Picture a quiet morning in a northwest suburb of Chicago. The air is cold, the sun is rising, and a man in his early 40s opens up his front door. He takes a deep breath, pauses, and yells a message out to the neighborhood.
“I’m still a believer! I’m still a Bulls fan!”
Seem strange? Not to the residents of Bartlett, where Bulls super fan Fred Pfeiffer lives. Some neighbors laugh. Some think he’s crazy. Either way, he’s made the yelling a ritual as of late. The words die down at the end of the block, but he’s begun to make a name for himself throughout the city as one of the most passionate Bulls advocates.
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Pfeiffer, also known as “See Red Fred,” is a fixture on Bulls Twitter. He hosts his own Bulls podcast, the Chicago Bullseye. He’s received shoutouts from NBC’s Kendall Gill and Mark Schanowski on the Bulls Talk podcast. And he’s become a regular caller on ESPN 1000’s top-rated “Waddle & Silvy” show.
For a fanbase shrouded in a fog of pessimism, one that shows a vocal disdain for the front office, Pfeiffer stands out as a lighthouse of optimism. He’s yelling his message across the city every chance he gets. “Let go of the hate,” he pleads.
“Literally everywhere I go, it always ends up in a conversation about the Bulls,” he told me, laughing. “My wife, at Christmas parties, she is often disgusted. It always ends up with me berating some non-believer or some former fan who’s now cheering for Minnesota.”
A lifelong Chicagoan, Pfeiffer has been a Bulls fan since he was 10 and the team drafted Michael Jordan. But the character of “See Red Fred” was born on the “Waddle & Silvy” show.
Marc Silverman, one of the co-hosts, gave Pfeiffer the nickname.
“He’s a Chicago treasure!” Silverman exclaimed on Twitter.
Pfeiffer has started to gain a cult following on the show. Almost 1,800 people responded to a recent Twitter poll from Silverman, with 62 percent voting that they were a fan of his calls. One listener (jokingly?) asked him to serve as his life coach.
At home, Pfeiffer is a normal guy with a wife and two kids, both of whom he coaches in basketball. He works a job in business development and travels for much of the week. But get him talking about the Bulls and he shows he’s a little bit different.
“I’ll get a minute or two off my work day and I’ll run and I’ll try to get to a quiet place, and I’m pumped. I’m ready to rock,” Pfeiffer said of his weekly call-ins to the show. “I think they like me because I’m always prepared. I run counter to the narrative that this is a horrible situation.”
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“See Red Fred, you’re on ESPN 1000. Hi buddy!” Silverman begins on one week’s call.
“Hey guys, my fellow big red bus riders!” Pfeiffer responds.
See Red Fred loves analogies. His most recent one? The big red leviathan. It’s a term for vice president John Paxson’s rebuild, representing “a new monster that is going to destroy the NBA.”
“The last year, my image against the Celtics [in the 2017 playoffs] was the red buzzsaw,” he said. “And I remember I mentioned that to Waddle and Silvy. I had a dream the other night that a big red buzzsaw was cutting through fields of green clover. And I said, ‘I have no idea what that means, but I know it’s got to be good.’”
Not everyone is a fan of See Red Fred. His views often run contrary to popular opinion and they’re always overly positive.
And he does make some bold, questionable predictions. Among them: Denzel Valentine will win the most improved player award, Kris Dunn has “a lot of John Wall” in him, Lauri Markkanen will be a top five player, and the Bulls will win a championship in either 2020 or 2022, depending on whether they tank this year. These promises might seem farfetched, but he said, “I 100 percent believe them.”
Despite the unbridled optimism, Pfeiffer disputes the homer label.
“I don’t like that term,” he said. “I just consider myself a very knowledgeable fan.”
Pfeiffer goes on to prove it in the next three minutes of his most recent radio appearance. He mentions the intricacies of Nikola Mirotic’s contract, recalls the details of a trade from four years ago, and brings up another from two years past. He calls for a Bulls pessimist to be dragged out of his mom’s basement and loudly shouts, “Shame!” to end his call.
Pfeiffer recording an episode of his podcast, Chicago Bullseye. (Courtesy Fred Pfeiffer)
Pfeiffer does know his stuff. He watches every game, reads everything he can, and engages constantly in discussions with friends and strangers alike. But he comes to different conclusions than many other die-hards. While support for the organization has plummeted, Pfeiffer remains steadfast in backing the team’s moves.
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“As a Chicagoan all my life, I realized that what Michael Jordan and the Bulls did for this town, they completely transformed it from a city of losers,” he said. “Before MJ, the first person you would associate with Chicago was Al Capone, a gangster. In the 90s, thankfully, it became Michael Jordan.
“The Bulls and the Bears are the only two teams that truly bring the city together. The Cubs and Sox tear us apart, the Hawks are great but the sport isn’t as universally popular as basketball. The Bulls and Bears transcend all that divide us. People of every race and class love those teams.”
While the universal popularity of the Bulls may be in question these days, it’s clear that Pfeiffer does indeed love them. He cried each time the Bulls won the title and again when the team won the lottery in 2008, “because I knew that [Derrick Rose] was going to be special.”
Pfeiffer’s affinity for the organization goes beyond the court too.
“I’ve just been a die-hard fan ever since I’ve been 10, and the team means so much to me,” he said. “And they’ve done great things off the court. They had [Bulls ambassador and former player] Bob Love come out to our kids’ school. I’m on the school board there. And he came out no questions asked, we raised thousands of dollars for the school, and he didn’t ask for a dime.
“I mean we’re not a wealthy school. A lot of lower-class, middle-class kids. A lot of people struggling. And he came out and it was just one of the greatest nights of my life.”
Pfeiffer’s love of the team and his frustration at how it was covered led him to start one of the first Bulls podcasts, Chicago Bullseye, which he still puts out during the season. The genesis of the idea came in 2007 after co-workers heard him arguing about the Bulls at lunch. From there, it evolved into a platform for he and co-host Mark Lewinthal to discuss the team and combat the negativity.
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“I decided to try to be a voice,” he said. “I don’t understand why everybody feels like this is so bad as a fan.”
For Pfeiffer, being a Bulls fan is one of the great joys of life. He gleefully recounts being thrown out of a bar in Boston during last year’s playoffs against the Celtics while the team was up 2-0 in the series. It was one of his happiest moments of the year.
“I got kicked out of the bar for saying that Bob Cousy couldn’t make a Division III college team today,” he said, laughing.
If that doesn’t convince you of the lengths that Pfeiffer takes his fandom, maybe this will: “I named my son after Ben Gordon,” he confides in me.
Does his wife know?
“No, she really doesn’t,” he said, laughing again. “I said, ‘Well, we gotta agree on a name.’ It came down to Samuel and Ben. I said, ‘Let’s name him after Ben from Friends,’ the son of Ross, because I knew she loved that show. But in reality, I wrote it in my journal: He is named after Ben Gordon.”
Fred Pfeiffer with his son, Ben, who’s named after Ben Gordon. (Courtesy Fred Pfeiffer)
So who is Fred Pfeiffer? A homer? A truth-teller? A lunatic? A man who is about to be in a lot of trouble with his wife? If you ask him, he’s a true fan.
“If you’re going to call me a blind Bulls fan, that’s fine,” he said. “I know how I am. I know I’m a real Bulls fan that knows this team well.”
And what drives him to these lengths? He’s a man of eternal hope, and he will need it. His goal is a big one — to lead the pessimists on to the big red bus, or at least get them to consider it.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” he said. “If you’re a true Bulls fan, and really think, and are smart, and I can make you look at this situation differently? That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
(Top photo: Courtesy of Fred Pfeiffer)
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