CSN Chicago’s Elite Lauch-McGuffey Duo Debuts Reign Men Doc Celebrating Cubs Title

Sony FS7, Avid Nitris DX are critical tools used by the Emmy Award-winning tandem

With MLB Opening Day just around the corner, Comcast SportsNet (CSN) Chicago is kicking things off with a massive celebration of how last season ended. Can you blame them?

CSN Chicago’s all-star tandem of Executive Producer, Original Content, Sarah Lauch and Senior Producer, Original Content, Ryan McGuffey are at it again, this time with a landmark documentary chronicling one of the most dramatic Game 7’s in professional-sports history. Reign Men: The Story Behind Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, which premieres Monday at 9:30 p.m. CT on CSN Chicago, is a one-hour journey with the Chicago Cubs through the emotions of the finale of last year’s Fall Classic, featuring original interviews with loads of the game’s key faces.

Lauch and McGuffey have woven together game footage with more than 15 hours of original, exclusive interviews with an extensive list of players, coaches, and front-office executives. Shot with a Sony PXW-FS7 and edited on the Avid Nitris DX, Reign Men also offers behind-the-scenes, celebratory footage of the team at Progressive Field in Cleveland and fans throughout the city of Chicago.

The Cubs’ historic ride to their first World Series title in 108 years was an epic one. So why focus on just Game 7? The answer is simple.

“Because it’s the Cubs,” says McGuffey. “The appeal of winning the World Series and breaking a 108-year drought had not only local appeal but national interest as well. Knowing that other networks and companies would have their own stories to tell, we thought the idea of singling out Game 7 as its own story was the only move to make. The drama of the game was unlike anything that will ever follow it, regardless of sport. So, in order to make our story unique, I think it was important to single out one of the greatest championship games in sports history, rather than to try to recap a whole season or whole postseason.”

McGuffey and Lauch have partnered numerous times on outstanding projects for CSN Chicago, including the Emmy-nominated documentaries 5 Outs… (2013) and Believe: The Story of the 2005 Chicago White Sox (2015).

“I always feel like it’s tough to rank projects because each of them has its own meaning to me and how we were able to tell the story,” says McGuffey. “I think one thing is certain: Reign Men is certainly our best in terms of production quality. I also would add that I think I’m most proud of Reign Men because of the impact the story had on generations of people and because it was a victory that broke the longest drought in professional-sports history, to be able to pull this off in the amount of time we were able to do it, to land all of the interviews we wanted, and to produce a documentary of an extremely high quality a week before Opening Day. … I’m just lost for words at how proud I am to have been able to do this and to do it with someone as talented as Sarah.”

Reign Men: The Story behind Game 7 of the 2016 World Series is narrated by Academy of Country Music Male Vocalist of the Year nominee, Illinois native, and lifelong Cubs fan Brett Eldredge. CSN will re-air the documentary on March 30 at 7:00 p.m., April 8 at 9:30 p.m., April 13 at 5:00 p.m., April 20 at 7:00 p.m., and April 23 at 3:30 p.m.