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LINCICOME: Wrigley Field isn't some widget

By Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 29, 2008 at 12:45 a.m.
Updated February 29, 2008 at 11:04 a.m.

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The surest way to ruin breakfast, other than with gravy, is to find idiocy in the morning sports pages.

Oh, not Roger Clemens again. Nor the sudden and inexplicable brilliance of the swing-and-miss local NBA team. Not the anticipated draft gaffes of the Broncos.

No, this is deeper and more careless than those. This reaches into the sports soul, it slaps the happy face of faith, the comfort of illusion.

To borrow a borrowed phrase, just words. And those words are Wrigley Field.

They could be other words, like the Grand Canyon or the Liberty Bell or the Alamo, words that bring to mind more than they are, grandeur and freedom and courage, words that cannot be for sale.

And so it is for Wrigley Field, not just a sports venue, though it is, and not a name that has anything to do with commerce, though it did. Far past chewing gum, these words touch the imagination and craft scenes in minds that have never been to the northside of Chicago.

Who does not see the sun and the ivy and the bricks, the Depression-era scoreboard, the classic antique logo on the facade, as much a Chicago landmark as the Water Tower or the El, the city looming beyond the walls, collected around this treasured gem like a watchful sentinel, enduring the inconvenience and resisting renewal.

Wrigley Field means more than a ballpark name, in the way that Yankee Stadium does, if in the opposite way. Failure is a cherished friend and hope is the abiding adhesive of generations.

Nowhere else can a mere place name summon both joy and agony, expectation and dread, delight and despair. And all at the same time.

In no other place, certainly not Fenway Park any more, not even Coors Field - which, too, is a special designation, now of wonder more than freaky baseball and with a pennant 62 years newer than any at Wrigley - does a name bring instant empathy.

The name evokes a gentle warmth and a sense of connection, to another time, to a vanished innocence, to a simpler age.

And, so, you read the story as your oatmeal grows cold, disbelieving that cruel, raw greed can replace the human heart, though you know it can because it always has.

The new owner of the Chicago Cubs, one Sam Zell, shopping the team as he is, still suggests that money is being lost and the Wrigleys are getting a free ride and just what can be done to make the Cubs just another money-grubbing piece of property.

How, in short, is the best way to soil an heirloom?

Sell the name.

The Hope Diamond (not a bad name for Wrigley, come to think of it) would be worth no less if it were the Cialis Hope Diamond, or the Starbucks Rock, but the romance would be gone.

For Wrigley Field to become the Conoco/Phillps Playground or Verizon Stadium or Costco Park is to erase every tear and scorn every kiss spent on the Cubs.

The Cubs are special and Wrigley Field is special for all the reasons that the dismal Zell wants to cancel.

The Friendly Confines turned into the Commercial Corner.

Beyond the money, beyond the profit is the simple violation of affection, the detached indifference to loyalty and devotion, the disregard for Cub fans' perpetual forgiveness.

We went through something similar with Mile High Stadium, and if the old place were still there and merely updated, so would indignation be valid. But Invesco Field is its own place and Mile High will forever be a cherished memory.

Wrigley Field is as it always has been, with the exception of the addition of lights 20 years ago, and that was a reluctant concession even so.

It is the place where Tinkers threw the ball to Evers, who threw the ball to Chance, where Babe Ruth called his shot and Bill Veeck planted the vines and Sam Sianis brought his billy goat and Steve Bartman came to signify the ultimate in Cubs in conflict, disaster from love.

The Tribune Company, bought by Zell and as soulless in its own right, cared at least for the traditions of the Cubs, for the Wrigley name, for the affection for a baseball team by the community in which it played.

Baseball stadiums should not be named like every golf tournament, like every auto race, like soft drinks and cigarettes.

There should be a place where passion has a place above profit, where affection is rewarded with genuine concern, where tradition means more than revenue.

And there is. Wrigley Field. More than just words.

Comments

  • February 29, 2008

    1:33 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    gnm200 writes:

    Coat the mound with gravy and call it done. Zell doesn't care. It's his team, it's his field and if 8-million people don't like his decisions, tough stuff on a shingle. He wouldn't know an incentive from a Santo, and can't be bothered with such niggling things as tradition. The sight of "Progressive Park at Wrigley Field" is quite the paradox.

  • February 29, 2008

    8:24 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    jasmith34 writes:

    Although I switched from the Tribune to the Sun-Times after you left and Royko died and Siskel died, today's column is a reminder of the reasons I wish you were still writing about the Cubs and Sox instead of the Rockies, the Bears instead of the Broncos, etc. You're just a damn good writer, and I'm glad I can still get you on the internet.