A break in the action for Bonadonna
Windy City ThunderBolts announcer writes a book, completes audio documentary
Terry Bonadonna is the type of person who cherishes every day at the ballpark.
He has been the lead radio announcer for the Windy City ThunderBolts since 2010, and the 2020 season would have been his 11th with the Crestwood-based team if the Frontier League had not canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Other offseason gigs for Bonadonna, such as announcing for theUniversity of St. Francis in Joliet, also dried up.
It could have been a long and frustrating summer for the St. Xavier graduate, but he used the time off to complete two projects. One was a book on the ThunderBolts’ 2017 season. The other was an 11-episode audio documentary about the White Sox-Cubs postseason exhibition series, which started in the early 1900s.
“The documentary consumed every minute of my life from the end of last baseball season to midway through this summer,” Bonadonnasaid. “Insomeways, Iwas lucky tohavesometime offwhenI didandI got to
finish that up.
“I released one episode a week from April through June. When that was done, I was able to use the time to self-publish the book.”
The documentary is called “Chicago’s Civil War,” and it can be found on his website, TerryBonadonna.com. The book is titled “A Wonderful Waste of Time,” and was released in early November. It can be purchased on Amazon.com.
Bonadonna, a Berwyn resident and
Fenwick graduate, had hit a crossroads in his career.
On one hand, few young announce rs plan to stay in independent baseball for a decade. But he loves this area and being around the ThunderBolts, so he accepted different challenges.
“Every season, I givemyself some sort of goal,” he said. “In about 2013 or 2014, I had been on the job for a few years. I felt like I had finally mastered the basics. I decided I had to throw a little bitmore onmy plate. I have tomake things a littlemore difficult for myself.
“I never thought ofmyself as a writer, but I wanted to challenge myself. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be fun to write a book. But I was wrong. Itwasn’t all that fun to write it.”
The book is a look behind the scenes at being an announcer who also serves as the club’s media relations director, including his relationships and interactions with players, office members and other broadcasters.
That year, he partnered for broadcasts with Mike Rankin, a Palos Hills native and Stagg graduate who was a student at St. Xavier at the time. The pair jelled so well that Rankin worked two more years with Bonadonna.
Rankin is a now producer atWSCR, and he enjoyed the memories of 2017 brought out by the book.
“It’s a lot of his own personal flavor,” Rankin said of Bonadonna. “You could tell that this is him expressing himself. He does a very good job illustrating what he experienced through his eyes.
“It was a real entertaining piece of literature for me. I lived it, and it was really cool to be able to relive it through his words.”
Bonadonna, the 2016 Frontier League Broadcaster of the Year, will likely be back with the ThunderBolts for the 2021 season.
However, he also can see himself moving up someday.
“I always felt like I shouldn’t keep working for the ThunderBolts or the Frontier League because I should move on with my life,” he said. “I felt that way for several years.
“You do this for a couple of years and then you move on. You move up to a different level of baseball. But I loved working with the ThunderBolts so much that I would find different excuses to keep myself around.”