The flags are flapping overhead, but softly, not with their usual starchy pop. The wind is wafting in. Pockets of clouds are forming on the horizon, but they remain in the distance; the sky is the pale blue of a baby’s eyes. From where we’re sitting in the bleachers, the Wrigley Field grandstand stretches like a theater backdrop, and the fans are screaming for the members of the Cincinnati Reds to throw them baseballs, for it’s batting practice.
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A short interruption: back in the bleachers, we hear the first strains of the day from the organ. Gary Pressy is playing “Go, Cubs, Go,” and the nostalgia of the tune and the inherently nostalgic tone of the organ are having, we’re pleased to note, a calming effect.
We’re outfitted today in a floppy Stetson, a flannel shirt torn above the left shoulder, shorts (white, even though it’s not yet Memorial Day), and sandals–not quite yuppie enough to ward off a certain bumlike air. Or at least that’s how we felt waiting outside the station, all those Cubs fans going by, averting their glances or, sometimes, looking us straight in the eye as if to derive some secret: how has someone who looks like a decent person come to this unfortunate end, begging for a bleacher ticket? With the arrival of each train the scalpers descended like carrion crows, standing in front of us as we lingered near the curb with our typewriter and bag. They hated us for free-lancing, for horning in on their business. Their expressions said, “What are you doing here? Why don’t you go wait on the corner with all the other yuppies and wait for us to score you a ticket?”
The game goes on like that, a scoreless tie, well pitched and well played on both sides. The Cubs’ Mike Bielecki gets Davis to ground to third base with the infield in and a man on third, one out, in the sixth.
