Who Is ... Mark Weinberg

WHY HE GETS THE BLACKHAWKS DOWN The Chicagoan has spent the last
12 years skewering his favorite team and its owner, Bill Wirtz.
Weinberg, 41, a civil rights lawyer, recently won a suit against
the city allowing him to peddle his self-published book, Career
Misconduct: The Story of Bill Wirtz's Greed, Corruption and the
Betrayal of Blackhawks' Fans, outside the United Center. "I'm a
Blackhawks fan, but I'm enraged by management," says Weinberg,
who says he has sold about 5,000 copies of the book (at $15.95).
"I'm a social critic fan."

BLUE HUMOR In 1991, Weinberg started a game program, The Blue
Line, which lampooned the franchise and sold about 1,500 copies a
night. This year he's expanded to a monthly newsletter--think The
Onion meets The Hockey News--and the October issue features Wirtz
Eye for the Straight Guy, in which a beer-swilling fan is made
over into a monocled, martini-drinking snob; a fake ad for Theo
Fleury's Urine Sample of the Month Club and a profane coloring
book (inset) satirizing a little girl's trip to her first Hawks
game.

PLAYING THE PERCENTAGES Weinberg doesn't think a Hawks
turnaround--they've made the playoffs once in six years--would
hurt his cottage industry. "I'm not worried," he says. "There's
always something to complain about."

COLOR PHOTO: M. SPENCER GREEN/AP (WEINBERG) FROM BAD TO WIRTZ Weinberg loves to needle the struggling Blackhawks.

COLOR PHOTO