Lee Elia Tirade
From Sports Library
Lee Elia was the manager of the Chicago Cubs for the 1982 season and part of the 1983 season. On April 29, 1983, after a one-run day game home loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers where the team had been booed and heckled by the home fans, he spoke with the media, where at the tail end and after the newspaper beat writers had left to file their stories, he lashed out at the Cub fans. The team was 5-14 at that point, but Elia felt that they were a better team that they were getting credit for. (Indeed, in 1984, the Cubs would win their division and go on to take a 2-0 lead in the NLCS before losing to the San Diego Padres.)
His Statement
We have these fuckin' fans who come out here and say they're Cub fans that are supposed to be behind you, rippin' every fuckin' thing you do. I'll tell you one fuckin' thing, I hope we get fuckin' hotter than shit, just to stuff it up them 3,000 fuckin' people that show up every fuckin' day, because if they're the real Chicago fuckin' fans, they can kiss my fuckin' ass right downtown and PRINT IT!
They're really, really behind ya around here...my fuckin' ass. What the, what the fuck am I supposed to do, go out there and let my fuckin' players get destroyed every day and be quiet about it? For the fuckin' nickel-dime people that show up? The mother fuckers don't even work. That's why they're out at the fucking game. They oughta go out and get a fucking job and find out what it's like to go out and earn a fuckin' living. Eighty-five percent of the fuckin' world's working. The other fifteen come out here. A fuckin' playground for the cock suckers. Rip them mother fuckers! Rip them fuckin' cock suckers like the fuckin' players! We got guys bustin' their fuckin' ass, and them fuckin' people boo. And that's the Cubs? My fuckin' ass. They talk about the great fuckin' support that the players get around here. I haven't see it this fuckin' year.
The name of the game is hit the ball, catch the ball and get the fucking job done. Right now we have more losses than we have wins. The fucking changes that have happened in the Cub organization are multi-fold. Alright, they don't show because we're 5-and-14...and unfortunately, that's the criteria of them dumb fifteen mother fuckin' percent that come out to day baseball, the other eighty-five percent are earning a living. It'll take more than a 5-and-13 or a 5-and-14 to destroy the makeup of this club. I'll guarantee you that. There's some fuckin' pros out there that wanna fuckin' play this game. But you're stuck in a fuckin' stigma of the fuckin' Dodgers and the Phillies and the Cardinals and all that cheap shit. All these mother fuckin' editorials about (Ron "The Penguin") Cey and fucking, uh, the Phillie-itis and all that shit it it, it's sickening. It's unbelievable. It really is. It's a disheartening fuckin' situation we're in right now. 5-and-14 doesn't negate all that work. We got 143 fucking games left.
What I'm tryin' to say is don't rip them fuckin' guys out there. Rip me. If you wanna rip somebody, rip my fuckin' ass. But don't rip them fuckin' guys 'cause they're givin' everything they can give. Everybody associated with this organization have been winners their whole fuckin' life. Everybody. And the credit is not given in that respect. And right now they're tryin' to do more than God gave 'em, and that's why we make the simple mistakes. That's exactly why.
And once we hit that fuckin' groove it'll flow, and it will flow, the talent's there. I don't know how to make it any clearer to you. I'm frustrated, I'll guarantee I'm frustrated. It'd be different if I walked in this room every day at 8:30 and saw a bunch of guys that didn't give a shit. They give a shit and it's a tough National League East, it's a tough National League period.
Fallout
Shortly after Elia' tirade, Chicago Cubs General Manager Dallas Green was left unable to maintain any substantive support for his field manager, whom Green had imported from the Philadelphia Phillies organization after he and Elia led the Phillies to a World Series Championship in 1980. Elia remained manager through the summer, and the Cubs fulfilled Elia's hopes by getting on a roll and finding themselves within 1 1/2 games of first-place Montreal going into a doubleheader with the Expos on July 4 at Wrigley Field. The Cubs were swept in the doubleheader and did not challenge for first again that season.
By August 1983, Elia was fired from his post and replaced by advance scout Charlie Fox, who served as manager for the remainder of the season. The last straw for Elia was his statement to the press that the Cubs had never "heard of" Atlanta Braves rookie Gerald Perry, who brutalized Cubs pitching during a three-game series soon after he was called up from Triple-A Richmond. Green hired former Kansas City Royals manager Jim Frey in October 1983, and Frey would lead the Cubs to a National League East Division title in 1984. Frey later replaced Green as Cubs GM in 1987. Elia went on to manage the Phillies for parts of 1987 and 1988 though without the same championship success as he had before managing the Cubs.
Elia has since aplogized for his tirade in April 1983, but his "meltdown" is still also legendary in Chicago fan and media circles even an entire generation after it took place. In the 1990s, he became hitting coach and then bench coach with the Seattle Mariners, where Lou Piniella was manager. Elia followed Piniella to Tampa, to be his bench coach there. In October 2006, the Cubs named Piniella manager, and Elia said that Piniella wanted him to join his staff as either bench coach or hitting coach, but that the Tribune Company blocked him from doing so. Ironically, Piniella's choice for hitting coach was Perry, the same player Elia said he never heard of 23 years earlier.
Elia's tirade was recorded by WLS-AM sportscaster Les Grobstein, whose role in the situation is not to be forgotten. Green attempted to get the tape from Grobstein, who would only provide a copy of it to the Cubs' management. Grobstein occassionally played the tape of the tirade on his radio show.
