Last week, I traveled with my family to a rare fair weather Chicago to see the visiting St. Louis Cardinals play a three game series at the venerable Wrigley Field and the home of the Chicago Cubs. It was my first time in Wrigley to see the Cards play their age-old nemesis, the Cubbies. It was one of those special slices of time for me. To share it with family members, who are avid baseball fans as well, was that much more meaningful.
The first thing you notice when you arrive at 1060 W. Addison Street in the Lakeview section of Chicago, home of Wrigley Field, is the throbbing excitement surrounding the park. The neighborhood envelopes the park. Fans, both red and blue, engaged in a street party atmosphere before the game. Pubs overflowing. BBQ smells wafting through the air. Vendors scalping tickets. Parking attendants hawking spaces. Cars and buses racing by. Fire engines blasting their sirens a few streets away. Police trying to hold it all together. The L punctuating the street chaos noise with it's own signature noise of steel upon steel screeching and moaning. And this is mid-May. Only 30 plus games into the season. I've been told by locals this is the gameday atmosphere for ANY Cubs games. If only the wannabe rival interloper Cincinnati Reds had such fervor from their fan base.
Once inside the park you see how the surrounding pulsing cityscape absorbs Wrigley like a large beer garden that just happens to have a ballfield in the middle of it all. It's cozy. It's loud. It's visually stimulating. It reminded me of a set from Mr. Roger's neighborhood years ago on PBS. It's that cute. There are the rooftop seats aligning Waveland and Sheffield Avenues with their beyond bleacher seats. There is the old manual scoreboard sans Jumbotron. There's the Boston ivy still in winter shock trying to wake up on the outfield walls. There is an obvious absence of advertisments within the park. There is the constant hum from the bordering streets even after you're inside the park. There are the flagpoles with the wind-tattered flags that are more confused than a Sarah Palin audience. Wind blows in. Wind blows out. Wind blows every which way. There are the lights that were installed only 23 years ago. (The park is 97 years old). Change doesn't come hurriedly and freely to Wrigley but neither do wins. The Cubs have never won a World Series in Wrigley. In fact, the Cubs last World Series championship was in 1908, 103 years ago, in old West Side Park.
In the three game series, we saw great baseball. Cards took 2 out of 3 from the Cubs. Cubs looked offensively strong but their pitching and team defense was poor. In light of this generational Cub ineptitude, there is one certainty that is everlasting: their fans are blindly loyal to their team. This is a perennial loser franchise with a fan base that is one of the most passionate in sports. Frankly, I don't get their love affair. Yearly, Cubs fans, all 3 million plus a year in Wrigley attendance and millions more around the globe, give so much and the Cubs team delivers so little. And for what...another losing season? Where's the quid pro quo here? How 'bout something for the effort, Cubbies?
My personal introduction to an authentic Cubs fan came before the start of the game one of the three game series. I was returning to my seat from the concession stand with my daughter and Olde Styles in hand when I noticed a couple of Cardinal fans standing amidst Cubbie blue in the lower deck. A father was wearing an Albert Pujols #5 Cardinal jersey while holding his adorable one year old son wearing the same jersey, albeit a bit smaller. Matching jerseys...how cute. I stopped, aimed by camera phone at them with finger on the trigger when all of a sudden an over-fed and over-served bellicose Cubs fan nearby yelled at me, "take your f_ _ _ _ ing lousy Cardinal cap off for the National Anthem." Excuse me, but we haven't met, I muttered. Oh well...no worries. Not in Busch Stadium anymore. So, I removed my Cardinal cap, thanked him for reminding me of my patriotic duty to remove it during the anthem and slunked away to my seat.
The Cards left town in first place. I left town thinking about my pleasant and not so pleasant Wrigley experiences. Grateful that my team is the St. Louis Cardinals and not the Chicago Cubs, notwithstanding, the inimitable Wrigley Field and its beyond loyal sozzled fans.
Postscript: As for the notorious weather that seems to dominate any visit to Chicago, it did not disappoint. In a matter of days, the weather changed from mid-July temps to December temps complete with ferocious moisture-laden arctic winds coming off Lake Michigan. Just another Chi-town weather front passing by. The Chicago weather like the Cubs are very similar...both lousy. But Wrigley's fun...and "they have that going for them which is nice."
No comments:
Post a Comment