Jim Anixter’s hat helped earn him a place in the pantheon of memorable Cubs fans that includes Sam “Cheezborger” Sianis, Ronnie “Woo-Woo” Wickers and, collectively, the Bleacher Bums.
Mr. Anixter was “The Pink Hat Guy.”
For decades, fans at Wrigley Field and those watching on TV could easily spot him in his seat directly behind home plate by the eye-catching pink hat he wore. For anyone who wasn’t sure who he was, his hat made it clear, declaring him to be “The Pink Hat Guy.”
Mr. Anixter, a longtime Highland Park resident who co-founded AZ Wire & Cable in Northbrook, died June 30 after a brief illness, according to his family. He was 81.
According to the Cubs, “He represented the loyalty, joy and spirit that make our fans the backbone of this organization.”
His first pink hat was a handout from the 1990 Home Run Derby when the Cubs hosted Major League Baseball’s All Star week festivities. Mr. Anixter kept wearing it as a tongue-in-cheek assurance of fidelity to his wife, who would always be able to spot him on television and know he was at the game and not out fooling around.
“When you think of my dad, you really want to think of like a Rodney Dangerfield-type character from the movie ‘Back to School,’ ” his son Todd Anixter said. “That’s kind of his personality. He was a man of the people. He had nicknames for everyone and a one-liner or a joke for everything.”
His latest laugh line: “If I had this Pink Hat Guy gig when I was single, I would have really cleaned up. I’ve been married 55 years.” Then, he’d point to his wedding ring and say: “It’s the smallest handcuff in the world.”
After awhile, he had “The Pink Hat Guy” inscribed on his hat, the first of dozens he wore over the years.
The hat made him instantly recognizable, perhaps peaking during game 7 of the 2016 World Series, an away game for the Cubs against Cleveland.
“It was like traveling with a Beatle,” his son said. “We had to walk in a circle around him to make sure people couldn’t attack him, I mean ‘attack him’ in the nicest way, but they wanted to reach out and touch him. And it was clear that at that point the Pink Hat mythology had gotten so large he was like a real-life celebrity in some ways.”
https://t.co/huoZ4A1u0w pic.twitter.com/sqrdsAf1br
— Jim Anixter (@pinkhatguyc) August 28, 2023
Mr. Anixter was 71 then, riding the high that all Cubs fans felt when the team won the World Series that season and embracing his own mini-celebrity.
“He loved the attention,” his son said. “He’d sit and talk to anybody. It didn’t matter if you were a beer vendor or Cubs owner Tom Ricketts. He’d talk to about the Cubs, about his family, about work. He was just a very passionate human being, and everybody gravitated towards him.”
A season ticket-holder who had coveted seats behind home plate at Wrigley Field for six decades, Mr. Anixter rarely missed a home game until declining health caught up with him last year. Even then, he watched every pitch on TV from home.
After his death, some fans behind home plate and nearby ushers wore pink hats in his memory. And the Cubs honored him by displaying his image on the giant Jumbotron screen behind the outfield.
In his first couple of decades behind home plate, Mr. Anixter was an “aggressive fan,” Todd Anixter said. He’d bring homemade signs to show his displeasure with underperforming teams or to give instructions to the players to “Bunt!” or “Steal!”
“Folklore has it that he was the inspiration for the famous Lee Elia rant of many years ago,” said his son, referring to the profanity-laced rant in 1983 by the Cubs manager, who’d had enough of naysaying Cubs fans.
Mr. Anixter was born in Chicago, grew up in Highland Park and had been an executive with Anixter Brothers, a family-owned cable and wire company co-founded by his father Alan Anixter and his uncle Bill Anixter.
In 1988, Mr. Anixter branched off and co-founded AZ Wire & Cable.
A year earlier, at 38, he attended the Cubs’ first fantasy camp, spending a week in Arizona while his wife was seven months pregnant. It was like spring training for middle-aged men, with the diehard fans coached by Cubs figures including all-time great Billy Williams, who became a lifelong friend.
If Mr. Anixter had his way, he would have had even closer ties to the Cubs. In 1981, he was part of a group of investors making an unsuccessful bid to buy the franchise from the Wrigley family. Others in the group included his brother, a Chicago Board of Trade broker. But their bid failed, and the team ended up being sold to the Tribune Company.
In 2009, he took another look at forming an investor group to buy the Cubs — even meeting with billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to talk about being part of that. But the effort never gained any traction, and the Cubs were sold to the Ricketts family.
At Cubs games, Mr. Anixter never drank — but he loved peanuts. One time, according to his son, a peanut vendor outside the ballpark told him he was supporting his family by peddling peanuts, and Mr. Anixter helped find him a full-time job working for an electrical company he did business with.
“My dad would do a lot of nice things for a lot of people,” Todd Anixter said. “But he didn’t want much fanfare for it.”
After gaining attention, Mr. Anixter started getting requests at work from Cubs fans wanting a pink hat like his. So he had some made that he would send to those seeking them, for which he made one request in return. He asked them to make a donation to a cancer charity.
“Growing up, he’d take me and my friends to a bunch of games,” his grandson Evan Anixter said. “It would be him and three 8-year-old boys. There were no real rules, which was nice, especially as a kid — like swearing was allowed, which was always fun.”
Evan Anixter said he made sure his friends each got a chance to sit by his grandfather.
“Whichever friend I brought, they’d leave with a new nickname, which would always stick,” he said. “Like Noah became ‘Nifty Noah.’
“If you met him once,” he said, “you knew him fully.”
Mr. Anixter survived by his wife Lesley Anixter, sons Todd, Darren and Eric, daughter Courtney Anixter and eight grandchildren. Services have been held.