by the time we made it out to the lot. That way, there wasn’t a member around to run interference by saying, "Don’t worry about Matt – I’ll take care of him when we get inside."

And that’s how it played out with the bishop. It was just the two of us on the blacktop exchanging some final pleasantries -- the young caddie and the old guy who drove a new Caddie.

Time to close the deal.

The bishop and I had talked plenty while we were out on the course together that afternoon, but at no point during the round did he and I discuss my religious background. (I’d graduated from a nearby Catholic high school a few years earlier.) As a result, he had no idea whether I played for his team on Sunday mornings or suited up with Xenu, Travolta and the Thetans.

But none of that mattered to His Thriftiness once he opened his wallet to give me my tip.

The man simply handed me three holy cards and sent me on my way.

Three holy cards.

For those of you who didn’t grow up Catholic, picture a baseball card. Now replace the photo of the third baseman on the front of that card with a painting of a third-century martyr. Swap out the player’s stats on the back of the card for a prayer.

Repeat that exercise two more times and you’ve got my tip from the bishop for a round of golf.

"So I’ve got that goin’ for me . . . which is nice."