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Beth Murphy, owner of Murphy’s Bleachers, a popular bar among Chicago Cubs fans, was as well-known in Wrigleyville as some of the players.
Murphy’s battles with the Cubs over rooftop owners’ rights played out in newspapers and on local newscasts for years, pitting the small business owners against one of baseball’s oldest and most valuable franchises.
It made Murphy a local celebrity and one of Wrigleyville’s most respected business owners.
“She always valued the bar’s contribution to the neighborhood,” said Karen Cholipski, her longtime friend.
Murphy, 68, died Monday after a long bout with kidney cancer.
The bar announced her death on Twitter, saying she “peacefully passed away” in the morning. The marquee of the iconic bar at the corner of Waveland and Sheffield avenues simply said: “WE WILL MISS YOU BETH.”
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“She just always helped a neighbor out,” said Freddy Fagenholz, general manager of Murphy’s Bleachers. “Safety in the area was very important to her. Beth had a great product and she earned it. She made Murphy’s Bleachers what it is today.”
Under her ownership, the bar became a sanctuary for Cubs players and Chicago-born celebrities who often visited Wrigley Field.
Cubs manager David Ross, a friend of Murphy’s, stopped by the bar Monday afternoon to offer his condolences. Actress Bonnie Hunt checked in on Murphy daily during her battle with cancer. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, who used the bar in his concert documentary, “Let’s Play Two,” also was a close friend.
“Eddie would send her ukuleles,” Fagenholz said. “Cubs players would drop off signed baseballs. They all loved Murphy’s Bleachers, but they loved Beth Murphy more.”
Cubs fans come to Murphy’s for the beer and the atmosphere, making it one of America’s most famous sports bars.
Team executives respected Murphy, even as they fought with her over the rooftops, signage and other issues related to revenue streams.
Fagenholz said Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts and President of Business Operations Crane Kenney eventually became friends with Murphy after the team’s renovation plan got through all the government and neighborhood hurdles to become reality.
“Crane and Tom, she respected them and they talked and things were really good,” he said.
The Cubs tweeted condolences to Murphy’s “family, friends, loved ones and patrons of the iconic neighborhood institution” and displayed her name on the Wrigley Field marquee.
Murphy grew up in Albany Park. In 1980, her husband, Jim, a Chicago policeman, bought Ray’s Bleachers, a local hangout on the corner of Waveland and Sheffield, for a mere $200,000.
The East Lakeview neighborhood was sketchy back in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, and the bar usually came alive only after Cubs games — and even then only when the team was winning.
Jim Murphy changed its name, but the bar’s fortunes really turned around in 1984, when the first Cubs playoff team in 39 years made Murphy’s the place to be before and after games. Rooftop businesses became popular, and the Murphys had their own built in 1984.
Jim became president of the Wrigleyville Rooftop Owners Association, which battled with the former Cubs owner, Tribune Co., over lights at Wrigley. The Cubs filed suit against the rooftop owners in U.S. District Court in late 2002, claiming they stole the team’s product and infringed on its copyright to “unjustly enrich themselves to the tune of millions of dollars each year.”
Beth Murphy succeeded her husband as the rooftop owners’ spokesperson after his death in January 2003. A 20-year deal was reached in 2004 that gave the Cubs 17% of the rooftop revenues but didn’t end the squabbling.
Murphy engaged in numerous battles with the Cubs owners, criticizing the Rickettses for threatening to move to Rosemont if the rooftop owners sued them. The Cubs’ sizable public relations machine often painted the rooftop owners as leeches who were an impediment to the team’s chances of winning.
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“We’ve been described, the Cubs owners and the rooftop owners, as the big jerk versus the little jerks,” Murphy said with a laugh in a 2013 Tribune interview. “I understand that.”
Murphy became a notorious pebble in the Cubs’ shoe and enjoyed playing David to the owners’ Goliath. In an interview in 2018 for a story on the 30th anniversary of the first night game, she called it appropriate that the much-hyped event was a rainout.
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“Chicago was in a drought that summer,” she said. “There were dust storms and we were waiting for tumbleweed to go by. So when (the rain) started, it was kind of nice. It wasn’t a little bit of rain; it was a statement. It was like God was making a commentary on the Cubs having night games. It was biblical.”
She often argued the neighborhood’s business owners and residents prevented Tribune Co. from ruining the Wrigley Field experience, insisting the Cubs would have bought all the buildings on Waveland and Sheffield to “knock it all down” and build parking lots.
“They were saved from themselves by the neighborhood, because if this was surrounded by parking lots, it would be pretty much like (U.S.) Cellular Field,” she said in 2013, referring to the White Sox ballpark. “I don’t think anybody would be coming here. … No one came here in the ‘70s. No one came here when we bought the bar. They couldn’t fill the upper deck. The neighborhood is what (changed it).”
Murphy tweaked the Cubs in other ways. Later in 2013, she was walking her dog by Wrigley and noticed that several thank-you banners and posters to the late Ron Santo, a Hall of Fame Cubs third baseman and longtime radio announcer for the team, had been tossed in a dumpster. She had her staff rescue the discarded memorabilia and publicly offered it to Santo’s son, Jeff.
It was another black eye for the Cubs, thanks to Beth Murphy doing what she loved to do — poking the bear.
“I think I’m doing what Jim would do,” she once said of her battles with the Cubs. “He might’ve been better at it or worse at it. But it’s what he would do.”
Services were pending as of Monday night. The Cubs are expected to pay tribute to Murphy during Tuesday’s game at Wrigley Field.