Playing the Fields

In an era when live major-league baseball has retreated to pleasure palaces packed with flashing videos, blaring music, and gut-busting food courts, has the old-fashioned game lost something? Across seven ballparks in seven days, one fan goes looking for an answer

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GAME 2
Arizona Diamondbacks vs. Chicago Cubs
Wrigley Field, Chicago
July 21, 2007

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and Wrigleyville smells like beer. It also smells like money: After failing to score tickets on eBay, we're forced to buy from a scalper on Clark who wants $140 for two seats in section 237. That's the lower terrace on the first-base side, partially obstructed behind a steel girder. Uecker seats at Trump prices.

As we're walking up the ramp to our seats, Dad gets nostalgic about the ball games his dad took him to when he was a kid. "We'd drive in from Indiana, so the buildup was huge," he says. "The moment when we'd walk through the tunnel and first see that beautiful green field and the scoreboard . . . no matter how many times he brought me, it took my breath away every time." Not today, though. With the overhanging terrace blocking much of the landscape from our section, we're robbed of that indelible moment.

While I always enjoy a game at Wrigley, soon after we sit down my gripes come rushing back. For starters, the family-friendly reputation. Children tend not to be baseball purists, and while Milwaukee may go overboard with all the stuff, Wrigley promises nothing but the action on the field. And sure, the atmosphere is congenial, but it ain't G-rated. The meathead behind us keeps complaining that his Carlos Zambrano bobblehead doesn't resemble the Cubs fireballer at all: "It looks like the Mexican president—what the @#$% is his name? Vincent Fox?"

But the misperceptions cut both ways. Wrigley doesn't deserve its notoriety for drawing a crowd interested predominantly in drinking and socializing. The beer flows abundantly in section 237, but even the rowdy fans know their baseball. (Maybe it's a different story in the bleachers.) When Alfonso Soriano makes an error, a guy down the row informs everyone that it was only his second of the year. In fact, on this trip, we find no fans more spirited and knowledgeable about the game than the Cubs faithful. As a Sox man, I admit this grudgingly.

Whether we care for the people or not, the Wrigley experience is undeniably memorable. First off, with the el passing by beyond right field, apartment buildings looming in the distance, and sirens blaring from a nearby firehouse, the ballpark never lets us forget we're in the middle of a city. Toss in the ivy and the iconic manual scoreboard, and you're transported. A relative lack of advertisements and interruptions on the PA system means there's nothing much to do but watch baseball and talk. And no one today needs a scoreboard to tell him when to make noise; they belt out "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" so loud, you can barely hear the comedian Dennis Miller leading it from the booth.

Unfortunately, the Cubs offense musters only four hits all day, and the pitching officially blows the game on a home run in the eighth. The chant begins: "THROW IT BACK . . . THROW IT BACK . . . ," instigating another Wrigley tradition: regurgitating an opponent's home-run ball as a sign of—what? Disrespect? Disappointment? Anger? The bleacher bum who catches this one seems reluctant to part with it, but soon the chant is overwhelming, and there's only one way to shut them up. The second he heaves it, the crowd erupts, and he appears pleased with his decision. When it comes to Cubs games, one man is powerless against the tide of history.

Photography: Esther Kang

This article appears in the July 2008 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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