Debra Pickett

Sure, the Clark Street stand was a favorite hangout in Greenberg's young bachelor days, when he lived in Chicago and worked a series of sports jobs from radio reporting to CLTV hosting. But Greeny -- as the fans of his morning radio show, "Mike and Mike in the Morning," all know him -- is all grown up now.

He's on his cell phone, trying to broker an emergency child care deal with his mother, since his kids' nanny has to fly back to South America for her grandmother's funeral.

"Are you available Tuesday?" he asks her, a slightly desperate tone creeping in to his voice. "If you are, I think it would be a pretty fun day."

She doesn't commit, so Greenberg has to leave off with a trying-not-to-be-needy request that she "Just think about it."

'I will move back here'

Greenberg, 38, whose new book, Why My Wife Thinks I'm an Idiot," (Villard, 219 pages, $22.95), is subtitled, The Life and Times of a Sportscaster Dad, swears this moment of modern dad-hood was not a setup.

This is just how his life goes, he says, since his wife has an executive career and his hours align more closely to the kids' schedule. He has a level of involvement in his children's life that would have been unheard of a generation ago.

"The book, if nothing else, is meant to be a tribute to all the dads of my generation who are trying to do it," he explains. "It's not about sports. At the end of the day, it's really about my family."

And this restaurant, he adds, happens to be a favorite Chicago haunt for the Greenbergs. His wife, Stacy, grew up in Lincoln Park, and their two children, ages 3 and 5, love to visit their extended family here.

"This is a great place to take them for breakfast," Greenberg says, before ordering a cup of vegetable soup and a Cobb salad.

Having gone to Northwestern and having started his career here, Greenberg says that, despite actually growing up in New York City, he considers himself a Chicagoan.

His ESPN gig means living in Connecticut for now, but "I will move back here," he says.

"Chicago is a very provincial city, sportswise and otherwise," he says, "So it's like, 'You're either one of us or you're not.' . . . And I'm in. People here think of me as a Chicagoan and I think of myself that way, too. I just happen not to live here right now."

The son of two writers, Greenberg says he always wanted to be a writer. The new book, he says, is actually his third, but "it's the first one I can prove."

After two novels were rejected by publishers, Greenberg met with his literary agent in February 2002 and declared himself officially done with writing.

"I said, 'I'm done. I'm devastated.' And I said the only writing I was going to do was in a journal I'd been keeping, which I'd come to think of as The Hysterical Man's Guide to Being an Expectant Father. My agent said, 'Michael, that's the book,' " Greenberg says, between careful spoonfuls of his soup.

'Narcissistic sissy boy'

He landed a book deal based on a 10-page sample of his journal writing and then, he says, "Basically, they give you the money, your wife spends the money and you're on the hook to finish writing the book."

Greenberg stands out from the typical ex-jock sports guys mainly for his self-deprecating willingness to discuss his life as a very involved modern dad and his well-developed taste in clothes and grooming.

"What I like about the word 'metrosexual,'" he says, "is that it's so much better than 'narcissistic sissy boy,' which is what they used to call me. I like clothes. I like fancy things. I kind of grew up with that. And, over the years, it's become a sort of shtick. Sports guys, there are so many of us . . . this stands out."

As he does on the radio each weekday morning, Greenberg is happy to hold forth on all topics sporting -- yes, he's heard Dusty Baker might be fired soon -- but he's also happy to tell stories about his personal life.

A life in anecdotes

On Mike and Mike, which he co-hosts with Mike Golic, he says, "We can sit there and talk about Barry Bonds for an hour, but the stuff that people really relate to is the everyday stuff. It's those stories that get the biggest response."

Many of those stories, like the time he said at a dinner party that he thought the experience of pregnancy was probably harder on men than on women, have been captured in Greenberg's book.

But Greenberg also seems to be one of those people who lives his life in anecdotes. When he mentions that he met his wife at the East Bank Club, he quickly explains that "whenever I say that, my wife always insists that I say we were introduced by a mutual friend over lunch there so it doesn't sound like I just picked her up over the weight machine or something."

Greenberg says he's planning to head over to East Bank right after lunch to take his son and daughter swimming, so I figure he's in a hurry to get going. But his wife ends up taking them instead.

After he finishes his lunch -- a crisis is averted when a drop of salad dressing falls on his tie, but is easily removed -- he decides to linger for a while over a cup of green tea.

"I love being on a book tour," he says, "because I get to sit around and talk about myself."

By the time we're finished, the kids are done swimming.