With or without Woo
July 14, 2005
By Jim Walsh - RedEye
It was straight out of "Without a Trace."
Cubs' superfan Ronnie "Woo-Woo" Wickers had been reported missing--by his wife, cops said--and the news spurred dozens of Chicagoans to call police, radio stations, RedEye and the Chicago Tribune to say they'd seen him.
At a concert.
At ballgames.
At the Jewel.
But Wednesday found "Woo-Woo" safe, sound--and single, according to him.
"That's amazing," Wickers told RedEye on Wednesday afternoon after all the hubbub about his disappearance reached him.
Wickers--the voice behind the infamous "Cubs, woo!" chant heard outside Wrigley Field--said he had "no idea" who reported him missing as of June 29 and said he is not married.
"I'm just a good Cubs fan," Wickers said.
"Thank you for being concerned," he said. "I'm just trying to spread the love, the love of the Cubs."
"I've been around, trying to catch up with Dusty Baker and talk to him about pitching and why we're 14 games back," Wickers said Wednesday. "I was just on an All-Star break, like the players. I've just been spreading love."
As for his appearances at U.S. Cellular on July 6 and 10? He was there to scope out the competition. "I thought maybe I could give Dusty Baker some pointers about these hitters," he said.
Sgt. Robert Cargie said Wednesday that the case on Wickers was closed and he could not comment on it.
The process of reporting a missing person, he said, is "an open-ended opportunity for people to report people who are missing."
"There's not a rigid protocol for people to report a missing person," Cargie said.
He said police routinely contact family and friends of missing persons once they are reported, and they get information about the person who reports the disappearance.
While walking through Wrigleyville on Wednesday afternoon, Wickers could not go far without hearing a honk from a passing car or a "Cubs, woo!" from people walking by him on the street.
A few asked where he had been, to which he often responded "Woo, I'm alive, woo!"
One cabdriver pulled up waving a cell phone and said a radio station wanted to hear Wickers' voice. Wickers went straight for the phone and belted out his chant.
People who called in Wickers sightings said they saw him all over the Chicago area--from Evanston to The Cell.
Perhaps the most off-the-wall confirmation of his whereabouts came from Wickers himself.
After the missing persons report was discussed on WLS-AM on Tuesday during the "Roe Conn Show," workers at a Chicago sports bar that had hired Wickers to clean its windows called the show.
Within seconds, Wickers was on the air proclaiming, in his inimitable fashion, "I'm alive, woo, I'm alive, woo.''
Ron Magers, a show contributor and WLS-TV anchorman, advised Wickers to call home to clear up any confusion. Donald Wickers, Ronnie's twin brother, said one of Wickers' friends was still so concerned Wednesday morning that she was with her preacher before hearing the good news.
"We weren't worried,'' Donald Wickers said. "He's just been out and about doing his thing.''
Wickers was doing just that last Sunday in full Cubs regalia when Mark Sharp, a Sox fan from Indiana, approached "Woo-Woo'' at The Cell and invited him to sit with a group of friends. With Sox fans heckling him throughout the game, Wickers still posed for pictures and talked baseball.
"When the scoreboard showed the Cubs had [beaten the Marlins], he stood up, turned and smiled," Sharp said. "Then about the eighth inning, he said he had to go to the bathroom, got up, left and never came back."
Wickers, who has been reported missing before and was rumored to be murdered in 1987 after skipping some early-season games, said he was not upset about the incident.
"That's just the way life is," he said. "Sometimes you have a bad inning. You have good innings and you have bad innings. I'm still Ronnie 'Woo-Woo.' "
--Tribune contributed.
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