On the two occasions Naperville resident Bill Ghighi has been at a taping of NBC Sports Chicago’s “Beer Money” game show, good things have happened for him.
He’s hoping that good fortune will continue next month when he is scheduled to appear as a returning champion for the show’s 100th episode.
Ghighi, a former teacher at Neuqua Valley High School, first appeared on the show June 2, 2016 — his 29th birthday. A self-described die-hard Cubs fan, Ghighi attended a game at Wrigley Field, where the show was being recorded. He was asked to participate and successfully answered three trivia questions about the team. The right answers earned him $130 — for beer money, as the show’s title suggests. After winning the money, he and his friends entered the 50/50 raffle and won that as well. Then this past summer, when attending a taping of the show at an Aurora restaurant June 16, his wife went into labor.
“After my son was born, I tweeted at Beer Money that good things keep happening when I’m around them,” said Ghighi, now a real estate agent in Naperville.
When his son was born he said he toyed with the idea of naming him after Theo Epstein, president of baseball operations for the Cubs. He also said he wanted his middle name to be Anthony after first baseman Anthony Rizzo. Ghighi said both ideas were shot down by his wife in favor of the name Brock.
Now Ghighi is set to return to “Beer Money” Feb. 7 as a returning champion for its 100th episode challenge. As a Cubs fan, Ghighi will be one of four players to square off over Cubs trivia that night. Twelve other contestants will answer questions about the Bulls, Blackhawks or White Sox. Four other contestants will participate in a “wild card” division. The 100th episode will be recorded at Joe’s Bar in Chicago Feb. 7. The game will air at 7 p.m. Feb. 11 on NBC Sports Chicago.
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When “Beer Money” asked him to return to the show, Ghighi said he was very excited and immediately went online to look at some of “the most random Cubs trivia.” Although not discounting trivia about Cubs history Ghighi said most questions he’s seen asked on “Beer Money” deal with the most recent seasons. He feels confident he will be able to answer the questions asked that night.
“I feel like I know a lot, but I’ll brush up before the game,” he said.
When he first appeared on “Beer Money” he was asked three questions. The first was a fill-in-the-blank of Embrace the ___? The answer was target, a slogan used by Cubs manager Joe Madden. He had to use math for the next question, “What is the square root of Derrek Lee’s team number?”
“That meant I had to know his number and be able to tell you the square root of it,” Ghighi said.
The answer is five because Lee wore the number 25.
For the last question, Ghighi had to name all team members whose names began with the letter J.
“I was able to do that and won the money. Now I want to do it again,” Ghighi said.
Alex Keown is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.