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Ordonez to Spankees?


Jbrown
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This says it's from Rosenbloom in the Trib, but it seems like it is just Rosenbloom saying it is logical for NY to go after him, not that there are talks going on.

 

And I agree, the Yanks don't have much to give anymore, they don't really have any position players the Sox would want (at least not at the inflated salaries), and their minor league system is thin. If it's true about the hard bargain KW was driving for Maggs with the Dodgers, then I don't see how the Yankees can match that.

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Here's a copy of the rumor from FoxSports.com.

 

Five MLB stories you must read for Thursday, March 11, 2004

Yankees may deal for Ordonez

Chicago Tribune

The Tribune's Steve Rosenbloom reports that the Yankees may look to the White Sox for help if Gary Sheffield can't play through his thumb injury. Look for the Yankees to target Magglio Ordonez if Sheffield is forced to go under the knife.

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I've talked on forums about this a week ago. First off, sheffield is going to try and play. second, Sox don't need minor league pitching talent, nor outfield talent. The only thing they'd trade Maggs for is a solid SP. And I don't think the Yankees will do that...

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It does appear that the NY Yankmees and the press may have been to quick with saying Sheffield would be out for 3 months with a thumb injury. He claims it is not a big problem and he will be playing. Once again, the Yankers have nothing we need and that which we might want is probably in short supply for them.

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It does appear that the NY Yankmees and the press may have been to quick with saying Sheffield would be out for 3 months with a thumb injury. He claims it is not a big problem and he will be playing. Once again, the Yankers have nothing we need and that which we might want is probably in short supply for them.

i highly doubt a deal with the yankees as well. i also think that injuries could be the downfall of the yankees this year.

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He wasn't immediately fired... He lasted part of the season, That rant was in april... He said they were 5-14... He managed 123 games that season.

That was so awesome. I actually give that guy some respect cause he laid it out there unvarnished for all to here. He's had some real balls going out there and telling it like it is.

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That was so awesome.  I actually give that guy some respect cause he laid it out there unvarnished for all to here.  He's had some real balls going out there and telling it like it is.

Elia was very familiar with the situation with the Cubs and their moronic fans ... He is an ex-White Sox.

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He wasn't immediately fired... He lasted part of the season, That rant was in april... He said they were 5-14... He managed 123 games that season.

The afternoon it happened it was a huge deal, Elia was called into Dallas Green's office for a few hours while everybody speculated about his future. It was really classic.

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Les Grobstein was the only journalist who was carrying a recorder that day. This may have been his shining moment. The Grobber has a web site

 

I remember Dahl playing it like 100 times. Each time it got funnier and funnier.

 

He has a couple clips on his web site regarding the Elia tirade. One is a dueling banjos with Lasorda and anotehr sets Elia's tirade to music.

 

Also from the grobber's web site

Happy (bleeping) anniversary to all the (bleeps)

Happy 20th anniversary for Lee Elia.

Hold the gifts from Tiffany and the flowers, please.

April 29, 1983, was the day Elia--then the Cubs manager--gave birth to the mother of all tirades after an afternoon at Wrigley Field.

READ MORE>>>>>>>>>

 

It's true, April 29,1983 after a Cub loss to the Dodgers, Cub Skipper Lee Elia said many things about 'Chicago Fans' he regretted. Yes, I had the only tape rolling for the entire explosion, but reporters DAVID SCHUSTER, RICH KING and PAT BENKOWSKI who had first gone to the Dodger’s Clubhouse to chat with Buffalo Grove Native Mike Marshall, also got to Elia's office in time to record a portion of it, so even if I had not been there, Lee still would have been in trouble. For the record, the other Reporters there for the entire episode were DON FRISKE of the Daily Herald, JOEL BEHERIG of the Sun Times, and ROBERT MARCUS of the Tribune. Coming in a few days, our new GROBBERNET SOUND VAULT which will include the ever-popular musical 'tribute' to the Lee Elia meltdown. WATCH THIS HOME PAGE for more details on that! Here are the stories being reported today in the Sun Times and Trib.

THIS WAS IN Today’s SUN TIMES

QUICK HITS BY Elliott Harris

 

Happy (bleeping) anniversary to all the (bleeps)

Happy 20th anniversary for Lee Elia.

Hold the gifts from Tiffany and the flowers, please.

April 29, 1983, was the day Elia--then the Cubs manager--gave birth to the mother of all tirades after an afternoon at Wrigley Field.

 

"Eighty-five percent of the [bleeping] world's working. The other 15 come out here. It's a [bleeping] playground for the [bleepers].''

 

"Had I not taped it, it's possible he might have been fired the next morning,'' veteran Chicago radio broadcaster Les Grobstein said Monday. Grobstein recorded the incident for posterity, if not posteriors.

 

"If they're the real Chicago [bleeping] fans, they can kiss my [bleeping bleep] right downtown.''

 

"It there would have been no tape for [general manager] Dallas Green to hear the impact of it and get him up there to have a news conference to apologize at 6 o'clock that night, this thing would have festered overnight and he probably would have had no choice but to fire him the next day.

 

"The next day, April 30, they bombed [Dodgers left-hander] Fernando Valenzuela, and they kind of got hot and they were a couple of games out of first place around the day before July 4, which is near the All-Star break, which was at the old Comiskey. Then they had a tailspin.''

 

By then, they already had a tale to spin.

 

 

AND THIS WAS IN TODAY's TRIBUNE

 

. When Elia fouled out

It's been 20 years since the Cubs manager ripped the fans—and no one has forgotten

 

By Phil Rogers

Tribune pro baseball reporter

 

April 28, 2003, 10:08 PM CDT

 

It was 20 years ago today that a Cubs manager had foul things to say.

 

This is putting the Lee Elia one-man stage show of April 29, 1983, in the mildest terms possible. As most know, the eruption of vitriol and obscenities that Elia directed toward booing Wrigley Field fans in a post game interview that day would have made Lenny Bruce proud.

 

No doubt you have heard of this tirade. You probably have heard it. You never have read it all, though, not in this newspaper anyway.

 

That would disappoint Elia. He wanted fans to know that his team had taken all the abuse it was going to take after five consecutive losing seasons and a 5-14 start to the sixth. We'll give it to you Rosemary Woods style.

 

"I hope we get [expletive deleted] hotter than [expletive deleted] just to stuff it up them 3,000 [expletive deleted] people that show up every [expletive deleted] day, because if they're the real Chicago [expletive deleted] fans, they can kiss my [expletive deleted] ass right downtown," Elia screamed. "And print it!"

 

Uh, not here. Couldn't do it then. Can't do it now. But printed and audio versions are a Google search away on the Internet.

 

Do yourself a favor and track it down and read it or, even better, play it. Pirate versions of the original tape are available at several Web sites, including www.hankhayes.com. First make young children leave the room, however.

 

Like the grounder through Leon Durham's legs and the Mets' red-hot September in 1969—remembered by most as the Cubs' collapse—the Elia tirade is a significant part of Cubs lore.

 

To put it in context, the Cubs had just dropped a 4-3 game to the Los Angeles Dodgers (as an aside, current Cubs manager Dusty Baker hit third for manager Tommy Lasorda). It was their second defeat in a row and the crowd of 9,391 was sick of seeing the home team lose, although, really, what should fans have expected that day with Bob Welch facing Paul Moskau?

 

Fans let Lee Smith have it after his wild pitch let Ken Landreaux score the go-ahead run in the eighth. They booed as the Cubs trudged to the clubhouse after pinch-hitter Scot Thompson, a .193 hitter that season, struck out to strand Keith Moreland in the ninth inning.

 

Elia lashed back as reporters gathered in his office. In a span of about three minutes, he strung together 448 words. Thirty-nine of them—or about one in every 11—can't appear in this paper. And that doesn't include the word "ass," which Elia used five times, generally with a modifier that would have earned him one month's detention hall, if not a suspension, at my high school.

 

Elia used four-letter words, 10-letter words and 12-letter words. He dropped 33 of the phrases that have come to be known as f-bombs, mostly with the suffix "ing," which he shortened to "in.""

 

In the most retold part of this loud monologue, Elia commented on the excessive leisure time of the fans who attended weekday games.

 

"The [expletive deleted] don't even work," Elia said. "That's why they're out at the [expletive deleted] game. They ought to go and get a [expletive deleted] job and find out what it's like to go out and earn a [expletive deleted] living. Eight-five percent of the [expletive deleted] world is working. The other 15 percent come out here. A [expletive deleted] playground for the [expletive deleted]."

 

The man with the tape

 

In the early 1980s, baseball reporters didn't work with tape recorders. But radio guys certainly did. So it was that Elia's outburst came to be a part of the public domain.

 

The ubiquitous Les Grobstein was lurking on the edges of Elia's office with tape rolling. It was his Zapruder moment.

 

While those three, blue minutes are really all that distinguished Elia's two seasons as Dallas Green's first manager with the Cubs, he wishes he had kept his cool that day. He wishes Grobstein had gotten a flat tire on his way to Wrigley that afternoon.

 

"I made some comments that I don't even know how they came out of my mouth, because they were not comments that I normally would make," Elia recently told the St. Petersburg Times' Marc Topkin. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think somebody would run out of there and put it on the air."

 

Unlike Eminem and other entertainers, Elia doesn't relish the shock value of his greatest hit. But he has come to understand that there is no way to distance himself from that April afternoon in 1983. He has remained in baseball, which guarantees him one of two visits a year to Chicago.

 

"I think there's a little bit of a Lee Elia fan base up there," said Elia, now a hitting coach for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. "I guess after 20 years you can look back and say a lot of good has come out of it, a lot of fun has been made out of me. … No matter where I go I couldn't be treated any better.

 

"People come up and they say, 'Hey Lee, how you going? I'm a working Cubs fan,' or something like that. So, in a way, it's kind of nice. If I could, I'd wish it didn't happen. But since it did …"

 

Beginning of the end

 

Elia's potty mouth didn't endear him to Andrew McKenna, John Madigan and others at Tribune Co., who had just turned the Cubs over to Green. The Grobstein tape contributed to Elia being fired in late August, which meant he wasn't along when the young team he had guided to a 127-158 record came within one victory of the World Series in 1984.

 

Elia got one more chance to manage for Green, this time with the Phillies. He took over midway through 1987 and was fired before the '88 season was over.

 

 

LES

 

I am feeling very old that a generation of Sox fans are not equated with the mother of all bloopers. I only wish it had been on video.

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