I'm not much of a baseball fan but my life has had a few brushes with Wrigley Field going back a couple of generations.
In the distant past they cleaned up after games by unleashing a hoard of kids, paid them with bleacher tickets for the next game. My dad grew up on Lincoln Avenue and got in on that, stories when I was little.
My grandfather caught a ball at some point, prized possession (apparently), saved it to give to the oldest male grandson (me) when I was ten. Birthday present, Mandan, North Dakota. Taped up broken bats, taped up balls, we didn't have much in the way of equipment although we oddly never ran out of electrical tape. On a bad day I offered the ball I had in my room, nobody told me it was that special, didn't think anything of it. The ancient cover lasted about five minutes. I didn't get into too much trouble over that although I'm sure it hurt someone's feelings. We had one TV station, sometimes the TV broke and nobody cared, I didn't know anything about major league baseball. Oh well.
After I had gotten straight I set a goal for myself, to sit through an entire baseball game. I figured that if I could do that without getting antsy I'd have turned some corner, and so I had. Some years later I loaned money (stupidly) and was paid back in Cubs tickets, four good seats along the third base line. That went on for a few years, a couple of games a year, but I'm really not a fan. The last few years I sold the tickets, maybe recouped ten cents on the dollar, lost track of the guy. His dad was a mover and shaker in the Chicago financial markets but that talent hadn't rubbed off, at least when I knew him. Oh well.
Other things, the city and Wrigley don't like each other much, a lot of "my turf/your turf" and "no, you can't come in and see" went on while I was there. Said hello to one of the Alou brothers one morning, he was waiting for the team bus. Have half a dozen balls around here somewhere, found below the outfield bleachers, where they keep all the field and sidewalk maintenance crap.
Anyway, boring Saturday morning.
Happy to be alive. |
