On April 29, 1983, Cubs manager Lee Elia, fresh off another bad loss, unleashed an epic postgame rant, one laced with profanity that will be celebrated every late April for as long as the sport of baseball exists.
In a lot of ways, it’s sad that The Rant is Elia’s lasting legacy in the sport. He dedicated his life to baseball, from an early age, through college ball at Delaware, into the minors at 21 years old, to a couple of short stints in the majors, 80 games with the White Sox in 1966 and 15 games with the Cubs in 1969. He spent decades in the sport as a manager and coach, at pretty much every level of the game.
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Still, after The Rant and another incident a few months later — he shoved a TV cameraman who wouldn’t leave his office when asked — folks who didn’t know him personally were wondering about the Cubs’ fiery manager. To the point that an article appeared in the June 13, 1983, issue of The Sporting News and included this somewhat tongue-in-cheek bit.
“Who is this Lee Elia? Why does he do such things?
Is he dangerous? Does he kick dogs, skin cats and shoot squirrels?
He isn’t and he doesn’t.”
Larry Bowa, a veteran on the 1983 Cubs club and future manager himself, said this: “Lee wants to get this club motivated so badly that he’s doing things to hurt himself. He’s a great individual as far as I’m concerned. He’s the easiest manager in the world to play for.”
Listen to Elia’s whole rant below. It’s very, very NSFW.
Now, let’s take a look at the rant, with a bit of information sprinkled in.
“F— those f—in’ fans who come out here and say they’re Cub fans that are supposed to be behind you rippin’ every f—in’ thing you do. I’ll tell you one f—in’ thing, I hope we get f—in’ hotter than s—, just to stuff it up them 3,000 f—in’ people that show up every f—in’ day, because if they’re the real Chicago f—in’ fans, they can kiss my f—in’ ass right downtown and print it.”
Let’s look at the number 3,000. The previous day, the announced attendance at Wrigley was 3,383. That’s almost certainly where it came from, but it’s almost certainly not the extent of the frustration. The Cubs’ home opener, set for April 5, was rained out, and only 4,802 fans were in attendance for the first game of the season.
That couldn’t have been fun, to look around and see 30,000-plus empty seats on Opening Day.
And in the nine home games leading up to The Rant, the team’s highest attendance was 12,859. Oh, and it makes sense that there might have been a little lingering frustration from the 1982 season. In the penultimate homestand of the year, two vs. the Pirates and two vs. the Mets, the Cubs twice had crowds of fewer than 3,700 fans. In the final two games at Wrigley, with the future World Series champion Cardinals in town, attendance was more than 20,000.
So, yeah. The paltry attendance and the grief the players and coaches took from those fans who were there definitely got under Elia’s skin.
“They’re really, really behind you around here … my f—in’ ass. What the f— am I supposed to do, go out there and let my f—in’ players get destroyed every day and be quiet about it? For the f—in’ nickel-dime people that show up? The motherf—ers don’t even work. That’s why they’re out at the f—in’ game. They oughta go out and get a f—in’ job and find out what it’s like to go out and earn a f—in’ living. Eighty-five percent of the f—in’ world is working. The other 15 come out here. A f—in’ playground for the c—s—ers. Rip them motherf—ers. Rip them country c—s—ers like the f—in’ players.”
Maybe they were just remote workers? I kid, I kid. That didn’t exist in 1983.
Day baseball games were known in most cities as the “business special” or something like that, when folks who worked in offices close by would take long lunches and spent a few hours at the ballpark. Those business folks probably weren’t the drunk fans who pushed Elia to the edge, though.
It’s not like tickets cost much. Looking at ticket stubs available for sale on eBay, it was easy to get into a game for $8 (about $24 in today’s dollars), so even the soon-to-be-drunks without jobs that Elia hated so much could get into the game without much of a problem.
“We got guys bustin’ their f—in’ ass, and them f—in’ people boo. And that’s the Cubs? My f—in’ ass. They talk about the great f—in’ support that the players get around here. I haven’t seen it this f—in’ year. The name of the game is hit the ball, catch the ball and get the f—in’ job done. Right now we have more losses than we have wins. The f—in’ changes that have happened in the Cub organization are multifold, all right? They don’t show because we’re 5-14. And unfortunately, that’s the criteria of them dumb 15 motherf—in’ percent that come out to day baseball. The other 85 percent are earning a living.”
Elia wasn’t wrong. The Cubs were making changes.
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In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Cubs played good baseball, just not good enough to make the postseason. They were over .500 every year from 1967 to 1972, with a high mark of 92 wins in 1969. After that, though? Their best record heading into that 1983 season was an 81-81 mark in 1977.
But the pieces were starting to line up, and by the 1983 season, youngsters such as Ryne Sandberg, Jody Davis, Lee Smith, Leon Durham and Steve Trout were regulars, along with veterans Ron Cey, Keith Moreland, Bill Buckner and Larry Bowa. That’s probably what was so frustrating to Elia, seeing how the team could come together, only to watch it unravel on a nightly basis with errors, both physical and mental.
And, yeah, it was only 19 games into the season, but for a manager who lived and died with each game, it must have felt like an eternity.
“I hope he can enjoy the job a little more and not take it so personally,” first baseman Bill Bucker said, as quoted in the TSN article. “I know he takes loses very sincerely. There’s enough in life to concern yourself with besides baseball.”
“It’ll take more than a 5-13 or 5-14 to destroy the makeup of this club, I guarantee you that. There’s some f—in’ pros out there that wanna f—in’ play this game. But you’re stuck in a f—in’ stigma of the f—in’ Dodgers and the Phillies and the Cardinals and all that cheap s—.
It’s probably not a coincidence that he picked those three clubs. The Phillies won the 1980 World Series, the Dodgers won in 1981 and the Cardinals won in 1982.
“All these motherf—in’ editorials about Cey and the f—in’ Philly-itis and all that s—? It’s sickening. It’s unbelievable. It really is. It’s a disheartening f—in’ situation that we’re in right now; 5-14 doesn’t negate all that work. We got 143 f—in’ games left.”
Ron Cey was one of the pieces the Cubs brought in to try to change the tide, to help guide a young team into contention. He’d been at the heart of so many good Dodgers teams the previous decade, and the Cubs traded for him a few months before the 1983 season. In a new setting, he struggled early. When Elia went on the rant, Cey was batting just .171 with only five RBIs, which is certainly the reason for the editorials.
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Cey was 35, and it wasn’t unreasonable to think his best days were behind him. Turns out, that wasn’t the case. After the slow April, Cey hit .321 with five homers and 18 RBIs in May. In his final year in Los Angeles, Cey hit 24 homers and 23 doubles, with 79 RBIs and a .751 OPS. In his first year with the Cubs — even with the slow start — Cey hit 24 homers and 33 doubles, with 90 RBIs and an .805 OPS.
“What I’m tryin’ to say is don’t rip them f—in’ guys out there. Rip me. If you wanna rip somebody, rip my f—in’ ass. But don’t rip them f—in’ guys ’cause they’re givin’ everything they can give. And once we hit that f—in’ groove, it’ll flow. And it will flow. The talent’s there.”
The talent was there. The 1983 Cubs never quite harnessed it, finishing with 71 wins. But the 1984 version of the club featured a nearly identical lineup — with the addition of outfielders Gary Matthews and Bob Dernier in a trade with the Phillies — but a vastly improved pitching staff, and that group won 96 games, the club’s first pennant since 1945 and came agonizingly close to making the World Series before falling to San Diego in the NLCS.
Unfortunately, Elia was fired after the 1983 season, and Jim Frey was the manager in 1984.
“I don’t know how to make it any clearer to ya. I’m frustrated, I’ll guarantee you, 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 s—. But they give a s—, and it’s a tough National League East. It’s a tough National League.”
It was a tough National League in 1983, with a lot of evenly matched squads and very few “easy” games. Of the 12 teams in the National League, nine finished with at least 79 wins and nobody had more than 91. The only three under 79 were the Reds (74) and Mets (68) and one other team, the Cubs (71).