Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field: A Dream-Fulfilling Journey
When I was 20 years old, I hopped on a motorcycle and rode from Seattle to Chicago to see the Pirates play the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
Growing up a diehard baseball fan in the 1980s, there were two ballparks I wanted to visit more than all the others—Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. Fenway had the Green Monster, which felt bigger than life even on the 20” TV set in our living room. I knew Fenway had been built in 1912, the same year the Titanic sunk. I knew Babe Ruth, primarily a pitcher back then, had played for three World Series-winning Red Sox teams when Fenway was in its infancy. I knew the Reds Sox had enjoyed five decades of greatness standing in left field in front of the Green Monster, from Ted Williams to Carl Yastrzemski to Jim Rice.
As much as I dreamed about seeing a game at Fenway Park, Wrigley Field was the Major League ballpark on the top of my list. I was a National League fan, back when that meant something. This was long before interleague play, which happened nearly every day in 2016. I had become a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates because of the Willie Stargell “We Are Fam-A-Lee” team that won the 1979 World Series. I lived in Florida at the time and we didn’t have a team. The closest team to where I lived was the Atlanta Braves and as much as they pushed the “America’s Team” label at me and had so many of their games on TBS, they were not my favorite team. I watched them because I loved baseball, but I didn’t root for them.
My family moved to a suburb of Seattle in the early 1980s, so I finally lived near a city with a Major League team. Of course, that team was the woeful Seattle Mariners, who were quite awful for much of the 1980s. Despite living in the Pacific Northwest, I remained loyal to my Pirates. They were my favorite team when I fell in love with baseball and always will be, even if Jerry Seinfeld makes a good point about sports fans basically rooting for laundry.
I watched many games at the Kingdome during the 80s. It was a big, concrete, utilitarian, multi-purpose stadium, made to accommodate baseball and football. Because it was in a dome it wasn’t one of the cookie-cutter stadiums built in the 60s and 70s, but the rationale was the same. Unfortunately for baseball fans, the Kingdome was designed as a football stadium that could be converted into a baseball stadium. The seating area was set back from the playing field and portions of the outfield were not visible from some of the 300 level seats in the outfield. There were upper level seats that were more than 600 feet from home plate. On the outside, the concrete rounded dome would have been perfect for naming rights, if only McDonald’s would have thought to paint it to look like a Big Mac.
The Kingdome was not on anyone’s list of top baseball parks in the 80s, but it was the only place I could see a Major League game, so I grew to appreciate it. Still, it was no Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. There was no ivy on the walls, no rooftop seats beyond the outfield bleachers, and no Harry Caray at the microphone, although Dave Niehaus wasn’t bad.
As the 80s turned into the 90s, a series of events occurred that would eventually lead me to Wrigley Field. It all started with a girl. We had gone to high school together. She was a grade below me. We started dating after she graduated from high school and we had a passionate relationship for about a year-and-a-half. I was going to college at the time; she was working as a waitress. The good times were amazing, but there were occasional bumps along the way. In the winter of 1990, one of those bumps became a roadblock and we broke up.
I was devastated. I listened to every 1980s breakup song I could find. I read sad poetry and wrote really sad poetry which, unfortunately and to my lifelong embarrassment, I mailed to her. I was a wreck and I wallowed in my self-misery for months. In June, I bought a motorcycle because I liked the idea of being a callous, brooding motorcycle rider, not caring about her anymore. That didn’t work either. The solution came to me in August. To get over this relationship, I would ride my motorcycle to Chicago to see a game at Wrigley Field. I could get away from it all and fulfill a lifelong dream at the same time.
In early September of 1991, I took off from a Seattle suburb heading to Chicago on a motorcycle. Well, technically it was a motorcycle, but it was more of a motorcycle-for-dummies. It was a Hondamatic 400. There was no clutch. It had two speeds, low and high. After buying it from a buddy in June for $300, I had only ridden it a few times and my longest trip on it had been about 5 miles. I also didn’t have a license to ride a motorcycle. I was at the age where I was old enough to know better but young enough to do it anyway, so off I went.