I took the family to Chicago last weekend. You may not think of the Windy City as a family destination, but it most certainly is. Tons of things to do and see for the kids and grown-ups alike. Unfortunately, the Cubs were out of town during our visit. Having no interest at all in going to see the White Sox, I instead opted for the tour of Wrigley instead of catching a game.
As we were getting ready to leave the hotel Thursday morning, my twitter-feed started going bananas. The Indians and Cubs were on the verge of a trade. How convenient for me. By the time the Blue line pulled into the station the trade was being reported. Fukudome was headed to Cleveland. I had an Indians hat on, and was carrying around an Indians backpack (Smuckers stadium give-away from a few years back) all day and not once did anyone say anything to me about the trade. Not once. I was pretty surprised. In fact, I broke the news of the trade to the tour guide and clubhouse attendant at Wrigley.
The tour itself lasted about an hour and a half. We basically walked to 3 locations where we sat down and listened to the tour guide. The first was the lower deck behind home plate. This view would have been much cooler if they weren’t constructing a stage for the Paul McCartney concert that weekend. Sigh. I learned some things from the guide however. I had no idea that Wrigley wasn’t originally built for the Cubs. Nor in fact, was it built by the Wrigley company. It was built for the Chicago Federals of the old Federal League. It wasn’t long before that league folded and the Wrigley family was part of the investment group that purchased the Cubs and moved into the ball park.
Our guide was an older gentleman, who had seen a lot of baseball there in his years. It makes perfect sense for a guide to be someone who has seen a lot, and remembers personally many of the great moments at a park. I started to get annoyed however, by his constant bashing of technology. Those tour guides are in some ways an extension of the PR department. I can guarantee you wouldn’t hear an Indians PR rep bash technology the way this guide did.
We sat in the press box for a while where I learned that Wrigley Field was considered too small to host the 1918 World Series against Boston, and so they were forced to play their home games at Comiskey Park. This prompted stadium renovations. Wrigley was expanded and the Cubs hosted 5 more World Series at Wrigley. They lost them all.
Our last lecture was in the bleachers. The rooftop seats surrounding the stadium have an interesting story. The Cubs were going to construct higher bleachers at one time, to which the neighboring apartments and houses complained because it would spoil the view they had of the games. (Wrigley was built in a residential neighborhood.) The housing owners formed a co-op and were taking the Cubs to court. A settlement was reached, whereby the neighboring houses had to give 17% of proceeds to the Cubs for the rights to view the game unobstructed.
Our final stop was the Cubs clubhouse. Fukudome’s jersey hung in his locker right along with the rest of the team. This is where I decided to mention to the guide that he’d been traded. I don’t think mister technophobe believed me or my twitter news-feed. That’s fine. He knows now.
I also spoke with a clubhouse attendant. I joked with him that I’d be happy to take some of Fukudome’s stuff back with me to Ohio, which he didn’t get. Because he also had no idea of the trade. When I told him about it he said that “We’d better have three lockers for him. One for him, one for his translator, and one for his personal hitting coach.” The attendant didn’t sound too disappointed to see Fukudome go. Now, I’ve read nothing but good reports about his relationships with the other players and coaches. Who knows, maybe the attendant felt he wasn’t a good tipper. Either way, the only player assigned more than one locker in the Cubs clubhouse was Zambrano. He was in a corner by himself. That adds up.
Click the pics to enlarge.
