Tuesday; Wrigley Field and US Cellular Field – Chicago

NY Mets vs. Chicago Cubs; 1:35 pm

NY Yankees vs. Chicago White Sox; 7:11 pm

We woke up nice and early on Tuesday morning, enjoyed a mediocre continental breakfast at the Best Western and then hopped in the Rav4 for our trek to Chicago. The trip ordinarily takes about 90 minutes, but there was so much construction and congestion that it took 2 solid hours. We arrived at US Cellular field (the White Sox stadium) around 11am. After circling the stadium (which is in the South Side of the city, a/k/a the Shitty Side), we eventually found the park-and-ride lot, which was right in front of the stadium. We had purchased a special parking pass that allowed us to park at the stadium early in the day, take the subway to work (or in our case, Wrigley), and drive home after the game. So we hopped on the “L” and headed to Wrigley. And thus began the interesting journey of our day/night doubleheader in Chi-town!

The first thing I noticed when we got on the train is that there were a lot of Yankee fans headed to the game. This made me feel better because Todd was wearing a Yankee hat (and later a Yankee jersey), which I was convinced was going to get his ass kicked. Todd likes to chat up anyone and everyone and was having a fun conversation with some other Yankee fans when this guy, let’s call him “Special Ed”, gets on the train and decided that he needed to be Mr. Conversationalist. One guy who Todd was talking to made the mistake of engaging with Special Ed and told him that he was from New York. “They still have that Bronx Zoo up there, right? Only it’s not called a zoo. It’s some sort of conservatory now.” This was an innocent enough statement, until Special Ed started quizzing the guy on the make up of the animal population. “They still have a juvenile rhinoceros there? I think they have a male, but don’t know about females. And giraffes? Do they have a giraffe house? I know they have a mouse house.” At this point everyone on the train was snickering at this guy, but it wasn’t until he started explaining that the “W” in David Wright’s name was silent and that it was a nice Anglo-Saxon name that everyone realized that Special Ed was indeed, “special.” Of course, the house didn’t come down until he started singing “New York, New York” (sadly, Liza Minnelli’s version, not that of Frankie Blue Eyes!). Thankfully at this point we pulled up to Wrigley Field and let Special Ed go about his day. For the record, Special Ed, the “W” in Wrigley is silent as well. Which brings us to…

…historic Wrigley Field!! Everyone I talked to about this trip told me how great seeing a game in this stadium would be and that I also had to go drinking at Murphy’s Bleachers and/or the Cubbie Bear for the full immersive experience. Look, it's obvious that I’m a huge baseball fan and respect the tradition of the game, but at the risk of being extremely unpopular, I have to say that Wrigley Field is a friggin’ dump! Seriously, 90% of the stadium has an obstructed view of the field, the scoreboard doesn’t have a total column so you have to actually ADD up the runs in each inning, and when you walk up the ramps, you are deposited directly into the middle of a seating section! I’m all for the history of baseball and I’m sure in 1939 the place was great, but it’s 2008 people! Put up some graphics!

Anyway, before we went in, Todd and I had a beer at the Cubby Bear to appease the Baseball Gods and bought some souvenirs to appease the shady vagabonds hocking obscene and racist t-shirts.

The game itself took an eternity. And what do I do when I’m bored? I eat. A LOT! So much so that by the 6^th inning, the nastiness started to catch up with me. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say Cub fans aren’t exactly appreciative of a man doing his necessary business in the stalls during the game. Frankly, the pressure of a heckled bowel movement isn’t something I’m used to, so it took a bit longer than anyone would have liked. That said, I think the guy who went in after me got his comeuppance!

The famed Seventh Inning Stretch at Wrigley was pretty cool. The whole place gets into it, even when sung by former Cub, Doug Glanville (who??). Thankfully Todd agreed to leave after the end of the 8^th inning, after the Cubs broke the game open. We rushed downstairs and onto the subway – a ride I was absolutely dreading. I imagined a sardine-like experience with guys mugging me at knife-point, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was nothing like that. We got on the “L” and were off without a hitch. For those of you keeping score, that’s 3 straight stadium exits without a traffic delay!!

The ride to US Cellular Field was relatively quick and uneventful. Once we got there we checked our rental car to make sure (a) it was still there and (b) nobody had broken into it. Much like the rest of the stadium, I was surprised to see everything was ok! We went inside early and secured a front row seat to Yankee batting practice. We walked around the stadium a bit and I have to be honest – I was pleasantly surprised. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the inside is comfortable and relatively relaxing. In the interest of full disclosure, it could be that I was so disappointed after the Wrigley experience that anything would have impressed me.

Nevertheless, our seats were in left-center field, on actual bleachers. At first I was a little peeved – after all, we paid good money for the seats -but much like many of the other stadiums, we struck up conversation with those around us and ended up having a helluva time. The wheels started to fall off the bus around the 7^th inning, after the Yankees broke the game open and all of the meathead Sox fans had imbibed their body weight in beer. The most important lesson I learned in Chicago is that Cub fans and Sox fans hate (and I mean HATE) each other! The first people to have their hats ripped off their heads and thrown around were the Cub fans. That’s not to say that the Yankee fans were treated much differently (as evidenced by the beer thrown directly at us from afar in the 9^th inning), but for once it was nice to see others getting excoriated before the Yankee fans!!

Once the game was over we headed to our prime parking spot and zoomed right out of the stadium. That’s 4 effortless exits in a row!! We drove about 30 minutes to our hotel – The Radisson – by O’Hare airport, which was quite nice. Too bad we checked in at 12am and were on our way to the airport by 8am. No rest for the weary.