George Castle has covered the Cubs and Major League Baseball since 1980 for a variety of newspapers and magazines, and for the Times of Northwest Indiana, the Chicago area's fourth-largest daily newspaper. An author of eight books, he hosts and produces a weekly syndicated baseball show, Diamond Gems, which is broadcast on 41 affiliates in 14 states and podcast on the YourSportsFan. com sports site. Castle has become a multimedia purveyor of Cubs inside information and analysis that has been unmatched, using a network of close clubhouse and front-office relationships to continually produce scoops and informative pieces that outflank other media. He has gotten to know-and gain the trust-of almost all of the important figures in the franchise, including Lou Piniella. Castle has also appeared on a wide variety of network radio-including ESPN, Sporting News, and Sirius-and local sports-talk radio programs. He was tapped by producers as one of the historical experts on the Cubs for Wait Til' Next Year: The Saga of the Chicago Cubs, the HBO 2006 special on the team. He lives in Chicago.