Given the advent of the 24-hour sports channels, cell phones, internet and what have you, it’s easy to believe that if a coach or manager told his team’s fans that they could kiss his ass…it would be viral within seconds.
27 years ago, when then-Chicago Cubs manager Lee Elia launched his now (in)famous profanity laced tirade, there were only four members of the media present…and it still blew up!
I guess that’s the awesome power of dropping DOZENS (too many to count, really) of F-bombs in a span about three minutes, huh?
One of the four media types that was in the room with Elia, Les Grobstein from Chicago Sportsradio 670 The Score has a great write up on what went down before, during and after the blow up over at WSCR’s website.
You can, of course, listen to the tirade (captured on glorious audio tape by Grobstein) in a variety of places. And if you can stomach the hodge podge of grainy baseball photos (remember, no cameras were rolling when Elia went off)…you can check it out over at YouTube.
Here’s the EDITED rant as captured that day…and, naturally, the UNEDITED VERSION.
Elia, did, amazingly, keep his job following the blow up and the Cubs 5-14 start. But following a collapse later in the season, he was let go. In the 27 years since, Elia has found himself in a variety of different roles for the Phillies, Mariners, Dodgers and Rays.
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