“Berto from the West Side” went viral Wednesday afternoon, but Rob Colletti is already “Almost Famous.”
It’s a bit of a conundrum for the two of them who are actually the same person.
“I don’t want my 15 minutes of fame,” Colletti said in a phone conversation Thursday. “I don’t want 15 minutes of fame! I’m trying to build a proper career.”
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“Berto from the West Side” is the impromptu alter ego of Colletti, a 35-year-old, Chicago-raised, New York-based actor who just appeared as rock journalist Lester Bangs, among other roles, in the Broadway version of Cameron Crowe’s classic movie, which finished its run in January. White Sox broadcaster Jason Benetti, who had no idea that Berto and Colletti were the same person before Thursday, said he has seen the show and that Colletti was “fantastic.”
The brilliant and incomparable @jasonbenetti stopped by @AlmostFamousBwy last night and he was as kind, funny and brilliant in person as he is in the booth. Couple of Chicago kids made good! Thanks for hanging with us, pal! @whitesox @CameronCrowe pic.twitter.com/BVjHa2IRHh
— Rob Colletti (@robcolletti) December 10, 2022
While it isn’t on his IMDB page, he is also a diehard White Sox fan.
The real Bangs would’ve appreciated the passion that Colletti showed when he called into ESPN 1000’s “Waddle and Silvy” show Wednesday after the Sox’s 8-0 loss in Toronto and let loose on the train wreck that is the 2023 White Sox.
While Colletti is an actor, “Berto from the West Side” is not a role he’s inhabiting. Berto is a childhood nickname, and he lived on the West Side and the western suburbs, among other city neighborhoods, before moving to New York.
Colletti had just watched the White Sox lose for the seventh straight time from his apartment in New York and he saw a tweet from radio host Marc Silverman asking for Sox fans to call in and vent on his radio show. So Colletti decided to become the classic “longtime listener, first-time caller” and he thought “Berto from the West Side” sounded like a good caller name.
“I’m not involved in the sports world at all,” he said. “I’m an actor, I live in New York and I am a diehard Chicago White Sox fan. I can’t stop watching them, no matter what. And just watching this team go 24 innings without even scoring an unearned run, it just awoke in me this need to say something.”
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He was the first call that Silverman and Tom Waddle took after the Sox’s postgame show ended and they let him go on, uninterrupted, for 7 minutes. It was more monologue than rant, though it was plenty angry. The articulate diatribe spread quickly on Twitter, despite the ESPN 1000 account not sharing the Twitch video. (ESPN 1000 is the radio home of the White Sox and the team is plenty sensitive.)
This White Sox fan went on one of the most legendary sports fan rants you will ever hear
(via @ESPN1000) pic.twitter.com/YCgPCJr1Sw
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) April 27, 2023
Colletti said he didn’t write anything down, even though he sounded like a polished radio professional. He was angry, but not out of control. The Columbia College graduate is a trained actor — he was in the “Book of Mormon” and The Sopranos prequel movie — and this was a performance from the deepest regions of his Sox fan soul.
“My call is rooted in heartbreak, not anger,” he said on the air. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m angry, but it’s the byproduct of a dysfunctional, abusive relationship with the front office and the ownership of the Chicago White Sox.”
He’s performed the national anthem at a game. He said he owns “more memorabilia than a normal person probably should.” He tailgates, he goes to SoxFest. This isn’t just a team from his hometown, it’s his team.
Colletti was just as frustrated when we talked Thursday. While he’s mostly tired of watching the White Sox lose in such dispiriting fashion — after defending the rebuild publicly and privately, he added — part of his disappointment stems from recent public comments from White Sox vice president Kenny Williams and GM Rick Hahn.
Williams recently told the Sun-Times that “accountability around here is not a problem” and Hahn dismissed fan anger as an outlier because reporters “always hear from the most negative fans.”
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“I don’t want this to be how the White Sox are seen,” Colletti told me. “But we’re the laughingstock of the league right now. National television broadcasts are talking about us and saying what a horrible team we are. MLB Network has run multiple segments on what a letdown we are. Again, we just sat through an entire year-and-a-half of that. It’s just … It’s wildly, wildly unfortunate.
“After canceling SoxFest, I was really, really insulted. But, again, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. But (Williams and Hahn) continue to talk and comment to the press in ways that it’s really, really heartbreaking.”
When I called him Thursday, he said it was the first time he had picked up his phone since the radio hit. He had been inundated with attention.
“I have never gotten so many messages in my entire life,” he said. “And they’re all really kind and moving like, ‘I haven’t been able to express how I’ve been feeling and you put it into words and I wanted somebody to be able to do that.’ That’s the part that I’m moved by.”
The #WhiteSox caller I just heard on @WaddleandSilvy might have delivered the great call in the history of Chicago sports radio.
— Adam Hoge (@AdamHoge) April 26, 2023
As Colletti noted in our conversation, creating that kind of connection is kind of his job as an actor. And that’s why his call resonated.
White Sox fans, particularly the “online” community, are a colorful, dyspeptic bunch, but they have a reason to be. The White Sox have only made the postseason in consecutive seasons once in the long, tortured history of the franchise and that happened in 2020 (the 60-game pandemic season) and 2021. Last year, they backslid to a .500 record, finishing 11 games back of the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Central. This year, they’re 7-18, haven’t won a series and are one of the worst teams in baseball. Every Sox fan could relate to Colletti’s hurt feelings.
“I’m not just trying to scream into the ether,” he said. “I really was hoping that somebody would hear that and be like, ‘Oh, I felt that way too.’ That’s sort of the root of what I do as a career. I mean, theater, like really great theater or a really great movie makes you leave and have discussions with your loved ones and reconsider your perspectives on life.”
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So is Colletti done with the White Sox as so many angry fans like to profess on social media? No. Not at all.
Like a lot of working actors, he shuttles between New York and Los Angeles, but he always finds time to come back to Chicago during the baseball season. Last summer, he said he was home for a spell and managed to take in “something like 17 games.” He’s working on a project now but said he’ll be home next month and has tickets to the May 12 game against the Astros.
“I love my team and I’m not going to stop going to the games,” he said. “I agree with ‘Waddle and Silvy’ when they say you shouldn’t punish yourself and not enjoy baseball because the team doesn’t do a good job at running itself. Your discretionary funds are your discretionary funds. You should go and do what makes you happy. Go to the game, get a beer, have a hot dog, try to catch a foul ball.
“The joy of baseball isn’t robbed from us because the team’s poorly operated. But yeah, man, it’s painful to watch this product right now. It’s actually, I would hope, embarrassing for the people who are at the top because this is all their doing. They’ve been given carte blanche and all the money that they’ve spent has amounted to something like a combined negative 0.5 WAR. You know, it’s just really embarrassing.”
It’s still early, though, right?
“I do want them to turn it around,” he said. “I want the White Sox to do well.”
He’ll hang up now and wait for their answer.
(Photo: Courtesy of Rob Colletti)
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