For the second week in a row we have an anniversary of a manager meltdown. Last week was Hal McRae, this week: Lee Elia. Who as Cubs manager in 1983 had what, for my money, is the absolute greatest manager meltdown of all time. This is better than McRrae. Better than Tommy Lasorda’s “what did you think of Dave Kingman’s performance” rant. This one is the Gold Effing Standard.
And it’s the “effing” which is why. Never has a manager ever rattled off a more profane rant on tape. At least a tape that saw the light of day. It’s such a fantastic blue streak that I don’t DARE embed it. If you want to hear it -- and I am not lying, it’s about 200 F-bombs in a row, directed at Cubs fans -- Google “Lee Elia rant” and listed to the first result. John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle attempted to type out a sanitized version of it. He got one paragraph in before it, presumably, became too tiresome to insert the “bleeping” parts.
Is it a coincidence that both the McRae and Elia rants happened around late April? People ask all the time when to stop taking small sample sizes and early season results so seriously. I usually say sometime between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day. But given the tension here, maybe managers start feeling it in late April. Dunno.
UPDATE: Holy moly! You can buy the Elia rant, printed out, in handsome Cubs red and blue.
