WRIGLEY FIELD — “Holy s—, that guy is still here?”
Yes, Cubs fans, the spirit and sound of Wrigley Field — otherwise known as Ronnie Woo Woo — is alive and well as the streaking Cubs make a push for the pennant.
After decades as one of the Cubs most prominent superfans — and some squabbles with the team — the 81-year-old Woo Woo said he’ll be coming back more regularly to rile up the Friendly Confines now that the team is in contention to “make a real run at the World Series.”
Woo Woo, whose real name is Ronald Wickers, is adored by fans and tolerated by team security. His chosen name matches his purpose: To shout “Cubs, woo! … Cubs, woo!” throughout the course of “all 9 innings, 27 outs, that will never change,” Woo Woo said.
Despite yelling in support of the Cubs at thousands of games, Woo Woo’s voice is still strong. That voice will be a staple of Cubs home games for as long as it holds up, Woo Woo said.
“They can’t trade me and they can’t fire me,” he said. “So, these days, I just have to drink lots of lemon water, which is good for the throat.”
Woo Woo wears a full Cubs uniform wherever he goes.
Ahead of the Cubs drumming the Reds 16-6 earlier this month, Woo Woo made an early victory lap around Wrigley, taking pictures with kids, recording well-wishes on fans’ iPhones to send to those who couldn’t be there and getting a continuous round of applause around the ballpark.
Some fans rose out their seats or tipped their blue-and-red caps as Woo Woo walked by.
Cubs fan Scott Maren, 24, has known Woo Woo since he was a kid. So has his dad, Tom Maren, 57.
“Ronnie is one of the greatest Cubs fans of all time,” Scott Maren said. “There’s nothing else to say except that he’s part of the Wrigley magic.”
Gene and Carolyn Zakis, Cubs season ticket-holders since 1971, said they invited Woo Woo to join them for lunch at Harry Caray’s a couple years back. The couple footed the bill.
“He’s been a good cheerleader,” Gene Zakis said.
“And still is a good kid,” Carolyn Zakis said.
Cubs fan Izzy Vielma-Reyes said she once ran into Woo Woo outside an Aldi in Uptown. He was wearing his usual Cubs uniform.
“It’s his joy and exuberance that makes you just want to woo with him,” Vielma-Reyes said. “And as a little Cubs fan of color growing up, seeing a Black man be such a visible part of the team, it’s what’s kept me a Cubs fan.”
Do The Cubs Love Woo Woo Back?
As Woo Woo soaked in the attention from fans, a sea of Cubs security guards kept him moving along the concourse, some with more urgency than others.
The team’s relationship with Woo Woo over the years has been lukewarm at best, according to fans.
Tensions boiled over in 2017 when Woo Woo was kicked out of the bleachers. Team leaders alleged he didn’t have a ticket, which he denies.
“Anyone else you want us to let in without a ticket?” the Cubs wrote on Twitter after Woo Woo took his story to the Chicago Sun-Times.
The team has since kept quiet about its loudest fan.
Previous ownership once passed Woo Woo a microphone to lead the singing of the iconic “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch in 2001 — a shining moment that came only after a public push from fans. The effort to amplify Woo Woo was later recounted in a full-length documentary about his life.
Richard Smith, a bleacher-seat regular who said he’s been going to games since the 1970s, gets why Woo Woo has long warbled in a Wrigley gray area. Back then, Woo Woo “was annoying,” Smith said.
“He has this special way of sucking in air that makes an interesting noise. And he’d do it incessantly. He’d chant at [Cubs player] Bill Buckner 40 times in a row and we’d have to say ‘Ronnie, stop,'” Smith said. “But as he got older, he became more of a guy people could tolerate. Eventually he grew from a gadfly into an icon.”
Bygones be bygones, but the Cubs are forever, Woo Woo said.
As the sun set over Wrigley in midst of the team’s romp of the Reds, the lifelong fan wobbled over to a seat in the back.
“Yesterday is just like a home-run ball. It’s gone and won’t be back,” Woo Woo said. “I’ve seen so many innings go by and I’ve had so much fun at this ballpark. I feel young when I get out here. I see the vines and I see the people. People come and go, but you’ll always hear me all over the place.
“This is where I matter.”
A Life In Blue Pinstripes
Woo Woo said he’s been to at least 3,000 Cubs games.
Back when he was just Ronnie Wickers, a Black kid growing up on the South Side, he played second base for the Washington Park little league team. He said his first time at Wrigley Field was in 1947 to watch Jackie Robinson break baseball’s color barrier.
“We had to sit in right field. The police would watch us go into the park and come out. That’s the way it was,” Woo Woo said. “My grandma took me. That Wrigley wind was blowing in, I heard the barrel of the bat and saw that Cubbies emblem on the chest. That was it.”
Wickers skipped high school and took a job as a janitor at Northwestern University, working the graveyard shift. He’d skip his lunch hour so he could get to Wrigley sooner after work.
Around 1957 or 1958 is when Wrigley got its “Woo,” Wickers said.
“I started with ‘Go Cubs Go!’ and it just took off. I was rejoicing in letting people know the Cubs were coming,” he said. “‘Woo Woo’ means ‘Win.’ I would cheer louder and louder. You can’t walk two steps in any direction at Wrigley without hearing me.”
Woo Woo had found his sound, but it took time for the Cubs to find their rhythm.
When the Cubs broke an almost 40-year playoff drought by winning the pennant in 1984, Woo Woo was ushered through a roaring crowd outside Wrigley for an interview on top of an NBC truck, “around where the DraftKings sportsbook is now,” he said.
After games, Woo Woo said he would drink with players at dive bars around the hallowed grounds. Guys like Buckner, Jerry Morales, Bobby Mercer, José Cardenal and Rick Monday would leave him tickets, he said.
Harry Caray once told Woo Woo he had “leather lungs.”
“I enjoyed that and I handed Harry a Budweiser, which he drank in 30 seconds,” Woo Woo said. “Good guy.”
Woo Woo claims a former New York Met once chased him around the Cubby Bear for smack-talking.
“He ran after me fast, but I ran faster,” Woo Woo said. “He said, ‘You’re a bum and I’ll meet you at the bus.’ But the bus was 20 minutes late and I was gone.”
Cubs Hall of Fame executive and Negro League legend Buck O’Neil was the person who encouraged Woo Woo to wear the full team uniform, he said.
“I would stop in this office and he’d say, ‘Wear the uniform, be proud to be a Cubs fan,'” Woo Woo said. “Win or lose, the people can see Ronnie Woo Woo.”
Your Favorite Fans’ Favorite Fan
The most faithful Cubs fans have invited Woo Woo to their bar mitzvahs, party buses, graduations and weddings. They’ve given him spare tickets, driven him to spring trainings in Arizona and worried on the occasions he’d been reported missing.
One fan bought Ronnie a new set of teeth, spurred on by Chicago sports columnist Rick Telander.
Friend Janet Tabit, who has long helped Woo Woo get around and find tickets, first met him at the Cubs Convention in 1990. Tabit wanted to meet slugger Mark Grace; Woo Woo shouted him over from across the ballroom.
It wasn’t until after the season that Tabit learned Woo Woo had at times been homeless.
“This is a man who just lives totally in the present. He doesn’t dwell on anything, and that’s why he’s always so joyful,” Tabit said. “He’s had surgeries, accidents … his voice has stayed consistent.”
Tabit said she’s helped Woo Woo find a stable place to live and get the medical care he has needed. At Wrigley, she flags an elevator and helps him settle into his seat.
“It’s the public that chooses who gets to be famous,” Tabit said. “It’s the fans who’ve embraced him.”
The game of baseball is changing, Woo Woo said. The bases are “as big as pizza boxes,” pitchers rarely go the full nine, the ballpark doesn’t open as early anymore and the time clock makes innings go by too fast.
A bleacher seat once cost 60 cents. Behind home plate would run you $2.50, Woo Woo said.
Now, “just the guy playing right could be making $20 million,” Woo Woo said.
“But like a home-run ball, yesterday is gone and won’t be back,” Woo Woo said. “There’s still 27 outs, fastballs, curveballs, knuckleballs and sliders. You still love the game. Grandkids of people I’ve known come up to me for autographs.
“You got to get ready to go to the ballpark and put a smile out to the world.”
The finale of this year’s Crosstown Classic is here, and Woo Woo promises to be back Tuesday to deliver the Cubs an earful — and maybe a little more Wrigley magic.
He cleared his throat with a sip of water Tabit brought him.
“All I really am is just a fan,” Woo Woo said.
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