Decades make for arbitrary divisions, but there’s no denying 1990 was the year Wrigley Field became an upscale, yuppie ballpark. Wrigley could be forgiven before for attracting college kids to its bleachers and suit-and-tie types to its box seats, but this year they took over. Combining with others of their ilk, known by their fondness for Simpsons T-shirts and neon-pink caps, the yups bought season tickets in order to attend the All-Star Game, then the not-quite-so-upscale moved in to buy the rest of the seats months in advance. This spawned an unpleasant little cottage industry of scalpers, who routinely sold pairs of box seats (face value, $20) for $50 and upward, and–on warm, sunny, weekend afternoons–got at least as much for a pair of bleacher seats. Attendance averaged more than 30,000 for most of the season, sending the Cubs toward the 2.5 million mark for the year.
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This party atmosphere could be delightful, of course, but there was always an uneven element about it, as the neighborhood was overrun by what Wrigleyville’s own Lynda Barry called an “inferno of studs.” Returning home late one evening after a night game, I saw a group of four adult boys literally and sincerely chasing a pair of young women. The women were, fortunately for them, wearing short skirts and flat shoes, enabling them to outrun the boys, who were prone to staggering, and when they got a safe distance away they turned and gave the boys the finger, sending them into hysterics. That was the point, for me, when Wrigley’s party atmosphere became almost unrecognizable. Throughout the year, what I yearned for was one of those bracing cold and sunny afternoons with 5,000 people in the park and the voices of the vendors echoing around the grandstand. It never came, and with the New York Mets in town this weekend for the Cubs’ final home games of the season, it isn’t likely to, not even for Monday’s originally unscheduled finale.
As for the team itself, on the other hand, it was delightfully retro. It had the inept-but-promising flavor of the classic Cubs of the middle and late 70s and early 80s. After they worked their way through a miserable mid-season stretch of thoughtless or just plain awful play, eliminating any realistic chance of competing with the Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates, the players relaxed and displayed some real talent. It was one of the more interesting north-side teams in recent memory. For one thing, there was the arrival of Joe Girardi, a classic-model catcher who harked back not to the 70s but the 40s. Short and stocky, with a face only a mother could love, Girardi looked like one of the first-generation immigrants who dominated baseball in simpler, earlier times. He was given the starting catcher’s job during spring training, with Damon Berryhill still on the mend from shoulder surgery, and while Girardi had always had excellent defensive credentials, he soon showed he could also hit. He has a short, crisp swing, all shoulders and a turn of the waist, and he threatened to hit .300 for most of the year, slipping to a respectable .279 toward the end.
Earlier this month, Sandberg was standing near the batting cage being interviewed by Jerome Holtzman, the dean of baseball writers and a member of the Hall of Fame himself. Bob Verdi had somehow found a bat in his hands, and he approached them pointing the bat from one to the other and saying, “Two Hall of Famers.” Not that Verdi’s acknowledgment made it so, but the whole image made such an immediate picture, laced as it was with instant and intentional nostalgia, that I’m sure we’ll remember it some years from now when it becomes true.
