Posted by chicagomedia.org on April 27, 2008 at 17:33:49:
By Teddy Greenstein | Tribune reporter
It was a few hours before their 6 p.m. sportscast, and WMAQ-Ch. 5's 1-2 punch of Chet Coppock and Mark Giangreco realized they were hurting for a lead item.
The date was April 29, 1983. The White Sox were in Toronto. The Blackhawks were down 2-0 to Edmonton in their playoff series. The Bulls were already on vacation.
"We're watching the Cubs game and Lee Smith throws a wild pitch in the eighth to bring in the [Dodgers'] go-ahead run," Coppock recalled. "The Cubs are just awful.
"So I tell Mark, 'Why don't you go to Cubs park? There has to be somebody who will pop off.' "
That somebody, of course, turned out to be manager Lee Elia, whose tirade contained so many expletives, "bleeping" deserves royalties.
Immediately after the game, many reporters went to the Dodgers' clubhouse to interview Mike Marshall, a young outfielder from Buffalo Grove High School, who had homered in the fifth inning.
Others went to the Cubs' clubhouse, then located down the left-field line. They're glad they did.
"We get in there, Elia sees us, and he says: 'Hi fellas, come on in,' " recalled Les Grobstein. "He seemed very calm."
Grobstein, the omnipresent Chicago radio reporter with a memory to rival "Rain Man", said he and three writers—the Tribune's Robert Markus, the Sun-Times' Joel Bierig and the Daily Herald's Don Friske—were there for the start of the interview.
Grobstein said he asked the question that sent Elia into a rage: "Tough way to lose a game, huh?"
Elia told the Tribune's Fred Mitchell the tipping point actually came when a Los Angeles reporter asked about how Cubs fans were reacting to the team's 5-14 start.
Whatever the case, the crowd around Elia grew quickly.
David Schuster, now a WSCR-AM 670 reporter then working for Sportsphone, put his microphone near Elia but looked the other way.
"I had to turn my back to him so I wouldn't laugh," Schuster said. "I was thinking: What am I going to do with this tape? How am I going to edit it?"
Giangreco and his cameraman joined the festivities just in time to hear Elia say: "85 percent of the [bleeping] world is working; the other 15 come out here."
"Les and I are looking at each other like: This is gold!" recalled Giangreco, now WLS-Ch. 7's top sports anchor. "At the end of the rant, we both said in unison: 'Thanks, Lee.' And we ran out of there."
Grobstein, working for WLS-AM, hustled back to the press box. On the way, he played the tape for Joe Mooshil of the Associated Press and broadcasters Harry Caray, Lou Boudreau and Vince Lloyd. The three were stunned.
Grobstein sarcastically asked Caray: "You think tomorrow's Lee Elia pregame show might be pre-empted or canceled?"
Giangreco, fully aware he possessed the only video of the rant, jumped in a station truck and headed for its downtown studio. There was no satellite to transmit the footage.
While fighting rush-hour traffic, Giangreco used what he called "one of those big rat-patrol, combat cell phones" to tell Coppock and producer Jeff Davis that he had "a bombshell."
Once Davis took a listen, he was stunned. "I never heard anyone go off like that with that kind of language," he said. "And I was in the Navy."
Channel 5 added the bleeps and ran about 40 seconds of exclusive footage at 6 p.m. WBBM-Ch. 2 sports anchor Johnny Morris called Channel 5 and demanded a copy of the tape. Coppock, disappointed with his tone, said no.
"If he had said, 'Look, we were on our way to the park and my truck driver had a flat tire,' I would have given him 12 seconds," Coppock said. "That created a schism between Johnny and me, and 25 years later, we haven't reconciled."
Morris could not be reached for comment, telling a go-between that he was headed to California for a funeral and would not be available until next week.
Said Giangreco: "It was so much more competitive back then. You had to be at Halas Hall every day with your own crew. If you missed [Mike] Ditka on roller skates or putting gum on a camera, you lost that day."
So what became of the tape?
Copies of Grobstein's audio version have made their way to all seven continents.
"We fed it overseas to a U.S. Naval sub off the coast of Antarctica," Grobstein said proudly.
But the videotape is gone. Missing. Lost or stolen.
Giangreco looked for it before he left for Channel 7 in 1994. "Mysteriously, it disappeared," he said. "I think Chet put it on eBay."
Coppock actually wishes he could buy it on eBay.
"It has to exist somewhere," he said.