Elia was hired by the Atlanta Braves as a special assistant to general manager Frank Wren in November, 2010.

He played the 1967 season in the minors and finished with 14 home runs, 59 RBI and a batting average of .267.

The following season he was called up to the Cubs major league roster, only appearing in fifteen games racking up only three RBI and a .176 batting average.

They finished the season NL East Champions with a 91–71 record, one game ahead of the Montreal Expos.

That season he helped lead the Phillies under manager Dallas Green to the peak of all the sport, a 1980 World Series Championship.

Some notable players he coached in these two years with the Phillies include Larry Bowa, Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, and Ryne Sandberg.

Elia was still a bench coach through the first 61 games of the 1987 season, but the Phillies were 29–32 at that point and manager John Felske had been fired mid-season.

In 1975, at the age of 37, Elia had begun his managing career in the Western Carolinas League with the Class A Spartanburg Phillies.

Notable players he managed on this team were future 1980 World Series champions Kevin Saucier and Keith Moreland.

They went on to play the Evansville Triplets (Detroit Tigers affiliate) in the American Association Championship Series.

They lost the series in six games as the Jim Leyland led Evansville team won the league.

A notable player on this roster was Lonnie Smith, who was a 1982 All Star and a three-time World Series champion left fielder.

That season they brought players such as Ryne Sandberg, Keith Moreland, and Dickie Noles over from the Phillies roster.

Elia is often remembered for a infamously profanity-filled tirade directed at the fans at Wrigley Field on April 29, 1983.

After the Cubs dropped a one-run game at home to the Los Angeles Dodgers, Elia lost his temper while making post-game remarks to four reporters (the Chicago Tribune's Robert Marcus, the Chicago Sun-Times' Joel Behrig, the Daily Herald's Don Friske and WLS-AM's Les Grobstein, who recorded it with the only microphone that was in the room).

[2][3]After being fired by the Cubs, he was hired as manager for the Triple-A Portland Beavers (Phillies organization) in the Pacific Coast League.

Elia's tenure in Portland is perhaps best remembered for his role in an unusual incident during a May 30, 1984, game against the Vancouver Canadians.

Elia was ejected for arguing a called third strike and subsequently threw a chair onto the field before leaving the dugout; this in turn led to the ejection of the team's batboy, Sam Morris, when he refused (acting on instructions from Beavers players in the dugout) umpire Pam Postema's demand that he retrieve the chair that Elia had thrown on the field.

In 1992, at age 54, he was hired as the manager of the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons of the International League.