Opening Day at Wrigley Field has become a sort of ritual that mimics Easter: a time of rebirth as tangible as spring itself (if not more tangible here in Chicago, where the season tends to lag behind the calendar). This year former third baseman, current radio announcer, and future Hall of Famer (it will be so) Ron Santo embodied that rebirth. Having survived the amputation of his lower right leg and a near-death experience over the winter, Santo threw out the ceremonial first pitch in a moment that stirred the emotions of anyone who calls him or herself a Cubs fan. There was Santo, looking remarkably hale and hearty, handing his new cane off to Billy Williams at the pitcher’s mound and then throwing the ball to catcher Randy Hundley–on the hop, to be sure, but triumphantly. It was a moment as rich in symbolism as any religious ritual. Santo, Williams, and Hundley are all deeply identified with the 1969 Cubs, the team that ushered many Cubs fans into their accepted life of suffering, yet are beloved as few Chicago athletes are. To celebrate them is to celebrate the idea that there are things more important than winning, that greatness is found in character displayed on the field, not in championships, and that Wrigley Field is a place where those priorities are kept in order and the materialistic concerns of the outside world are kept outside. Yet what served as the literal backdrop for this moving ceremony but the Tribune Company’s latest device to get its way through bullying and spite: a hideous gray “windscreen” hung on the chain-link back fence of the bleachers. It was still more evidence–as if more were necessary–that the Tribune has precious little appreciation for what the Cubs and Wrigley Field represent, and that it constantly needs to be reminded of its responsibilities as their owner.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It’s been only through fan sentiment and neighborhood pressure that Wrigley Field has matured into the grace it’s enjoyed for the past 15 years or so. Wrigley Field has an intimate visual relationship with its neighborhood, and Cubs fans wherever they are–in Iowa or on Kenmore, watching via satellite in Los Angeles or from a rooftop on Sheffield–treasure it. Wrigleyville is the neighborhood of baseball, and every fan in the upper deck and looking out on the apartment buildings and the high-rises and Lake Michigan beyond knows it. Yet the Tribune Company has denied this relationship at every turn and has had to have its own best interests forced upon it.
At first I was lulled into agreement that the Tribune’s plan to build up and out in the bleachers would alter the park relatively little. The drawings, of bleachers built up over columns to turn the sidewalk along Waveland and Sheffield into a shaded walkway, looked pleasant and more or less consistent with the original architecture–much as the lighting standards built in the 80s were designed with the proper sense of proportion and harmony. But my thinking has changed, and what changed it was that windscreen installed just before last Friday’s opening day. The Tribune’s motive was to block the views from the buildings across the street, because the owners of those buildings–whose rooftop views would be obstructed and apartment sight lines utterly blocked by the bleacher addition–were fighting the plan every step of the way. I have no sympathy for those owners, a gang of mercenary realty pirates that the Tribune Company rightly tried to tar and feather in the media. What changed my thinking was the look of that gray screen from the field and the lower grandstand. It was more a moldy shower curtain than a windscreen, and if it blocked the view of the field from the buildings it also blocked the view of the buildings from the field and the grandstand. The Cubs were punishing their fans inside Wrigley Field in order to punish the outsiders. The screen utterly altered the experience of the game. The park’s tight connection with the community was visually violated. And the thing is, it would be violated even if instead of a shower curtain there were several additional rows of well-designed bleachers.
If the windscreen furor distracted from the Cubs’ play the first week of the season, that wasn’t entirely a bad thing, for the doomsayers’ worst-case scenario was playing itself out against the fans’ high hopes. First the Cubs lost two of three in Cincinnati to the Reds. The offense sputtered, and only Kerry Wood was able to break through for a victory. Back home, the Cubs’ offense was shut down by the Pittsburgh Pirates in back-to-back games, leaving the Cubs 1-4 with a Sunday rain-out to start the week.
