(Photo courtesy Flickr/Arianravan)
By David Stanczak
Perhaps the Righteous Brothers’ greatest song was “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” because the lyrics touch on an emotion many, if not all, people feel at some time in their lives: not just the loss of a love, but the internal realization of that loss, the recognition that what once was, is no longer.
Today, I want to sing that song, and address it to Wrigley Field. The impetus to do it came yesterday, when I heard that bad weather had delayed Wrigley Field renovations, the left field bleachers wouldn’t be completed until May and the right field bleachers even later. As a result, the Ricketts family was going to ask the City of Chicago to allow the renovation work to be done around the clock.
I still remember the first time my dad took me to Wrigley Field as a kid. The sight of all that lush green grass and ivy covered walls in the middle of a big city was literally breathtaking. It was just the way P. K. Wrigley, who owned the team wanted it: a pastoral scene right in the city, with no garish advertising (even for chewing gum) to spoil the ambience. Just green and baseball.
Wrigley was a bit of a romantic, quirky person with definite ideas about baseball which, as the owner, he was permitted to indulge. In addition to the pastoral setting, Wrigley believed that baseball was meant to be played during the day. This meant no night games in his ballpark. He also believed that fans should always be able to get tickets on the day of the game, so every game day 22,500 unreserved grand stand seats were up for sale. All of this came at a cost: lack of advertising revenue, and lack of attendance due to absence of night games and inability to make plans. But the Cubs were a hobby for P.K., so he didn’t mind. And the legend of the Lovable Losers was born.
Since Wrigley’s departure, all the things that made Wrigley Field Wrigley Field have vanished: the day games, the unreserved seats, the lack of advertising.
The Jumbotron makesthe transformation complete. All that is left is the corpse of a building, which now resembles Frankenstein’s monster, with all its stitches. The Cubs are now a completely commercial operation, which should be moved elsewhere and operated as such. The Wrigley Field I knew and lovedis gone, gone, gone.
David Stanczak, a Forum commentator since 1995, came to Bloomington in 1971. He served as the City of Bloomington’s first full-time legal counsel for over 18 years, before entering private practice. He is currently employed by the Snyder Companies and continues to reside in Bloomington with his family.
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