Charles “Stormy” Bidwell Jr., a member of an influential sporting family from Chicago and the former owner and president of Chicago’s defunct Sportsman’s Park, died on Nov. 3 in Northfield, Illinois, according to his family and news reports. Bidwell Jr. was 97.
Although most associated with the Cardinals NFL franchise, Bidwell was the president of Sportsman’s Park on Chicago’s south side for nearly 30 years, from 1967 to 1995, when control was handed down to his son. The track was once a major presence on the Chicago circuit, but it was torn down in 2003 and is now the site of a Walmart shopping center.
Adopted by Charles and Violet Bidwell when he was an infant, along with his brother Bill, Charles Bidwell Jr. was brought into a powerful Chicago family that owned one of Chicago’s two NFL franchises. He was given the nickname “Stormy” as a child due to temper tantrums.
Violet Bidwell, who gained control of the Cardinals in 1947 after the death of her husband, moved the Cardinals to St. Louis in 1960, and two years later, after Violet’s death, control passed to both Charles Jr. and Bill. The pair would co-manage the team until 1972, when frequent disagreements between the brothers led Charles Jr. to sell his stake in the team in 1972.
For the next 23 years, Charles Jr. focused on Sportsman’s Park and his holdings in four Florida greyhound parks, along with a beer distributorship. While the Chicago circuit remained strong into the 1980s, tensions began rising in the 1990s as the tracks competed for prime race dates, leading to a partnership between Sportsman’s and its South Chicago neighbor Hawthorne, which was located just across the street.
Charles Jr. handed control of Sportsman’s to his son Charles III in 1995. The son began toying with the idea of holding auto races at the property, and in 1999 the dirt racing surface was torn up and replaced with asphalt. For three years the track remained a combination horse-racing and auto-racing track, with dirt laid down every year over the asphalt. Trainers based at the track constantly complained about racing conditions on the overlaid dirt.
In 2002, the auto-racing partnership at the track was dissolved, and Sportsman’s eventually transferred all of its horse-racing dates to Hawthorne, which is now the only remaining Thoroughbred track on the Chicago circuit.
In the final racing season at Sportsman’s, the track’s Illinois Derby was won by War Emblem, who would go on to win the Kentucky Derby in his next start at 20-1. The victory provided a heart-warming footnote to the ignominious decline and death of the track where he won his final Derby prep.
Charles Jr. was at one time the largest single shareholder in Churchill Downs Inc., and he was a board member of the company for decades.
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