The Washington Nationals, who appear dead serious about making baseball history in their amazing first season, certainly have come to the right place this weekend to get a big dose of it.
Just say the words “Wrigley Field” and a dugout full of sacrosanct baseball images will come calling, even if you’ve never been any closer to Chicago than, say, Charleston, W.Va.
A lot of people have had a lot of things to say about the so-called “Friendly Confines” since the Cubs moved there in 1916, two years after the place was built (for $250,000, yet) to house the Chicago Whales of the soon to be defunct Federal League.
Bill Veeck, son of a one-time Cubs president and later owner of the rival White Sox: “An afternoon at Wrigley is the greatest buy in the country. It’s sitting in the sun, drinking a few beers and telling a few lies.”
George Herman Ruth, somewhat less complimentarily before either calling or not calling his home run shot in the 1932 World Series: “I’d pay half my salary if I could play in this dump all the time.”
And most memorably and euphemistically, Cubs manager Lee Elia’s rant after Wrigley’s notorious Bleacher Bums hooted heartily during an early season loss in 1983: “Eighty-five percent of people are working — the other 15 percent come out here and boo. They don’t even work. That’s why they’re at the games.” (Actually, Elia set an unofficial major league record by invoking the magic “F” word, or a variation thereof, 36 times during his postgame diatribe to presumably blushing reporters.)
Other than Elia, what makes Wrigley so remarkable? Well, for example …
• It’s a genuinely old ballpark (second in age only to Fenway Park by four years), rather than one of today’s retro jobs.
• The ivy on the outfield walls — and lack of advertising.
• The statue outside of longtime broadcaster Harry Caray and memories of his yowling “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during each seventh-inning stretch.
• The brownstone houses beyond the outfield walls with rooftops full of paying (and drinking) customers.
• The winds that blow out many afternoons and produce scores reminiscent of when the Chicago Bears played there. The Cubs once beat the Phillies 26-23, and pitchers sometimes hide when it’s their turn to work at Wrigley.
• Flags for each team flying above the stands in the same order as the league standings. Thus the Nats could have taken a peek when they arrived yesterday and spotted their red-and-white flapping proudly, if illogically, atop the National League East.
But the greatest tradition of all, strictly daytime baseball, vanished in 1988, when the Tribune Co. — which owns the ballclub and flagship station WGN — agreed to install arcs. For years, the Cubs had resisted because private homes surround the park in its Wrigleyville neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side. During more than 40 seasons, Wrigley was the only major league stadium without lights. That’s what prompted Elia’s ungentle gripe about Cubbies fans not having jobs.
Another Cubs tradition, of course, is losing. The team hasn’t won a World Series since 1908, eight years before it moved onto the premises, and hasn’t played in one since 1945. When Red Sox fans rejoiced last fall over the club’s first Series championship in 86 years, Cubbies partisans muttered, “Big deal.” The last time the Cubs emerged as masters of all they surveyed, Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House and Franklin P. Adams was scribbling “Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
With that legacy, it requires research to determine that the Cubs subsequently won pennants in 1910, 1918, 1929, 1932, 1935, 1938 and 1945. And over the decades, Wrigley has borne witness to some marvelous players and signature events.
Most recently and ignominiously, fan Steve Bartman interfered with Cubs outfielder Moises Alou’s attempt to catch a foul ball in Game 6 of the 2003 NL Championship Series against Florida. Naturally, the Cubs lost Games 6 and 7.
Chicago’s James “Hippo” Vaughn and Cincinnati’s Fred Toney pitched the only nine-inning double no-hitter in baseball history in 1917, with former Olympic hero Jim Thorpe’s single winning for the Reds in the 10th.
Gabby Hartnett’s renowned “Homer in the Gloamin’ ” let the Cubbies overhaul the Pittsburgh Pirates and win the 1938 pennant.
Sam Jones’ no-hitter against the Pirates in 1955 was the first by a black pitcher.
Ernie Banks hit 512 career home runs while frequently chirping, according to legend, “Let’s play two.” (In those days, teams often did.)
Pete Rose of the Reds, old Charlie Hustler himself, tied Ty Cobb’s record of 4,191 hits there in 1985.
Rotund Hack Wilson smote 56 home runs for the Cubs in 1930, a National League record that lasted until Mark McGwire bashed 70 and Sammy Sosa 66 in 1998.
Speaking of Sosa, Wrigley is where he walked out on his team in the final game last season, thus enabling the ever willing Baltimore Orioles to overpay big free agent bucks for a washed-up slugger.
So as they cavort on Wrigley’s greensward, the Nats should savor their first visit to one of baseball’s pre-eminent shrines, along with Fenway and Yankee Stadium. And now that broadcaster Caray has gone to his eternal reward, they won’t have to hear or fear the dreaded cry of “Cubs win! Cubs win!”
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