It’s more than an hour to game time when Jerry Krause takes the floor, and the stands at the Chicago Stadium are nearly empty.
“Did fans at the Stadium actually boo recently when it was announced that Bulls general manager Jerry Krause was celebrating his birthday?” This question, posed recently by Sun-Times columnist Terry Boers, appeared the same day his paper reported a Bulls victory over the Washington Bullets that “assured the Bulls of home-court advantage in the first and second rounds of the playoffs and ended the home half of their regular season on a winning note.” It was the Bulls’ 55th victory in 82 regular-season games, only the second time they’d won so many games in the history of the franchise.
And no one gives Krause any credit. Instead, fans and writers take an almost malicious delight in knocking him. Mostly they knock him for drafting “lousy” players. But they also knock his weight, his dress, his speech, his mannerisms, and his overall behavior. “While it is true that Krause and [team mascot] Benny the Bull have never been seen together, I discount all rumors that they are the same creature,” Tribune columnist Bernie Lincicome once wrote. “For one thing, Benny has another suit.” Lincicome wrote that in a column knocking Krause for receiving the National Basketball Association’s executive of the year award! After a while you have to wonder: what in the world did Krause do to deserve such abuse?
When Jerry Krause was a kid he loved sports–all of them. He went to Cubs games, Bears games, Sox games–there were no Bulls in those days–and his father, Paul, even took him to the fights. He read the sports sections in all four Chicago dailies and knew the name and jersey number of every jock in town.
Young Jerry, on the other hand, had some troubles at Taft.
Also breaking into the paper at that time was a young sportswriter named Bill Gleason.
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“I learned a lot from Tony. He’d never stay in one place when he was scouting a player. He’d always move around the park to catch him at different angles. And he didn’t talk much. That’s the key. Too many scouts give away their sleepers by blabbing too much. I remember when I was in Puerto Rico and I saw Candy Maldonado. He was in the Dodgers organization then, and I really liked him. I told Roland [White Sox general manager Roland Hemond] that if the Dodgers left him off the roster we should draft him. So every day I’m scouting him and I don’t want no one to notice ’cause I don’t want the Dodgers to catch on and not put him on waivers. And then the last day I’m sitting up there in a press box trying to hide behind a plant or something and Reggie Otero–the Dodgers scout–he turns around and says, ‘Hey Krause, get the fuck out of here. I just talked to [Dodger general manager Al] Campanis and Candido’s on the 40-man roster.’ I had to laugh because there I was trying to be so secret and old Reggie was watching me the whole time.
