September 4, 2016 – our last day in Chicago, our 13th wedding anniversary, and our visit to Wrigley Field (23rd Baseball Park) to see the Cubs play the San Francisco Giants. (Of course we were hugely rooting for the Giants, and considered ourselves quite lucky to be in town for this occurrence!) The stadium was built in 1914 as Weeghman Park, but chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. acquired complete control of the Cubs by 1921, and by 1927 the park became known as Wrigley Field. Located on the north side of the city, in the Lakeview community (part of the Wrigleyville neighborhood), Wrigley Field is now just one of nine parks whose name isn’t reflective of corporate sponsorship.
Getting tickets
was a little tricky; with none to be had from the Cubs website, we had to
resort to third party sources. Seating capacity for Wrigley Field is 41,268 and
attendance that day was around 41,000. We ended up getting a couple of good
seats using StubHub, and although we paid more than normal, I guess you could
say we got our money’s worth – the game went 13 innings! It looked like the
Giants might win it, but at the bottom of the 9th, the Cubs tied it up at 2-2,
finally wrapping it up in the 13th inning with a final run. Call me
superstitious, but might there have been any connection between this day being
our 13th wedding anniversary, and the game going 13 innings? Nah, probably
not!
Here are
some fun facts about Wrigley Field:
- The famous ivy in the outfield was planted by former Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck in 1937
- No baseball has ever hit the Wrigley Field scoreboard (installed, like the ivy, in 1937)
- There’s a big gate in right field commonly called the “elephant’s gate,” because it was built to bring elephants into the field for the circus
- Wrigley was the first park that allowed fans to keep foul balls
- On June 13, 1956 a fan’s car, parked outside the ballpark on Waveland Avenue, was hit by by TWO home run balls. Cubs Eddie Miksis and Giants Willie Mays both hit the parked car—while the fan was inside watching the game.
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