Rip, rip, rip on the home team

Cubs fans who sit in the bleachers have many cherished traditions. They throw visiting teams' home-run balls back on the field. They engage in not-so-friendly banter with visiting outfielders. And, at least once during every game, the left-field bleachers chant, "Right field sucks!"

But only one man has made a career of these antics. In 2002, Brad Zibung was just a heckler. In 2003, he founded The Heckler, an Onion-style satire rag that captures North Siders' mixed emotions about their favorite team, with biting commentary and stinging headlines:

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Zibung, 28, hails from NewHolstein, Wisconsin, where he grew up a fan of both the Cubs and the then–American League Brewers. He moved to Chicago in 1995, and, he says, "Before I knew it, I was a bleacher season-ticket holder."

Zibung enlisted friend—and fellow Cubs fanatic—George Ellis, and the two started Rightfieldsucks.com, a humorous chronicle of their experiences at games. The website became a hit, and because he'd had fun working on the college paper at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (where he says he was accepted "because I could fog a mirror"), Zibung decided to take the site into the printed realm. With the help of the "good folks at Citibank, MasterCard, U.S. Bank Visa and Capital One," he launched The Heckler in time for the 2003 home opener.

For the first two seasons, he poured "every free penny I had and then some," into The Heckler, using his public-relations job at Leo Burnett to keep the fledgling freebie afloat. "It got to be really crazy," he says. "There'd be nights I'd be working on layout until four in the morning, and then get up at eight, stumble onto the El, get to work at quarter to ten, and try to act like I'd been there for an hour and a half."

Finally, after much soul-searching, Zibung quit Burnett in July 2004. The day his departure was announced, Rick Telander wrote a column in the Sun-Times about The Heckler. "It helped validate the decision," Zibung says. Discussing his on-the-job education, Zibung freely acknowledges making mistakes but says he's now treating the enterprise less like a club and more like a business. It helps that he's hiring some people with "actual experience with newspapers," he says.

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Zibung says satire was a natural outgrowth of being a bleacher bum. "When you sit in the bleachers, everybody's trying to one-up each other with cracking jokes. It's a rite of passage, like heckling the other team's outfielders."

Not only that, the self-effacing satirist ("Like [former pro football player] Cris Carter, I take pride in my ability to stay humble") admits that he can't compete with the establishment when it comes to sports commentary. Not only is The Heckler's brain trust short on access and expertise, it's not that high on its own talent, either. The group courted contributors with an ad stating: "If you think you can write as good as us, you're probably right."

But while he is trying to treat his humorous job more seriously, his mission statement remains stream-of-consciousness. "The biggest thing I want to do is have fun with and at the expense of—but, you know, side by side—everything that goes on with baseball and the Cubs in general.

"We have our staff meeting at Yak-zies," he says.

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While the website (www.theheckler.com) offers a convenient e-mail address for "Cease and Desist Letters," Zibung hasn't actually received any. The above headline was unsuccessful, but not because Vatican lawyers descended from Rome; rather, tipsy Cubs fans mistook The Heckler for a religious tract and shrugged off the "Bleacher Bunnies" who were handing it out.

Zibung claims that Cubs President Andy MacPhail told him The Heckler is popular in the front office. He also says the official Cubs nanny told him the players' wives are big fans (the wife of then-Cub Moises Alou, in particular, was tickled by columnist Jen Zaletel's crush on the former left-fielder).

There is one group of people The Heckler has definitely alienated: Sox fans. "Get bent ass hole," shared "chihawk67" via e-mail. "I can't believe they let people like you vote."

Zibung shrugs off the cross-town rancor and muses on The Heckler's surprising longevity: "To think that we've created something that was initially based on Kyle Farnsworth jokes—'Kyle Farnsworth nails another waitress'—now is on people's resumes? That floors me."

Pick up The Heckler on game days outside Wrigley Field or subscribe online at www.theheckler.com.