He began his long broadcasting career at eighteen, at Peoria radio station WMBD in 1934. Chicago radio station WGN hired him in 1940 to broadcast Cubs and White Sox games, largely on the recommendation of their top announcer, Bob Elson. Brickhouse served in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II. He announced White Sox games on WJJD in 1945 but missed the 1945 Cubs season, the only time during his broadcasting career that the Cubs would win the National League pennant. His was the first face seen when WGN-TV, Chicago's Channel 9, began broadcasting in 1948. His only pennant as a broadcaster was won by the White Sox in 1959, but neither the 1945 Cubs nor the 1959 Sox won the World Series. Brickhouse broadcast both Cubs and White Sox games until 1967, because they almost never played at home on the same day. He retired in 1981. Even in retirement, Brickhouse maintained a high profile as a Cubs and WGN ambassador. He occasionally returned to the booth for special events, such as Wrigley Field's annual "70's Night". He also guest-hosted with Harry Caray when the Cubs secured their first postseason berth in 39 years, as they clinched the 1984 National League Eastern Division title in Pittsburgh. The Cubs won the first two games of the League Championship Series at Wrigley, but lost three games to the Padres in San Diego, once again failing to win the pennant (1984 was the last year that the LCS was a best-of-five series). Brickhouse hosted a weekly segment on WGN's local version of WCW Pro in the early 1990s called "Brickhouse's Bonus." In 1990, Brickhouse narrated the retrospective VHS tape, The Sporting News Presents Baseball in the 80's. Broadcasting style Brickhouse tried to let the pictures speak for themselves. In contrast, his successor as Cubs announcer, Harry Caray, a radio broadcaster by training, tended to describe the game on TV as if he were doing a radio broadcast. Brickhouse was sparer with his descriptive prose; perhaps not as spare as Vin Scully of the Los Angeles Dodgers, but talking in quick bursts rather than long sentences, knowing that the well-established camera work of WGN-TV and of producer Arne Harris would tell much of the story. Instead of over-describing the action, "Brick" was more likely to add "flavor" to what was obviously happening, with almost childlike enthusiasm. He would pepper his play-by-play with