Cubsessions co-editors Becky Sarwate and Randy Richardson interview Joe Mantegna.
Sometimes, the tensions of a particularly close and important baseball game become unbearable. In these cases, a little solo quiet time may be necessary. That’s the situation in which actor, producer, writer and director Joe Mantegna found himself in the late hours of November 2, 2016.
“It was such an emotional night,” he recalled during a telephone conversation. “I didn’t go to Game 7 of the World Series,” he said. “I thought, ‘If they lose, I’ll be devastated–and in Cleveland.’ So I was in L.A. at Taste Chicago, my wife’s restaurant. To be shoulder-to-shoulder among all of these Cubs fans in the city was pretty awesome.”
Then the longest 17-minute rain delay in Chicago Cubs history turned Mantegna into a hermit. “I watched the final inning from a Fox News truck in the parking lot,” he said. “I couldn’t stand to be around all those people if it didn’t happen. So I’m staring intently at a 6 x 6-inch screen. With the final out, I started screaming in the truck and looked out at the door at the restaurant. It was dead quiet. It was like being in the middle of an otherworldly dream.”
The news team barely had time to alert Mantegna to the 10-second delay in the live-game feed. And then he said, “The restaurant erupted. I realized I was one of the first people who wasn’t physically at the game to see the Cubs win the World Series.”
The star of CBS’ Criminal Minds knows that fellow diehards relate to the need for community interspersed with quiet reflection. After all, Mantegna said, “We are a special society. That’s what being a Cubs fan is all about. We come from all walks of life and experiences. I can talk Cubs with [journalist] George Will the same way I can talk to [musician] Eddie Vedder. Talk about two diverse people. This is a club of individuals who are passionate about the same thing.”
Within the special society that comprises Cubs Nation, mini-tribes develop. Comedian Tom Dreesen and actor Adrian Zmed are two members of Mantegna’s tribe – who also happened to be interviewed for this book. All three men are famous Chicagoland natives, but Mantegna does not regard the arc of his personal fandom as one defined by geography.
“I grew up around Garfield Park,” he recalled. “And I was a Cubs fan before we moved to Cicero. On the West Side, to use another sports metaphor, baseball fandom was a jump ball. To the East you had Lake Michigan, and there were no teams playing in our neighborhood. It was our fathers and mothers who passed on their Cubs or White Sox loyalties. I was indoctrinated at a young age. I used to joke with my dad for years, asking, ‘Why did you infect me with this disease?’”
On May 5, 2017, Mantegna threw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field for the 11th time. He and Dreesen maintain a friendly rivalry where this honor is concerned. “Tom and I are nearly tied in the category of people who’ve thrown out the first pitch most often,” he said. Off the field, Mantegna explained his adult bonds with pals Dreesen, Zmed and other celebs in this way: “If I meet someone and they’re a Cubs fan, it’s like finding out you have the same birthday. You’re immediately connected.”
The club loyalist inspired a whole work about the unique relationships fostered by virtue of bleeding Cubbie blue. Bleacher Bums, the 1977 play written collaboratively by members of Chicago’s Organic Theater Company, has been produced all over the world. A 1979 performance of the play was taped for PBS television, and in 2002 a made-for-TV movie adaptation was aired. Mantegna described the original concept as one driven by the twin theater concerns of storyline and economics.
“In my teens, I sat in the bleachers with my friends because it was cheaper than grandstand,” he said. “I was also acting in plays during high school and junior college. During the early 1970s, I would go to the ballpark with friends and I started looking at the characters. I thought ‘This is interesting.’
“35,000 people come here to watch a team that’s most likely going to lose. But these diverse people show up every day to be frantic together. Then they go their separate ways and have nothing else in common. I thought, ‘If I can capture this mania, what it is to be a Cubs fan, I think I’m onto something.’”
Convincing his fellow thespians to explore the idea was hardly a tough sell – since there was no money for anything else. “It was the end of the season and we operated on grants,” he said. “[Chicago Organic Theater co-founder and director] Stuart Gordon gathered us together and asked what we could do on the cheap since we were out of money. I raised my hand.”
The troupe spent some time at the ballpark taking notes and observing. The result, Mantegna said, was “The cheapest show you’ll ever do. Just wear what you’d wear to a game as a costume. Take all of the seats out of one side of a theater, sit on bleachers and you don’t need a stage. Anyone on a shoestring budget can mount this show.”
The work’s lasting popularity can be partly attributed to easy replication, but even in a post-2016 Cubs World Series reality, appetite for the production remains undiminished. “It’s nostalgic,” Mantegna said. “It took the team 108 years to get to last year. My mother just passed away in April at 101 years old. She was born in the middle of a seven-year losing streak. None of this happened overnight and there are many who will never forget the struggle and the love they carried for the team through it.”
Whether or not the Chicago Cubs manage to put together a string of championships is almost immaterial for Mantegna. “The Cubs are perfect proof that it’s not easy to win a championship in the first place,” he said. “But they have established themselves as contenders. We’ve played in three consecutive NLCS contests. We’re in the category of guys you expect to contend and be there. It’s an amazing change.”
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