Who?
A baseball-adjacent story about Sam Sianis, the nephew whose uncle owned a famous eatery in the Windy City. Sam passed away May 15 at the age of 91.
From The New York Times obit:
The Billy Goat had yet another claim to Chicago fame. Mr. Sianis’s uncle Billy bought the bar — which was originally across from Chicago Stadium (now United Center) and called the Lincoln Tavern — in 1934. After a goat wandered in the door, he renamed the bar the Billy Goat and adopted the animal as a pet.
The goat, called Murphy, became something of a celebrity himself. In 1945, the elder Mr. Sianis brought him to Game 4 of the World Series, between the Cubs and the Detroit Tigers, at Wrigley Field.
It began to rain. Murphy began to stink. The Cubs’ owner, Philip K. Wrigley, kicked them out.
As he was leaving, Billy Sianis put a curse on the team, vowing that it would never win a championship. When the Cubs lost the Series that year, he sent a note to Mr. Wrigley: “Now who stinks!”
“A goat wandered in the door?” Thought Chicago was a bit more sophisticated than that.