Madness or Euphoria: My Conflicted Feelings About the Chicago Cubs
What should I do with the mad that I feel?
This was a question that Mr. Rogers tackled decades ago, but the answer eludes me right now. With the Chicago Cubs set to kick off Major League Baseball with Opening Night on Sunday, I find myself facing inner turmoil.
On the one hand, there is an unbridled excitement and childlike glee that I haven’t felt in years (maybe ever?) about this Cubs team and their chances of entertaining me through September and perhaps even a bit longer. Even if they don’t go all the way, they’re going to go somewhere, which is a big improvement over the nowhere of the past several seasons.
So what’s my problem? Well, my problem is this:
I love Wrigley Field with all my heart. It’s one of my favorite places in the world — filled with my own memories of Cubs games past and the people I was with, not to mention more than a century of baseball history and the memories of the millions of people who have enjoyed the Friendly Confines over that time.
You know the sentiment: America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers, but baseball — and Wrigley Field — has marked the time. So seeing the above photo earlier this week made me incredibly sad and more than a little angry at my beloved Cubs.
I’m not going to get into an argument about the new revenue streams made available by the various jumbotrons that will desecrate Wrigley for the rest of its days. Sure, it’ll bring in more cash. Hooray.
My argument is that a renowned brand like the Chicago Cubs could easily find ways to spin straw into gold without completely changing an atmosphere and experience that has remained largely the same since Wrigley held its first game. If you think that these changes won’t permanently alter the experience of attending a Cubs game, you are kidding yourself. And if that doesn’t matter to you as much as the Cubs getting more cold, hard cash, maybe you’re not exactly the Cubs or baseball fan that you claim to be.
For decades, Cubs fans could expect certain trappings of a game at Wrigley that are now changed forever.
- No replays.
Baseball is a game of inches and moments and human error. There are no do-overs. Lament the call or rejoice in the great catch. Then watch the rest of the game. Replays are for sports highlight shows that you watch when you get back home. - No “pump ups.”
When the game is on the line, there’s no more explosive venue than Wrigley Field. Perhaps its the age of the place, but I have attended many games (a 2007 playoff game springs instantly to mind) where the electricity and furor of the crowd made it feel like the field’s very walls and foundation were shaking. There’s no need for a jumbotron to tell the Wrigley faithful when they need to make some noise or for a digital noise-o-meter to measure the excitement. This happens organically at Wrigley. - No mascots.
Clark the Cub has only just begun his tyrannical reign of terror. He’s going to be in the stands playing with fans for the delight of jumbotron viewers between innings. He’s going to be animated and placed in pre-game cartoons. He’s going to become an ubiquitous part of the team’s branding and marketing. He’s going to haunt your dreams (even more than this anatomically correct monstrosity from 1908). - Lots of organ music.
Ah, the familiar strains of Gary Pressy on the Wrigley organ — one of the definitive sounds of summer. It’s more than just “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch. It’s a pre-game medley and “Crocodile Rock” between innings. It’s the clever selection of a song that somehow corresponds to the current batter’s name when he steps up to the plate. Do you really believe that a player is more likely to get a hit if he’s able to choose his own entrance music? I’d like to see the research on that. Until then, this is baseball, not the WWF. Enjoy Gary’s selection, get in the batter’s box and do your work. - The Wind.
There’s a 10th man on the field for most games at Wrigley, and although he remains unseen, he has the power to decide if the game is going to be a pitcher’s duel or a home run derby. I’ve only just began pondering this, but how will all these additional video boards affect the way the wind blows in or out at Wrigley? That could drastically change one of the hallmarks of North Side baseball. - No video board player introductions.
I can already hear the electric guitar riffs and see Anthony Rizzo turning majestically toward the camera with a tough guy sneer on his face. Can’t we just have the public address announcer read the lineups? This isn’t a video game. - No tear-jerking montages of Cubs history.
I love nothing more than a good video montage of something I care about…seriously. But that’s not what I came to see at a baseball game. Save that for the ESPN intro on Opening Night. You can set your DVR. - Commercials that are heard and not seen.
Did you find it annoying when they started playing the Luna Carpet jingle between innings? Not as annoying as you’ll find it to watch an entire Luna Carpet commercial on the new video boards. Now instead of just hearing about the Official Insert-Product-Here of the Chicago Cubs, you can watch a 30-second ad for it. This is perfect though, as life is now all about being glued to a screen of some sort at all times. I guess it saves you having to pull out your phone between innings.
Aside from making more money through advertising, changes to the Wrigley experience seem to be about making it more like watching the game on TV than actually attending a live baseball game, and I don’t understand why. Going to Wrigley to watch nine innings of baseball has always been a welcome escape from all of that noise. Sure, the ads have been ramped up a bit in the past few years, but the experience in 2014 was still incredibly similar to the experience of someone watching Babe Ruth call his shot (or not) at a game in 1932. In a world that has been rolled over by steamrollers and remade in so many ways, that was a remarkable accomplishment.
I understand that we live at a time when the human attention span grows shorter with each passing hashtag, but I really don’t think the solution is to cater to that mindset, especially by changing a place that has long been a stronghold of the opposite sentiment. There are plenty of shiny new stadiums where I can attend a digital carnival that also happens to contain a baseball game. Wrigley was a glorious exception to that rule — and frankly, that throwback feeling is why people loved it so much. Its simplicity was its differentiating factor.
I’ve never felt that Wrigley should be frozen in time. By all means, update the players’ facilities and fix the crumbling concrete. Fix the bleachers if they need fixing. Heck, I’ll help tear out the men’s room troughs myself. But let the experience and sight lines and environment between the white lines remain the same.
The addition of more advertising and giant video screens is a slippery slope to a left field slide for Clark the Cub or whatever other new financial opportunities Cubs executives might try to wring out of the old ballpark. Once you allow a big change, it becomes a lot easier to allow a whole bunch of smaller changes. Pretty soon you realize that it’s a lot more cost effective if you don’t have to pay people to operate that scoreboard in center field.
But this is where we are now. It can’t be undone, so tradition-honoring Cubs fans like me have to grumble, live with it and move on. One could argue that we’ve been doing that for other reasons for more than a century, so I guess it’s at least a familiar feeling.
I’ve stated my case, so now it’s time for me to try to get back to the excitement. Opening Night is around the corner, and it looks like that new jumbotron could have a lot of very exhilarating highlights to showcase, even if there won’t be any space for the Bleacher Bums to sit and enjoy them yet.
Besides, much of the Wrigley Field charm still remains. The hand-operated scoreboard still stands (looking minuscule next to its flashier new sibling), the ivy will still grow on the walls in about a month and the raising of the W flag will still incite a chorus of “Go, Cubs, Go” (no matter what the Chicago Tribune thinks).
I don’t have to love it, but I guess I can get used to the renovated Wrigley, just as I can get used to other new developments, like a Cubs team with homegrown talent and winning odds in Vegas. I knew these were all possible changes for the Cubs, but I never expected to see all these changes in the same year. When you put it that way, I guess I can’t wait to see what else might surprise me about this season. Let’s get started!
