CHICAGO — Presumably, the negative for one of the most hilarious Chicago sports photos ever taken is safely stored. Somewhere.
Maybe it’s in Arizona. A framer who had a business in Westmont and retired to Florida thought he and his brother had it. A copy or slide could be in the possession of a photo seller who operated out of the northwest suburbs until moving to Tennessee about a decade ago. It’s possible it no longer exists.
No one seems to know, and some of Chicago’s prominent sports photographers over the last 40-plus years admit it’s a mystery to them who snapped the photo that has been reproduced tens of thousands of times and was signed for years and years in stacks of hundreds by late Chicago Bears legend Mike Ditka.
What is known is the majority of copies — probably ones you’ve seen — were not produced from the original negative but a copy of a copy of a copy of Ditka, resplendent in a team jacket, his customary “Bears” sweater vest, black slacks and aviator sunglasses, striding across Soldier Field casually flipping the bird with his right hand.
Better images exist spotlighting the grit, toughness and determination that defined Ditka’s Hall of Fame playing career as a trailblazing tight end beginning in his record-setting 1961 season. But Ditka delivering the one-finger salute captured the essence of what drew fans to him as the coach — stubborn, combustible, unyielding and never, ever shy with his emotions.
It was the photographic equivalent of the time a heckler, walking by a postgame news conference, was giving it to Ditka and he snapped back, “See that?” while forming a number with his thumb and index finger. “That’s your IQ, buddy. Zero.”
More than two decades before cellphone cameras enabled fans to capture everything at sporting events — like Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong’s exchange with Sox fans at Rate Field this summer — someone pushed click just as Ditka delivered the universal sign to go pound sand.
“I honestly don’t know who took it,” said Ken Valdiserri, an executive with the Bears at the time. “I just know I’ve seen it everywhere. It’s ubiquitous.”
Way before the internet came along to make things viral, and at the infancy of the merger of sports and marketing, the 1985 Bears were a cultural phenomenon. Iron Mike was the ringleader, and his popularity only grew in retirement. The bird photo spread throughout the city and beyond. When Da Coach was done coaching and began making appearances — and he was everywhere — fans brought them to be signed.
How the image populated so quickly before e-commerce is a topic of debate among memorabilia hobbyists. Who took the photo remains a source of debate. Like many tales associated with those Bears teams, it’s a story to this day.
“A few people have claimed taking it but no real verification,” retired Chicago Tribune photographer Phil Velasquez said. “So I don’t want to attach a name to it.”
Retired photographers Charles Cherney (Tribune), Bob Langer (Tribune and Sun-Times) and Tom Cruze (Sun-Times) were stumped. So were Bryan Harlan, an agent for coaches who was in PR for the Bears during Ditka’s tenure, as well as longtime WBBM-TV sports producer Bob Vasilopoulos and Steve Grad, a Las Vegas-based autograph authenticator who is a Chicago native and was in town during the period.
Check with Bill Smith, the Bears team photographer at the time, many suggested. If anyone knows, Bill will.
“I don’t know who shot that picture,” Smith said. “I assume it was a fan.”
NFL Films did an amusing three-minute video on Ditka’s finger in 2015. Twenty-one head coaches were shown the photo. All were entertained.
“I think Coach Ditka has a unique gift of summing a lot of thoughts up in one distinct action,” joked Chip Kelly, then with the Philadelphia Eagles.
“I can semirelate,” said John Fox, then with the Bears. “The No. 1 sign is the best part of the picture.”
“For obvious reasons, unless you’re ready for retirement, I don’t suggest doing it,” said Chuck Pagano when he was with the Indianapolis Colts.
The NFL has levied plenty of fines over the years for the bird. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was docked $250,000 last season for directing it at fans during a win over the New York Jets. In 2009, Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams was fined the same amount for double-barreled gestures at Buffalo Bills fans. Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel and Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick were fined for illegal use of the middle finger.
That was pocket change compared with the fallout from the 2012 Super Bowl XLVI halftime show when rapper M.I.A. flashed her middle finger while performing with Madonna and Nicki Minaj. The NFL sued M.I.A. for $16.6 million, and a confidential settlement was reached two years later.
Use of the middle finger as an affront has been linked to ancient Greece and Rome. You could say it has stood the test of time.
“It’s one of the most ancient insult gestures known,” anthropologist and sociobiology author Desmond Morris told the BBC in 2012.
NFL Films said the photo was 30 years old — which in 2015 would date it to 1985 — but that’s not accurate. Soldier Field had AstroTurf through the 1987 season, and there is natural grass in the photo. So the first season it could have been taken is 1988.
More importantly, what prompted Ditka to brandish his middle finger?
“Nobody understands where that came from,” he said in the video. “We were out warming up. We were coming off the field and there were a bunch of fans from Green Bay or Detroit, I don’t know who it was, and they started calling my mother a bad name. So I went, ‘Screw you.’ And somebody took a picture at the time I did that.
“They didn’t take a picture of those guys calling my mother an SOB and all that stuff. And you know what, if I had it to do over again, I’d do it again. Screw ’em.”
NFL Films did not reveal who the photographer was and how that person introduced the image — a framed copy of which adorns the restroom wall of the company’s Mount Laurel, N.J., headquarters — to the collecting world.
“It was a lady in the stands,” said Mike Kinyon, a credentialed shooter at Bears games for 39 years. “I was there. And I was told that by many people. If you look at the angle of the photo where it was taken, it had to be from the seats, the north (end zone).”
With his mind racing back through the decades, Kinyon was intrigued talking about the photo and set out on a mission to dig up information.
“OK, I’ve got the story,” Kinyon said, calling back a short while later. “I talked to Gary Haeger (Bears equipment manager from 1984-97). Bill Smith took the picture. Ditka was flipping him off. Gary just told me that’s what happened and I just hung up with him.”
But …
Smith said he didn’t capture the image. If he had, surely it would have been in better focus. Even the best copies aren’t polished. Plus, Smith was unlikely to have been in the seats to get the angle.
“Yeah, Bill could not have taken that picture,” Kinyon said. “But that’s what Gary said. If Bill had taken it, he never would have shared that image. Now I believe it was a woman in the stands.”
Dennis Sidler, who has operated his memorabilia company SidsGraphs out of Frankfort since 2000, recalled he first saw the photo around 1996. It was commonly believed by autograph seekers around Wrigley Field then that the photo was taken by a woman, Pat, who frequented Cubs games with a camera.
Pat would take pictures of baseball players in the mid-1990s and at one point had a small shop on Clark Street near the ballpark where she sold photos.
Sidler’s memory matched what Ed Zur, an autograph dealer who owns EZ Graphs, remembered. Pat had taken the photo, he said definitively.
Jeffrey Warren, 80, a former photo dealer in Inverness who now lives in Knoxville, Tenn., sold countless copies of the picture over the years.
“It was the photo everybody wanted because that was Ditka,” said Warren, who still owns nearly 100,000 slides in two large media vaults. “That was his essence. If he didn’t like something you said, he’d tell you to go to hell. That was the biggest selling picture of him.
“There was a woman over near Wrigley Field and she owned a shop. I understood she took the picture. I ended up, and I don’t even remember how I got it, with a copy of the negative. You see a lot of this picture out there and his face is terrible. It looks like the grass is dead. People made copies upon copies upon copies of it and didn’t give a damn whether it looked good or not. It just got worse and worse.
“But I produced the best quality picture of it. I corrected the scratch that was on it. I got the grass looking green. I got his face the right color. I corrected the shadows so it was a decent picture.”
Said Sidler: “He’s right. Warren had the best copy you could get back then.”
OK, does Warren still have even a copy of the negative?
“I don’t know if I still have it or if someone loaned it to me,” he said.
Sidler bought copies of the photo — in sizes from 8×10 to 16×20 — using various sellers. He said he was part of at least eight private signings with Ditka where, at each one, there’d be stacks of what was known as the finger photo. Sidler estimated he had Ditka sign 1,000 copies over the years, and at the signings he was present for he saw “easily stacks that would have numbered 5,000 or more over the years.” Ditka autographed thousands more at other signings.
Occasionally, Ditka would grumble “doesn’t everyone already have one of these f−−−−−− things?” and refuse to sign the photo. But demand for the finger shot far outweighed pictures from his playing days or anything else, even the shot of him being carried off the Superdome field following Super Bowl XX.
“Everything I did in my career as a player and everything I did as a coach and THIS is the f−−−−−− photo people want!” — or something very similar — Sidler recalled Ditka saying on multiple occasions.
Then, he’d pick up a blue Sharpie and go to town, signing his name as fast as they could pull photos.
Zur regularly attended WMVP-AM 1000’s shows when Ditka appeared weekly at his Gold Coast restaurant during the football season. He’d bring 10 finger photos, stuff $100 in a basket that was for donations to Misericordia, and Ditka would sign them, sometimes inscribing, “You’re #1.”
“He absolutely loved it,” Zur said.
Everyone — Ditka, the photo sellers, the autograph dealers and the charities Ditka supported — was benefiting from the photo people believe Pat took.
Maybe the negative is in Florida. Keith Schuth, who sold his framing business in Westmont six years ago, claims he and his brother Al, also now in Florida, acquired the original negative from Warren Wimmer, a local freelance photographer who died in 2016.
Schuth’s recollection was that Wimmer had purchased the negative from Pat. Before that, though, Schuth, 72, was printing tons of the finger photo.
“I acquired a really good copy of the photo and it was OK with this lady Pat, I gave her X amount of money, and we printed a sh−−load of these photos. Right after (Michael) McCaskey fired Ditka, we were making 5×7 photos, double matting and framing them and we put a little plate on there that said, ‘Ditka says goodbye to McCaskey.’ We could not keep enough in stock.”
Where is the negative now?
“I called my brother up and I said, ‘Al, you have that Ditka negative?'” Schuth said. “And he goes, ‘Yeah.’ The next day he calls me and he said, ‘Keith, I am beside myself. I opened the envelope and the negative is gone.’
“That’s the history I know.”
Pat’s shop wasn’t around long. Rumor was it didn’t take long for MLB, the Cubs or both to knock on the door and inquire about unlicensed photos that were for sale.
Pat who?
No one could recall her last name. Sidler bought hundreds of baseball photos from her of players at the time such as Kevin Orie, Kevin Tapani and Glenallen Hill, among others. He couldn’t pin down her last name, although he thought her husband’s name was Jim. Zur drew a blank. Schuth thought her surname might have been Irish.
Sidler believes she may now reside in Arizona. He has seen her at Arizona Fall League games numerous times but not in “at least a decade.” Zur ran into her at Camelback Ranch a few years back as well.
“I said, ‘Pat?'” Zur recalled. “It was her.”
So a handful of people who either printed the photo in mass quantities or had stacks and stacks of it signed by Ditka believe Pat was the photographer of Da Finger. But the full background of the infamous image — and what became of the original — remains a puzzle. For what it’s worth, Wimmer’s son Steve said he never heard his father talk about having the negative of such a wildly popular photo.
Extensive efforts to learn more about Pat were unsuccessful. Cubs president of business operations Crane Kenney, who was an in-house attorney for the club at the time, could not recall the shop or any measures the team may have taken to curb the sale of unlicensed photos.
It didn’t ring a bell with former Cubs PR staffer Chuck Wasserstrom, now in administration at UT-Chattanooga.
“Would Paul Sullivan know?” he asked, referencing the veteran Tribune baseball writer. “He’s the mayor of Wrigley.”
No dice, Sullivan said.
The mystery lives on and copies of the photo continue to be used to produce goods. Obvious Shirts, with permission from the Ditka family, has created a line using the finger photo. Owner Joe Johnson got a copy of the image — not the original — from Ditka’s longtime publicist Betsy Shepherd.
“I put it in Photoshop and colorized it and made it a little sharper on the edges because it was a little bit blurry, kind of looked ’80s,” Johnson said.
Proceeds from sales, which have been brisk, are going to Misericordia.
“I texted Matt (Ditka’s son) and he said, ‘Yes, you have our approval,'” Shepherd said. “Their creative minds went at it and it makes me laugh. Coach would love this.”
Whoever captured the fiery, combative and yet somewhat playful side of Ditka brought to life something that has become legend, whether it’s been produced from the original or not.
“This negative could be worth a lot of money,” Schuth said.
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