Free 100 Things Cubs Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Jimmy Greenfield

whose base hit made it 9–8.
    Smith, a lefty, was up next, and Zimmer wouldn’t have shocked anyone by pinch-hitting him for Darrin Jackson, a righty. But Zimmer always managed with his gut, and on a day when faith mattered he put his in Smith, whose sacrifice fly tied the score.
    Neither team scored in the ninth, and the Astros went down in order in the 10 th , but the Cubs rallied in their half. Walton, who beat out Smith as the NL’s top rookie, walked and moved over to second on a Sandberg bunt. The game almost ended on McClendon’s single to center, but Walton had to hold up. After an intentional walk to Grace, Smith came to the plate again.
    With the crowd in a frenzy, Smith dropped a single into right field as Walton raced home to complete the Cubs’ biggest comeback of the 20 th century. The 1930 team also came back from a nine-run deficit to beat Cincinnati 13–11, but that game was on the last day of the season and the result didn’t have pennant implications.
    “I’ve been asked so many times lately, ‘Is this the biggest game you’ve won?’” Zimmer said afterward. “This was the biggest.”

18. Listen to Lee Elia’s Rant
    If you want to hear Lee Elia’s infamous 1983 postgame news conference ripping Cubs fans, it’s not hard to find. All it takes is a quick Google search for “Lee Elia tirade,” “Lee Elia rant,” or if you want you can just go with a simple “Lee Elia.”
    Lee Elia will never be able to escape the incident in which his use of the “F” word isn’t even as shocking as the way he ripped Cubs fans. The rant will be in the first paragraph of his obituary no matter how the rest of his life turns out, and so a few years ago he finally tried to have some good come out of it.
    As the 25 th anniversary of the rant approached, Elia partnered with a collectibles company and autographed baseballs with the words, “And Print It!”—one of the most memorable non-expletive portions of the rant—written on the bottom. Part of the proceeds went to Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities.
    There may not be a more well-known, not to mention cuss-filled, rant in baseball history, and if it weren’t for longtime Chicago broadcaster Les Grobstein’s tape recorder Elia’s three-minute speech would have disappeared into thin air.
    The April 29 game itself had been a disaster. Cubs closer Lee Smith threw a wild pitch in the eighth inning to let in the game-winning run in a 4–3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, dropping the Cubs to 5–1 4. Afterward, Elia was meeting with reporters when he let loose. Grobstein was the only reporter to record the event.
    Knowing he had gold on his hands, and realizing Elia’s job was about to be in danger, Grobstein hustled to get the audio edited and within an hour or so it was airing on WLS-AM. Separately, he played the tape for Cubs officials, including General Manager Dallas Green, who summoned Elia to his office.
    A press conference was hastily called, and Elia spent the entire time apologizing and desperately trying to take back what he had said. In an interview with the Tribune ’s Fred Mitchell in 2008, Elia said the sight of fans cursing and throwing beer at right fielder Keith Moreland and shortstop Larry Bowa had set him off.
    However, in a Tribune story that ran the day after the incident, Elia said he wasn’t aware Moreland had almost gone after a group of fans. “My frustrations just peaked,” Elia said in the news conference about his tirade. “It’s obvious the fans have the same frustrations, and I was out of line.”
    Elia hung onto his job but only for another 104 games. It was another postgame comment by Elia, this one about how the Cubs had never heard of Atlanta Braves rookie Gerald Perry after Perry had homered against them that Green cited on the day Elia was let go. He didn’t mention the rant.
    Elia, who was 46 at the time of the rant, briefly managed Philadelphia in the late 1980s and has been a respected coach and adviser for