Freeze Frame

My latest purchase arrived in the mail on Monday, an 8”x10” photo of Tommie Agee sliding under the tag of Lee Elia during spring training, 1966. Oh, the memories. Agee was part of a three-way trade with the Indians and A’s. We sent Fred Talbot, Mike Hershberger and Jim Landis to Kansas City for Rocky Colavito and then shipped Colavito and Cam Carreon to Cleveland for Agee, Tommy John and John Romano. Nice deal, that. Elia was already a baseball lifer when he debuted with the Sox as a 28-year old rookie in ’66. A .205 BA in 195 at-bats didn’t win him a second season on the South Side, just a cup of coffee with the Cubs in 1968. But his career in baseball was hardly over. Dallas Green named him Cubs’ manager in 1982. Elia gained notoriety for speaking truth to conceit in April of 1983. His team had just lost a close game to the Dodgers and gotten off to a terrible start at 5-14. Let’s just say Elia wasn’t a fan of the fans who showed up back then, saying that, “Eighty-five percent of the f****n’ world is working. The other fifteen come out here.” Unfortunately for Elia, his words were caught on tape. Not that he was wrong. This was the era of “Bleacher Bums,” which offered a fanciful take on that fifteen percent. Bums they were, and unemployed Elia became late in the ’83 season when the Cubs fired him. I see those full houses at Wrigley Field, and I can still hear Elia cursing, good White Sox that he was.