Don't Embrace the Past...Give it a Great Big Bear Hug

I’ve been cursed with some streak that tells me to tend toward the contrary. If everyone is betting one way, I’m likely to back house against it. If all of my buddies are ogling one woman, I’m likely to point out her flaws and talk to her mother. If everyone goes to the beach, find me in the mountains.

It is because of this streak that I was prepared to hate Wrigley Field. The nation’s second-oldest stadium, the home of the long-suffering Cubs, the Mecca to which all baseball fans must make a pilgrimage. I was prepared to hate it. After having passed the hot mess that is Soldier Field earlier in the day, I had a blog post mentally written about how Chicago is stuck in the past and needs to let it go, and to prove the point they need look no further than the south side of town, where the White Sox tore down Comiskey, and won a championship in the soulless Cellular One Park soon after.

I was prepared to hate it. It took a trip up one ramp and down a flight of stairs to change my mind. The trend in stadium construction for the past 20 years has been to build an old-time stadium. Cities hoping to revitalize a business district would construct a brick ballpark hoping to send fans’ imaginations back to a time when baseball was (supposedly) more pure. Everything but the prices resemble the turn of the century.

Everyone is trying to capture the mystique that lives in Wrigley Field. I arrived for batting practice and was surprised to see that there was still a spot at the wall where I could reach down and touch the ivy. I knew I had to sit in the bleachers, the two concrete countries where home run balls are thrown back and beer is expensive, but still cheap enough to dump on an opposing player should the opportunity present itself.

I write this fully aware of the fact that I’m in danger of losing my reader to the cliché. The sound of the ball hitting the ivy on the wall on the fly gave me chills. Stay with me: Chills literally ran up my arms when I heard the batting practice ball hit the left field wall on the fly. Even from where I stood , above right center, the induplicable sound affected me to my core. It happened three times while Jason Heyward took his batting practice swings. Each time: chills. (And those were his weak shots. His good ones reached the top of the bleachers in right and left. That kid is good.)

I should feel ashamed for having wanted to hate this place. I don’t, but I probably should. I stepped into it and immediately appreciated it for all that it is and always has been: The best baseball stadium ever built. Its architects were so forward-thinking as to create a place wherein there were not only no bad seats, but where there are enough concessions to accommodate a modern club’s merchandising, and enough space for everyone to walk around the concourse and still see the game from every angle. It was built to be flexible enough to have additions put on it, allowing for luxury boxes and even, eventually, the tradition-killing lights. Thankfully, I got to a day game.

Don’t hate this place. Hate the people that populate it. While I have a full appreciation for all of its history, its relevance in the present, and its place in the future, now and forever as a must-see baseball destination, the people inside don’t seem to be able to get over how poorly their team plays. In Pittsburgh, I would see how fans can lovingly hate their team but love their park. The North Side Chicago fans seem to be so incapacitated by so much losing, that instead of appreciating the hallowed halls of Wrigley every chance they get, they never miss an opportunity to point out the ways in which their team ruins it for them. As if the Cubs as they see them aren’t good enough for the field on which they play.

So finally I say Chicago should live more in the past. Relish the curse of the billygoat. Tell loudly the tale of Steve Bartman. Appreciate all you have, for your 104 years of not winning the World Series will never be duplicated by any team. The Red Sox didn’t have the fortitude to make it past 86 years. The south side pansies bailed out after 84. The Diamondback babies weren’t able to make it 4 years without getting good enough to win it all. What the Cubs have is something that no other fans can claim. But the bitches on the North Side are too busy crying in their 8-dollar 12 ounce beers to see that each year that the Cubs graze the basement is one more tick on a record that no one will every break, in a baseball stadium that no one will ever replicate.

When the Cubs were up by a run with two innings left, it became noticeably more difficult to engage anyone in any type of conversation. Everyone became very nervous at the both the prospect of winning, and the possibility that they might throw it away. When their closer enevitably gave up three runs in the ninth, the stands emptied with practiced speed. They left quietly, and they left quickly. Cubs fans, wake up and love the fact that you've thrown away another W! You’re sitting in the stands at the end of DiMaggio’s 56 games. You have a ticket to Ripken’s 2,400th game. But you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourselves to come up with a way to embrace your unique gift. Start throwing back your own team’s home run balls. That will show them to try to mess with tradition.