Wrigley Field’s Stairway to Heaven
It’s a long haul up to the press box in Wrigley Field, and Bus Saidt of New Jersey’s Trenton Times felt every step. “This is pretty tough on me,” he told the Sun-Times’s Joe Goddard during one of their climbs last April. And when Saidt paused to catch his breath, Goddard, who felt concerned about him, also stopped.
Saidt was a well-liked man, and friends who were angry that he died found themselves angry at the Chicago Cubs. Phil Pepe, a columnist for the New York Daily News and president of the Baseball Writers Association, wrote a “formal appeal” to Cubs president Don Grenesko. “I am not suggesting that this climb caused the heart attack,” Pepe told Grenesko, “but neither can I be certain that the climb was not a contributing factor. Already several of our members have informed me they have informed their papers they won’t cover games at Wrigley Field.”
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“Interestingly, the fans who occupy the 10,000 upper deck seats accept and love our ball park for what it is and they have not accused us of possibly contributing to anyone’s heart attack.”
No one with an ounce of respect for the visual integrity of Wrigley Field can mourn the unbuilt elevator shaft, which architects from Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaum said would have had to go up outside the ballpark’s walls. The Cubs are still toying with the idea of installing a lift inside, from ground level to the foot of the upper deck, cutting the hike in half. But Grenesko says such a shaft would slash through ramps and offices and therefore it’s “a long shot” to get built. (No longer a shot, we hope, than the Berlin Wall Grenesko says may go up to foil the roof-dwelling Lakeview Baseball Club.)
(Is it worth noting that Holtzman, Grenesko, and Phil Pepe all work for the same company? Sure it is.)
There’s Nothin’ Happenin’ Here
A few days before the army opened fire in Tiananmen Square, the New Republic went to press with a peculiar lament. Jeering President Bush for his tepid support of the massed demonstrators, senior editor Morton Kondracke wondered:
