first season of managing he led his team to a league best 81–59 record. The following season the team took a bit of a nosedive and finished with a 59–80 record. In the 1977 season, Elia was promoted as the manager of the Double-A Reading Phillies in the Eastern League. He managed his team to a 63–75 finish, which was good for third place in the Can-Am Division. Notable players he managed on this team were future 1980 World Series champions Kevin Saucier and Keith Moreland. During the 1978 season, Elia remained head man in Reading and turned it around significantly. They finished the 1978 season with a 79–57 record, which was good for second in the league and only 1.5 games back of the first place Yankees. In 1979, he was named manager of the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, the Oklahoma City 89ers. The 89ers finished with a 72–63 record and won the west division. They went on to play the Evansville Triplets (Detroit Tigers affiliate) in the American Association Championship Series. They lost the series in six games as the Jim Leyland led Evansville team won the league. A notable player on this roster was Lonnie Smith, who was a 1982 All Star and a three-time World Series champion left fielder. In 1982, at the age of 44, Elia was hired as the manager of the Chicago Cubs. He was hired by Dallas Green, who had been his manager the previous two years in Philadelphia. That season they brought players such as Ryne Sandberg, Keith Moreland, and Dickie Noles over from the Phillies roster. They finished the season with a 73–89 record and finished fifth out of six in the NL East. Elia is often remembered for a infamously profanity-filled tirade directed at the fans at Wrigley Field on April 29, 1983. After the Cubs dropped a one-run game at home to the Los Angeles Dodgers, Elia lost his temper while making post-game remarks to four reporters (the Chicago Tribune's Robert Marcus, the Chicago Sun-Times Joel Behrig, the Daily Herald's Don Friske and WLS-AM's Les Grobstein, who recorded it with the only microphone that was in the room). During this tirade Elia vented his feelings about Cubs fans in the stands who were booing and heckling Chicago: After being fired by the Cubs, he was hired as manager for the Triple-A Portland Beavers (Phillies organization) in the Pacific Coast