Stephen Colbert to Chicago: You saved America once, you can do it again

Stephen Colbert, on the final night of his stint in Chicago, had a request for Chicago: Could you please save the country?

He told his live TV audience that the city had done it once before. “In 1860, the very first convention ever held in Chicago — the early Republican Party, the first Republican convention — Chicago gave us Abraham Lincoln and saved the republic. Once again, we’re in a time of division, a time of crisis, and Chicago has to give us a president again. They’ve got to do it again…

“I know that is a lot to put on the shoulders of one city. But we know one thing about Chicago: Her shoulders are strong.”

The Chicago presence was strong in this episode right from the start, when the show played “The Super Bowl Shuffle” with a Democratic National Convention rewrite beginning, “We are the Bears’ Kamala crew, celebratin’ your nominee with you.”

Colbert also showed footage from his visit to Wrigley Field last week, where he sang during the seventh inning stretch, lowered beer to the ball shaggers with a fishing rod and quizzed Jameson Taillon on his pizza preference. (It’s New York.)

As he practiced stretching with Ian Happ, the camera weirdly zoomed in on the left fielder’s wiggling posterior as Colbert labeled him an “outfielder and licensed operator of a dump truck.”

The host also visited the manual scoreboard and — in solidarity with longtime operator Darryl Wilson, who confessed he sometimes gets so hot he takes off his pants — dropped trou himself.

After a conversation with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who marveled that she got to address a convention at the stadium where the Bulls play, the week concluded with a performance by Mavis Staples and frequent collaborator Jeff Tweedy.

They sang “Freedom Highway,” a civil rights anthem recorded by Staples’ group the Staple Singers in Chicago in 1965.