On Lee Elia: 40 thoughts on the 40th effin anniversary of baseballs best rant

1. The first time I heard the greatest f—— rant in f—— baseball history was in 1997. I was a freshman in college, covering the football team for the school paper. After a particularly unsightly loss, the coach did not appreciate my line of questioning and he let me know it, loudly. I must have looked rattled, because when I got back to the newsroom my professor seemed to know just what to do. He reached into a file cabinet, pulled out an old cassette player and pressed play. From the speaker emerged the voice of a beleaguered former Cubs manager named Lee Constantine Elia.

Advertisement

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. It was chicken soup for the green sportswriters’ soul that even 40 years later remains worthy of line-by-line examination.

“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.

2. The Rant began in the cramped manager’s office down the left field line at Wrigley Field. It was April 29, 1983, and the home team had just dropped a 4-3 decision to the Dodgers. The deciding run came courtesy of a wild pitch by Lee Smith, the future Hall of Fame closer. But on that Friday afternoon, he was just the latest Cub to contribute to a 5-14 start.

3. In those days, Wrigley lacked modern basics like lights and a tunnel leading from the dugout to the clubhouse. 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. 

4. “As I’m walking with my paperwork after a tough loss, some fan gets all over Keith Moreland,” Elia recalled to the Times in 2016. “Moreland goes toward the stands a foot or two, and security guards break it off. Then we walk another six or seven yards, where the tarp is, and someone says something to Larry Bowa. He jumps in there. There’s a lot of shoving.”

5. The manager’s postgame media scrum was sparse. Most other reporters had gone over to the visiting clubhouse to chat with Mike Marshall, the local boy who had homered for the Dodgers. But Bierig, a backup baseball writer in his first year with the Sun-Times, was too paranoid about getting beat. “I wanted to go to the Cubs locker room first to make sure that I didn’t miss anything there,” Bierig recalled this week. “As it turned out, that was a good move.”

Advertisement

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. According to Friske, he was one of three writers standing around Elia’s desk, along with Bierig and Robert Markus of the Chicago Tribune. The manager stood behind his desk and gave mundane answers. “He was calm and everything else,” Friske said. “He was talking about the game and the fans being upset. We’ll be good, we’ll be fine.”

Things changed, Friske said, when a fourth reporter joined a few moments later, this one holding a clunky recording device. “And then he saw the microphone,” Friske said of Elia, “and he just lost it.”

“We’re mired now in a little bit of difficulty,” Elia said matter-of-factly. But it wouldn’t be long until Elia’s flirtation with understatement would give way to nearly four minutes of potty-mouthed pyrotechnics.

6. 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. The manager had seen enough.

“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. “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. Because if they’re the real Chicago f—— fans, they can kiss my f—— ass right downtown and PRINT IT!”

7. 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. By his managing days, however, Elia had clearly acquired a firm command of the language.

“He kind of starts a little slow and then builds a crescendo,” Friske said. “And it was quite a crescendo.”

Advertisement

8. Indeed, the man could turn a phrase. Consider Elia’s deft use of sarcasm: “They’re really, really behind you around here. My f——’ ass.”

Then there was his command of rhetoric: “What the f— am I supposed to do, go out there and let my f——’ players get destroyed every day and be quiet about it? For the f——’ nickel-and-dime people that show up? The motherf—— don’t even work. That’s why they’re out at the f——’ game.”

And what about this sage, though unsolicited, career advice? “They oughta go out and get a f——’ job and find out what it’s like to go out and earn a f——’ living.”

9. Les Grobstein got a f—— job and earned a f—— living. The Grobber, as he’d come to be known, was working at the time as the sports director for the radio station WLS 890-AM. That’s how he came to be the only reporter in the manager’s office with a microphone and recording device. He’s the reason Elia’s rant survives.

10. The Grobber’s work wound up in the hands of a clever radio engineer, who spliced Elia’s profanities into a Cubs radio commercial featuring the manager. It begins with a cheesy, only-from-the-’80s jingle.

If you’re looking for something new
it’s happening down at Wrigley Field
That gamer spirit’s breaking through
the Cubs are getting tough and it’s for real!

Then an announcer cuts into the action. “Here’s Cubs manager Lee Elia,” the voice says. That’s when a particularly spicy slice of Elia’s infamous presser gets edited in: “They’re really, really behind you around here. My f——’ ass…”

The 15 percent

11. With his tirade now roaring along at full speed, Elia took a brief detour into economics, yielding what scholars believe to be his most enduring work: “Eighty-five percent of the f——’ world is working. The other fifteen come out here. It’s a f——’ playground for the c—suckers.”

12. For the record, the U.S. unemployment rate in 1983 was actually 8.3 percent. “I was referring to those 15 people who were giving Moreland a hard time,” Elia told his hometown Philadelphia Inquirer years later. “I have no idea why I said 15 percent.”

Advertisement

13. “Rip them motherf——” Elia continued. “Rip them country c—suckers like the f—–’ players. We got guys bustin’ their f——’ ass, and them f——’ people boo. And that’s the Cubs? My f——’ ass. They talk about the great f——’ support the players get around here. I haven’t seen it this f——’ year.”

14. The Cubs rarely saw that great support in those years. In fact, only 9,391 had come to Wrigley that day to watch a team that began the season with six straight losses. The day before, the crowd was only 3,883. On another note about the previous passage, it has become accepted that Elia used the word “country.” Not so says Friske, who was standing just a few feet away: “He’s stumbling over his words. I think that’s a misrepresentation of what he actually said.”

15. As Elia continued, more reporters filtered into his office. But with plenty of material already — albeit much of it unprintable without heavy sanitization — The Grobber tried to cut the interview short. It nearly worked. Media members began to disperse. That would have been the end of it if not for Elia, who resumed his monologue, unprompted.

“It startled us,” Bierig said. “We thought it would just subside and it didn’t. He got it all out.”

Said Friske: “It was like he blacked out or something. It was weird. If you listen to it, he was out of control.”

16. Paul Konerko heard it for the first time in the mid-2000s. “This can’t be real,” he recalled thinking in a lengthy interview on Chicago radio last year. Whenever Grobstein dropped in to cover the White Sox, Konerko insisted upon hearing the original. He often made offers to buy the tape and the recorder. The Grobber let him know that neither was for sale.

In the White Sox clubhouse, A.J. Pierzynski remembered how Konerko made Elia’s outburst part of the daily soundtrack. Pierzynski found himself quoting cleaned-up lines from the diatribe during media sessions, just to see if the interviewer would pick up the reference. To his chagrin, few did. He gifted Konerko and others a sculpture of a hand holding a baseball, which included a button that when pushed would play The Rant.

Advertisement

One of the clubhouse attendants happened to be a DJ. So when he remixed Elia’s tirade with techno music, it became an immediate hit with the White Sox.

17. After what sounds like an abrupt shift in the audio, Elia continues, this time without interruption. What follows is a portion that is often edited out in the shortened version that is most common on the Internet.

“Don’t ask me about any specific play. I won’t answer it. I’m not going to talk about specific f——’ plays. The name of the game is hit the ball, catch the ball and get the f—— job done. Every time we f—— lose a close game it’s magnified: why this guy bunted, and that guy popped up, and this guy threw a wild pitch. That’s baseball fellas. That’s gonna happen. That’s how runs are scored. That’s how the f—— balance goes cockeyed. That’s the difference between victory and defeat. Right now, we have more losses than we have wins.”

18. It would remain that way for the 1983 Cubs. The best they could do was to get within two games of first place, thanks in part to a season-high, seven-game winning streak about five weeks after The Rant. But after that, the Cubs faded and wound up in fifth.

19. Just three years before, Elia coached third base as the Phillies won their first World Series. He worked for manager Dallas Green, who would be hired away by the Cubs to become general manager under the new ownership of the Tribune Co. Green brought in Elia to help change the Cubs’ culture. That’s the context for Elia’s next doozy.

“Everybody associated with this f—— organization have been winners their whole f——’ life,” he said. “Everybody. And the f—— credit is not given in that respect.”

20. Elia hoped to provide a 30,000-foot view of the situation.

“The f—— changes that have happened in the Cub organization are MULTIFOLD,” he said. “Alright, they don’t show because we’re 5 and 14. And unfortunately, that’s the criteria of them dumb 15 motherf——‘ percent that come out to day baseball. And unfortunately, that’s the criteria of them dumb 15 motherf——‘ percent that come out to day baseball. The other 85 percent are earning a living. I tell you, it’ll take more than a 5 and 13 or 5 and 14 to destroy the makeup of this club. I guarantee you that.”

Advertisement

A disheartening situation

21. Baseball has changed a lot since 1983. Though a television camera was present for part of Elia’s rant, that tape has since been lost to time. These days, it seems every managerial press conference is captured on video. Of course, some things never change: No amount of 80-grade makeup can compensate for suspect starting pitching.

22. That fact didn’t keep observers from offering new theories for what was going wrong out of the gate for the 1983 Cubs. Elia, it turns out, was an avid reader. Consider his impromptu review of the coverage, some of which apparently fixated on all of the Phillies connections in the Cubs organization and Ron Cey’s slump.

“There’s some f——’ pros out there that wanna f—— play this game,” he said. “But you’re stuck in a f——’ stigma of the f——’ Dodgers and the Phillies and the Cardinals and all that cheap s—. All these motherf—— editorials about Cey and f—— the Phillie-itis and all that s—. It’s sickening. It’s unbelievable. It really is. It’s a disheartening f——’ situation we’re in right now.”

23. For a moment, Elia reached for perspective. “Anybody who was associated with the Cub organization four or five years ago that came back and sees the multitude of progress that’s been made will understand that if they’re baseball people, that 5 and 14 doesn’t negate all that work,” he said. “We got 143 f——’ games left.”

That last part was true. The Cubs did have 143 f——‘ games left. But Elia did not. He survived the immediate blowback of The Rant, though it took a stroke of luck. Upon hearing the tape for the first time, Green called down to the manager’s office. Elia had been hustling home to umpire his daughter’s softball game but had forgotten his car keys, so he returned to his office to retrieve them. It’s the only reason he heard the phone ringing. Had Elia not answered, Green said the manager would have been fired on the spot. Instead, a contrite Elia apologized during a hastily arranged press conference. A month later, Elia found trouble again when the manager shoved a cameraman who refused to leave his office when asked. Again, Elia survived.

But strike three came in August when a Braves call-up named Gerald Perry helped beat the Cubs. “I never heard of this guy Gerald Perry,” Elia said after the game. “Our coaches don’t scout the International League. He came out of nowhere.” Green didn’t care for how his coaches neglected to read the team’s scouting reports.

On Aug. 22, Elia was fired.

Advertisement

24. This tidbit might be apocryphal. But on the day I first heard the tape, my professor told me that Elia may not have been the only casualty of his outburst. Remember that gag radio spot? Well, it supposedly made it onto the air and it cost the engineer his job.

25. Elia was decidedly old school. Not above crushing his players in the press, he once referred to them as “garbage.” In 1982, his first year with the Cubs, he got into a physical tussle with first baseman Bill Buckner. But on the day of The Rant, Elia resolved to stick up for his guys, and he indulged in the timeless managerial tradition of martyrdom.

“What I’m tryin’ to say is don’t rip them f——’ guys out there,” he said. “Rip me. If you wanna rip somebody, rip my f——’ ass.”

26. Though he covered a multitude of topics, Elia made sure to mix in a little something for the theologians.

“But don’t rip them f——’ guys ’cause they’re givin’ everything they can give,” he pleaded. “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.”

27. The Grobber took up the unofficial mantle of preservationist. For years, to mark the anniversary, he replayed the tape on his overnight radio show. He took special delight in his tape making the rounds back in the ancient days of analog, when going viral required a lot more work. “That tape was on every continent of the planet in three days,” he once told an interviewer. “Only Antarctica we’re not sure about, but they probably heard it there too.”

28. My professor had gotten a hold of a copy from a friend of a friend. That tape is how I learned that becoming a sportswriter required the ability to weather such maelstroms while keeping a straight face.

29. Improbably, Elia wound down his diatribe with a hint of confidence and optimism: “Once we hit that f—— groove, it will flow — and it will flow — the talent’s there.” He would be proven right — in 1984. Green got the Cubs some much-needed pitching and then watched some of that young talent flourish under a new manager.

Advertisement

The Cubs hit a groove. It flowed. And because of it, they reached the postseason for the first time since 1945.

30. “I don’t know how to make it any clearer to you,” said Elia. “I’m frustrated, I’ll guarantee you I’m frustrated. It would be different if I walked into this room every day at 8:30 and saw a bunch of guys that didn’t give a s—. They give a s— and it’s a tough National League East. It’s a tough National League period.”

‘I hope it never goes away’

31. With that, The Rant was over. Counting all of its variations, Elia unleashed a torrent of 46 F-bombs and two uses of one epithet that has aged so poorly that if spoken in a presser today it would spontaneously combust the Cubs’ human relations department. Elia told interviewers for years that he didn’t remember saying any of it. “I don’t think everyone believed him,” Friske said. “But I believed him just because it was so out of the blue and he just went nuts for whatever the length of the tape is … he was so off the rails.”

“Most of us thought he was a pretty good guy,” Bierig said. “And it was not real pleasant to watch a guy bury himself like that.”

32. As the tirade died down, Elia noticed one of his coaches, Ruben Amaro, standing at the doorway to his office, waving his arms frantically. He was giving the manager the stop sign. “Compadre,” Elia recalled Amaro saying later, “you said something you should have never said.”

33. A little more than a year later, having been dismissed from the Cubs, Elia found himself managing Portland of the Pacific Coast League. He gave an interview to Milton Richman of United Press International about what folks were now referencing as “the tape.” He admitted that the incident got so much attention that “it almost borders on being funny.” Almost. One constant through the years is that Elia never quite fully embraced the most infamous moment of his career. He would later manage the Phillies, then work in various coaching and front-office capacities during a baseball career that began as a big league player and ultimately spanned more than 50 years. But he spent much of that time trying to live down the most infamous four minutes of his career, and as he once admitted, “it hasn’t been easy.”

34. Elia, a prostate cancer survivor, seized on the chance to do something positive with the notoriety. On the 25th anniversary of the incident, Elia returned to Chicago and signed baseballs to be auctioned off to benefit Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities. “It has been 25 years and it would be nice to clear the air,” he told reporters in 2008. Each of the signed baseballs was inscribed with one of Elia’s signature flourishes: “PRINT IT!”

Advertisement

35. Konerko once said that snippets have seeped into his daily dialogue. He relayed a story about a golf outing. Upon discovering that his ball had landed in the rough, he said without thinking: “It’s a disheartening f——’ situation we’re in right now.”

36. “When Grobstein passes away one day,” my colleague Jon Greenberg wrote a few years back, “his role in this affair will be the lede in his obituary.” When The Grobber’s time came last January, the Associated Press reported the sad news thusly:

CHICAGO — Les Grobstein, a longtime Chicago sports radio reporter and talk show host who recorded Lee Elia’s famous profanity-laced postgame rant about Cubs fans, has died.

37. Earlier this month, one lucky bidder paid $1,800 for a one-of-a-kind piece of sports history: the mic, recorder and tape that Grobstein used to capture Elia’s tirade. “That thing should be in the Smithsonian to be honest with you,” Konerko told an interviewer. Ultimately, Konerko was not the buyer. The auction house did not respond to a request for comment. Pierzynski is spending Saturday’s 40th anniversary of Elia’s meltdown calling the Cubs-Marlins game for Fox Sports. Through social media, he has made it clear that he wants the artifact.

Need help from the twitterverse! I want to know who bought this tape recorder from the late Les Grobstein! It was sold at an auction a few weeks ago!! 40 year anvy is Saturday of the Lee Elia rant @Cubs and would love to get the buyer on @FoulTerritoryTV also might want to buy! pic.twitter.com/KaEZKVxc9i

— A.J. Pierzynski (@aj_pierzynskiFT) April 25, 2023

38. “I wish this would all go away,” Pierzynski recalls Elia saying once, to which he responded: “I hope it never goes away.” That’s because for many, Elia’s rant became a reminder of the humanity behind the game. “You have a bad day, and the reporter is in your face with a microphone asking why you struck out with the bases loaded and you just want to go off,” Pierzynski said. “You get booed, you get frustrated, you’re a human being. There was a million times where you’d sit there and wish you could say what you really wanted to say. But you can’t.”

Elia did it anyway, part of the reason that his outburst endures.

“I know it will never change,” Elia told an interviewer in 2008. “But I hope it’s a little softened now. I hope there’s some warmness over it now. I hope they understand.”

39. Elia is 85 and retired from baseball. He has shared stories about fans approaching him and saying that they’ll play the tape at work meetings, as something of a motivational speech. Others will take the opportunity to correct the record with comments like, “Hey Lee, I’m a working Cubs fan.”

Advertisement

Though it’s easy to get lost in the crassness of his magnum opus, there is indeed a warmth to it now. Cubs fans have re-created The Rant on YouTube. Another went all “Lee Elia: Unplugged” and set the diatribe to music with his acoustic guitar.

“It was terrible,” Elia told the Inquirer once. “It was immature of me. But if you can get through the cursing, which I’m ashamed of, you’ll see I was supporting my players. I just didn’t say it right.”

40. Nisei Lounge in Wrigleyville will honor an annual tradition on Thursday, appropriately enough, during a Cubs day game. “Celebrate Lee Elia Day? Here? You bet your ass we do,” wrote the proprietor, Pat Odon. “And if anyone tells you different? They can kiss my f——’ ass right downtown and PRINT IT.”

“It’s just an annual fun day for Mr. Elia’s 15 percent,” Odon wrote, “who know the importance of work-life balance through the occasional enjoyment of day baseball at the Friendly Confines.”

(Top photo of Lee Elia: Fred Jewel / Associated Press)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k21oampgaXxzfJFsZmlsX2eEcLjEnmSepJmWerW10ZqbnmWTqq%2B0ecCnpaKulafAor7YaA%3D%3D