Well, it’s Tres de Mayo. How are things going so far this baseball season? You managing OK? Life OK? You doing better than poor Pedro Grifol? The guy waited patiently to become a big-league manager, and his first month was — how can I phrase it? — not so great. It would be inappropriate for me to use foul language, which brings up the fact that this is the 40th anniversary of one of the greatest bleeping rants in managerial history.
On April 29, 1983, manager Lee Elia had just watched the Cubs lose a heartbreaker to the Dodgers that dropped their record to 5-14. Joel Bierig, a first-year backup beat reporter for the Sun-Times, was there to catch Lee say: ‘‘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. I’ll tell you one f-----’ thing: I hope we f-----’ get hotter than s--- just to stuff it up them 3,000 f-----’ people that show up every f-----’ day. Because if they’re the real Chicago f-----’ fans, they can kiss my f-----’ ass right downtown and PRINT IT!’’ And that was just the start. It was Les Grobstein who recorded the rant, and you can hear The Grobber’s edited tape on YouTube.
