By Ben Joravsky
Weinberg says he never planned to get into a battle with Wirtz–it just sort of happened. It all started in the winter of 1991, when Weinberg and another hockey fanatic created the “Blue Line,” an alternative program for Blackhawks games. Their idea was to fill at least 4 pages–it grew to 20–with obscure statistics, offbeat facts, and gossipy tidbits about hockey players, and then peddle the program to the fans streaming into the Chicago Stadium. Weinberg says, “I often wonder how things would have worked out had the Blackhawks been a little less hostile.”
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Eventually the city dropped all charges, and Weinberg never had to go to trial. But, he says, “I learned a lesson about power in Chicago. I always thought the Blackhawks were behind that arrest. The police who arrested me knew my name. They were coming after me. It was a trumped-up charge–I wasn’t blocking anyone. They just wanted me off the street. We weren’t even hostile to the Blackhawks–not yet anyway. We were just competitors. They were sending a message about what they do to competitors.”
In 1995 he sued the United Center on behalf of 17 peanut vendors, most of them black west-siders, who lost their livelihood after Wirtz and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf used their clout to get the City Council to ban the sale of peanuts within 1,000 feet of the stadium. That same year he sued a security company employed by the United Center, after one of its guards had him arrested on disorderly conduct charges, which were subsequently dropped.
Career Misconduct, which depicts Wirtz as a petty tyrant who abuses his power, was published in mid-December. It’s structured as a compendium of some of the suits filed against Wirtz over the years. The chapter headlined “Stealing From His ‘Niece’s’ Trust Fund” gives an account of Norris v. Wirtz. In 1985 a jury found Wirtz guilty of defrauding the 18-year-old daughter of a very close friend who’d just died; Wirtz was the trustee overseeing the daughter’s trust fund and had sold off some of the assets for his own benefit. The cartoon that accompanies the chapter shows Wirtz, scotch in hand, crying to a bartender, “My only crime was loving her too much. Well, that and stealing from her trust fund.” (Wirtz appealed, and the court reversed the jury verdict, though on the grounds that the statute of limitations had run out by the time Norris filed her suit.)
After about an hour a policeman came and took Weinberg to the lockup at Madison and Racine. “They put me in a cell with two black guys,” he says. “I said, ‘What are you in for?’ They said they were pinched for trying to purchase crack cocaine. They asked me what I was in for. I said, ‘Selling books at the United Center.’ They started laughing. They said they never heard anything like that.”
Last Wednesday Weinberg drove his battered old car back to the United Center. This time he brought his sister, Jill, and her teenage daughters, Perri and Julia Kramer, with him. “I figure they won’t beat me up if they’re here,” he said, laughing. He also brought me. Together we walked to Madison Street, just north of the Michael Jordan statue. Two security guards approached. “Those are the guys who arrested me,” said Weinberg. He turned to his sister and cracked, “If they arrest me, don’t bail me out until you’ve sold your books.”
