Take Me Out to the Ballgame: Cubs-Indians Wrigley Field Experience
Leaving Wrigley Field after the Cleveland Indians’ 10-1 trounced the Chicago Cubs, I was struck by the complete transformation of the area around the National League’s answer to Fenway Park.
Red Sox fans, and anyone who’s ever been to a game at Fenway, know what I’m talking about. There’s a seamless integration of the ballpark’s history with modern amenities and concessions, together with a distinctive vibe along the street outside the park.
Cubs fans know Clark Street was a gauntlet of sorts after a ballgame, with cabs, buses and cops directing traffic. But tearing down a worn-out old McDonalds and building a sleek new hotel in its place changed the postgame scene dramatically. Bars up and down Clark Street—which still soak up their share of postgame revelry—have certainly taken notice of their new competition, along what the Cubs now call Gallagher Way.
The Ricketts family poured money into the area since they bought the team in 2009, and putting a championship team on the field has been part and parcel of revamping the majors’ only franchise to remain in the same city since 1876. If you thought Wrigley Field was something special before 2018, the updated version of it will take that feeling to a higher level. Although I miss the “Right Field Sucks!/Left Field Sucks!” battles that once rang out in the bleachers, I’ll give that up in favor of what took its place.
After walking out of a gift shop along Clark Street after the game, I noticed three Indians fans planning to take a picture. There were lots of Indians fans in attendance at the game, and they had plenty to be happy about afterward.
A guy in a white Indians jersey had his smartphone, and two of his buddies were posing with a blue police barricade. Traffic is now shut down along Clark Street around the ballpark, as it never was before this year, and the barricades are needed to make this happen.
One of the Indians fans in the soon-to-be-taken photo saw me and said “Cubs guy, get in this picture!” I was in full ballpark regalia, and perhaps they wanted me to lend some authenticity to their shot. I was happy to act as their Cubs totem, but only because I had something special to offer in return.
The Indians fans didn’t know my one and only purchase at the Cubs gift shop had been an enlarged reproduction of the scorecard filled out by Cubs announcer Pat Hughes for Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. For $10, I purchased the equivalent of a holy relic, something I had waited all my life to see.
As the Indians photographer lined up his shot, I held up the Pat Hughes’ scorecard and gave the biggest grin I could. This was a photobomb of the highest order, at least in my mind. I was reminding the Indians fans on both sides of the lens that their team had indeed won the battle of May 22, but my team won the war of 2016. And that event will bind all of us together for as long as we live, however long that turns out to be.
The Indians fan taking the picture walked toward me and said “I know what that is.” I told him it will always be priceless to me. We shook hands, and I wished him well on his foray into the Chicago night. Maybe he had come in from Ohio, and maybe he lives here already, but he was ready to go out and celebrate his team’s victory, either way. I hope that someday he’ll have a scorecard of his own to purchase at an Indians gift shop.
As I pulled into a parking spot outside my house after the game, I was struck—as I sometimes am—by a Bruce Springsteen song lyric playing on satellite radio. The lyric proclaimed “We’re all riders on this train,” and I thought about myself and the Indians fans. We’re riders on the baseball train, and though we certainly sit in different cars along the way, we all put on our team’s gear and head to the ballpark, pulling for our team for the six or maybe seven months a year that we’re able to do so.
People can say whatever they want to about how baseball’s lost its importance based on TV ratings and blah, blah, blah. And I’m preaching to the choir when I say this, but show me another activity people devote so much attention to, especially over the summer months. Basketball and hockey seasons will come to an end soon, and then it will be all baseball, all the time until Labor Day weekend rolls around. W.P. Kinsella wrote about “the thrill of the grass,” and I couldn’t agree more. Bring it on!
