Consider Elia’s deft use of sarcasm: “They’re really, really behind you around here. “He kind of starts a little slow and then builds a crescendo,” Friske said. By his managing days, however, Elia had clearly acquired a firm command of the language. On and on it unfolded, a pitch-perfect tapestry of profanities, weaved by the son of an Albanian immigrant who grew up speaking English only as a second language. Because if they’re the real Chicago f- fans, they can kiss my f- ass right downtown and PRINT IT!”ħ. “I’ll tell you one f- thing: I hope we f- get hotter than shit just to stuff it up them 3,000 f- people that show up every f- day. “We’ve got all these so-called f-’ fans who come out here and say they’re Cub fans that are supposed to be behind you, rippin’ every f-’ thing you do,” Elia said. Elia quickly turned his focus to the denizens of Wrigley Field. It didn’t seem to matter that the Cubs were only three weeks into the new season. But it wouldn’t be long until Elia’s flirtation with understatement would give way to nearly four minutes of potty-mouthed pyrotechnics.Ħ. “We’re mired now in a little bit of difficulty,” Elia said matter-of-factly. ![]() “And then he saw the microphone,” Friske said of Elia, “and he just lost it.” ![]() Things changed, Friske said, when a fourth reporter joined a few moments later, this one holding a clunky recording device. “He was talking about the game and the fans being upset. “He was calm and everything else,” Friske said. The manager stood behind his desk and gave mundane answers. According to Friske, he was one of three writers standing around Elia’s desk, along with Bierig and Robert Markus of the Chicago Tribune. There are slightly varying accounts of who exactly was present at the start of the scrum, but let’s go with the version recalled this week by Don Friske, formerly of the Daily Herald. So the players were left to walk unprotected down the left field line, where irate fans showered them with a cocktail of jeers and beers. In those days, Wrigley lacked modern basics like lights and a tunnel leading from the dugout to the clubhouse. But on that Friday afternoon, he was just the latest Cub to contribute to a 5-14 start.ģ. The deciding run came courtesy of a wild pitch by Lee Smith, the future Hall of Fame closer. It was April 29, 1983, and the home team had just dropped a 4-3 decision to the Dodgers. The Rant began in the cramped manager’s office down the left field line at Wrigley Field. “He was just sticking up for his players,” says Joel Bierig, formerly of the Chicago Sun-Times, one of the few to witness the whole thing from start to finish.Ģ. It was chicken soup for the green sportswriters’ soul that even 40 years later remains worthy of line-by-line examination. Out poured a string of obscenities in all of its analog grotesqueness and beauty, a manic jumble of extemporaneous anger that somehow coalesced into one filthy, problematic, cathartic, red-assed outburst.
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