Ronnie Woo Woo
Encyclopedia
Chicago Cubs
The Chicago Cubs are a professional baseball team located in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the Central Division of Major League Baseball's National League. They are one of two Major League clubs based in Chicago . The Cubs are also one of the two remaining charter members of the National...
fan and local celebrity in the Chicago area. He is known to Wrigley Field
Wrigley Field
Wrigley Field is a baseball stadium in Chicago, Illinois, United States that has served as the home ballpark of the Chicago Cubs since 1916. It was built in 1914 as Weeghman Park for the Chicago Federal League baseball team, the Chicago Whales...
visitors for his idiosyncratic cheers at baseball games, generally punctuated with an exclamatory "Woo!" (e.g., "Cubs, woo! Cubs, woo! Big-Z, woo! Zambrano, woo! Cubs, woo!") Longtime Cubs announcer Harry Caray
Harry Caray
Harry Caray, born Harry Christopher Carabina, was an American baseball broadcaster on radio and television. He covered four Major League Baseball teams, beginning with a long tenure calling the games of the St...
dubbed Wickers "Leather Lungs" for his ability to shout for hours at a time.
Wickers grew up on the South Side of Chicago. Born premature and abused by his mother, he was raised by his grandmother, who brought him to his first Chicago Cubs games during the late 1940s. Wickers explained in a 2004 Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
interview that he started "wooing" in 1958 or 1959. "It just came to be. I had fun with it," he remarked. He has remained a fixture at Wrigley Field ever since, even singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is a 1908 Tin Pan Alley song by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer which has become the unofficial anthem of baseball, although neither of its authors had attended a game prior to writing the song. The song is traditionally sung during the seventh-inning stretch of...
" during a May 24, 2001 game. In 2005, filmmaker Paul Hoffman released a documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about Wickers, called WooLife. The film premiered at the Chicago Historical Society.
Wickers worked nights as a custodian
Custodian
The term Custodian may refer to:* Janitor, a person who cleans, maintains, provides security and initiates repairs or makes minor repairs to buildings.* Custodian bank, an organization responsible for safeguarding a firm's or individual's financial assets...
at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
for much of his life. After the deaths of his grandmother and girlfriend in the 1980s, a distraught Wickers found himself homeless and without a stable job. From 1984 to 1990, he attended Cubs games with donated tickets. Wickers was absent at Wrigley Field games for a brief period in 1987, which prompted some Cubs fans to worry that he had died. He eventually contacted news organizations to say that he was alive and well. Since 1990, most of Wickers' income has come from washing windows in the neighborhood around Wrigley Field. He also makes paid appearances at parties and has starred in local commercials. In 2000, two Wrigleyville bar owners organized a much-publicized fundraiser to provide Wickers with a new pair of dentures.
Wickers was treated and released from Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical center after being hit by a car after a Cubs game on April 18, 2005. He has since recovered.