Chicago Cubs tickets

For its combination of beauty, intimacy, and ambience, one ballpark stands out in a league of its own: Wrigley. The experience is not limited to inside the stadium. The neighborhood around Wrigley, near Chicago's North Side, is appropriately called Wrigleyville, an indication of how baseball permeates the area. On game day, electricity extends for many blocks in every direction, a sense of community that's found nowhere else in America's baseball cities. In the early twentieth century, baseball teams built their parks in the heart of their fan base. But one by one these inner-city neigh¬borhoods deteriorated, and the clubs fled along with their fans to the suburbs. Not so in Wrigleyville, where pubs, bookstores, and clothing boutiques make this burg within a big city the funkiest, most livable ballpark neighborhood in any major-league city.

Wrigley Field is also the smallest and arguably the most intimate ballpark in the big leagues. Some parks may seem cozy from the front rows, but deep outfield fences, large foul territories, or steeply pitched upper decks can cause distant viewing in supposedly friendly confines-a phrase that is perfectly applied here. Built in 1914 and renovated several times, Wrigley has retained virtually all of its charm: ivy-covered walls, hand-operated scoreboard, and sun-swept bleachers. Even the Cubs' announcer Harry Caray was an icon. With his shock of white hair, oversize black-rimmed glasses, and gruff, folksy delivery, Garay was held in higher esteem than any of the Cubs players. A long-standing highlight of games here was Caray leading the crowd in a sing-along of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch. Corny, maybe, but fun nonetheless. Harry Caray passed away in 1998.

Wrigley is unmatched for its physical beauty. An afternoon game here must be why baseball was invented. The Cubbies have rarely fielded a contender in the past fifty years, but their fans remain loyal, consistently filling the stands. Part of the charm might be the consistency of their failure. You suspect they will lose in the end, yet hope still springs eternal on the near North Side.

After the first big-league night game was played in Cincinnati in 1935, teams gradually found that they could attract a bigger gate by playing games after most people finished work. In the mid-eighties, when the Cubs were making late-season noise, there was talk of moving their home World Series games across town to Comiskey Park or even to Milwaukee's County Stadium, since Wrigley did not have lights. The television networks had long ago decreed that all World Series games were to be played at night. So after much protesting, lights were installed in 1988. But the Cubs still have not played in the World Series since 1945.

JOE MANTEGNA (ACTOR) "To me, if somebody told you to invent the quintessential baseball stadium, it would be Wrigley Field. It's everybody's dream of what a baseball stadium should be. Unfortunately, the team doesn't quite come up to the standards of the park. . . . Can't have it all."

TODD HUNDLEY "You know, it's an overwhelm¬ing thing. Me growing up as a kid, it was Wrigley Field. Being in the city, and all of a sudden walking up the big corridor or stairs, it's all concrete, and then, boom! There's the green grass and the dirt . . . My dad [Randy Hundley] was done playing by the time I was old enough. I was born in '69, he was done in '74, '75. So I and my buddies would kind of miss school some days and get on a train and go down to the city."

RAFAEL PALMEIRO "I never did go to a big-league stadium as a child. The first big-league baseball stadium that I went to was when I was called up in Chicago when I was with the Cubs. I was over¬whelmed when I came out on the field. I'd seen it many times on TV 'cause I followed the Cubs on WGN. And you see this great stadium on TV, and then when you see it live, it's an amazing thing."

BRET SABERHAGEN "I was born in Chicago and lived out there for the first five years of my life. And my grandfather, who got me interested in baseball, was a Cubs fan. So my first big-league game was a doubleheader at Wrigley Field . . . Seeing Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Ron Santo and Don Kessinger, all the old Cubbies that's what really got me liking the game-going out and watching it and seeing a beautiful ballpark."

EDGARDO ALFONZO "I don't like it, I don't know why. Probably because of too many day games. For me, I don't see the ball pretty good over there. But the field's nice, don't get me wrong. But I don't feel comfortable there."

JERRY COLANGELO (DIAMONDBACKS OWNER) "Well, I must admit, [I was] seven or eight years old and happened to be at Wrigley Field in Chicago. I looked surreal. To be able to see the players after listening to them on radio-because that was before television. It was just a tremendous thrill."

TIM RAINES "The first stadium I ever saw was Wrigley Field, and that was three years out of high school, and I had never really been to a major-league stadium before. It was after my third year in the minors; the only stadiums I saw were minor-league stadiums . . . I was so in awe, and nervous-I couldn't hit a ball out of the cage, and I couldn't catch a fly ball in the out-field, I was that nervous."

BOB FRIEND "My very first memory of seeing a big-league park was very exciting. I was around seven or eight years old when my dad and I took a train from Lafayette, Indiana, to Chicago to see the Cubs in a doubleheader at Wrigley Field. The Cubs beat the Dodgers in the first game. The second game was called because of darkness. Some of the players on the field were Bill Lee, Gabby Hartnett, Phil Cavarretta, and Dolt Camilli.

"That beautiful ivy-covered fence and ballpark stands as one of my favorites today. I also had great success there-two one-hitters and a near perfect game in 1955, facing only twenty-seven men."

MIKE STANTON "My second big-league appearance, I was with Atlanta, we went into Wrigley. It was a pretty special moment for me, because I'd been watching the Cubs forever on WGN. Just stand out there and see the ivy . . . and see all the parts of the stadium that you didn't get to see from TV, it just made an impression on me, that this is where I want to be."

JIM HICKMAN "Wrigley Field was the best. You could smell the hot dogs and popcorn . . . The ivy, the grass, small dugouts, bleachers-everything was great."
CHIP CARAY (BROADCASTER) "One of my fondest memories is our family's claim to baseball history: three generations of major-league broad-casters together at the same time, May 13, 1996. My dad Skip and I were working for the Braves, my grandfather Harry for the Cubs . . . my first ever visit to Wrigley Field . . . The highlight . . . came in the seventh inning, where Harry sang 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game.' Seeing the joy, the love, the passion he and Cubs fans had for each other was just wonderful. I gave him a standing ovation with tears running down my face. And then a big hug your my dad-for the first time in a long time, I felt really connected . . . Now that my grandfather is gone, believe me, that day at Wrigley remains a cherished memory."

JIM THOME "It's the cream of the crop."

GENE ELSTON (BROADCASTER) "In 1934 my father purchased a new Chevrolet and announced we would break it in with a motor trip to Chicago to see the Cubs and St. Louis. Having heard many stories concern¬ing the gangsters in the Windy City, I was quite uneasy upon our arrival-ir the dead of night-while driving to our relatives' home. That was all forgot ten the next morning when I found myself in a lower box seat at Wrigley Field on the first-base line behind the Cardinals' dugout, and Dizzy Dean would be the St. Louis pitcher. This thrill turned into another, twenty years later, 1954 on Labor Day. I would be sitting in the Cubs broadcast booth with Bert Wilson and broadcasting my first big-league game-the first of forty-two seasons of calling Major League Baseball."

GENE LAMONT "The first [big-league stadium] I saw as a child was Wrigley Field. It seemed awfully big, just the field and everything, how nice the field was manicured and everything. We had, in Illinois, skin infields, no grass on the infields. I was really impressed."

JOE CARTER "The first stadium that really impressed me the most was the first one I played in-that was Wrigley Field. To have all the history and to go there and have the ivy climbing the walls . . . You couldn't believe that you were finally on a ballpark field that you had seen on TV so much."