The City of Chicago gave itself a self declared holiday yesterday as the Chicago Cubs wound their way through downtown in a parade that is being described as the fifth largest gathering of people in history. It was quite a day………..
The population of metropolitan Chicago is estimated to be around 10 million people. They didn’t take tickets at the door, but they estimate that half of them were at the parade celebrating the Chicago Cubs as champions of the baseball world.
There were a half million at Woodstock and that was thought to be a lot. But when the MLB-TV cameras panned the mass of people assembled at Grant Park from atop, it was breathtaking. And when Cubs Manager Joe Maddon stepped up to the podium to tell the crowd “Welcome to Cubstock 2016! “This is an incredible moment for all of us. Never have I experienced anything like Wrigley Field on a nightly basis. … I want to congratulate you fans also. Thank you for being so patient.”…………that too was a magical moment in the city’s history.
And when the cast of the Chicago production of “Hamilton” led a sold-out audience in singing “Go Cubs Go” during the Thursday night curtain call. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner declared Friday as “World Champion Chicago Cubs Day” statewide. The city dyed the Chicago River a bright shade of blue to match the Cubs’ colors, repurposing a decades-long tradition of dyeing the river green on St. Patrick’s Day………….that too put an exclamation point on the festivities.
But in other parts of Chicago, the day was more normal for the five million people who did not attend the parade and subsequent party in Wrigleyville. Because at the same time in the morning that the buses were being loaded for the parade to begin, The Chicago Tribune was reporting:
"Two men were killed and nine others were wounded since Friday morning in city shootings, police said.A man in his early 20 was shot in the chest about 5 p.m. in the 4700 block of West Congress Parkway in the city’s West Garield Park neighborhood, said Officer Kevin Quaid, a Chicago police spokesman.The man shot was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital where he was pronounced dead, Quaid said.An earlier fatal attack happened about 1:45 p.m. in the 8900 block of South Parnell Avenue in the Gresham neighborhood, said Quaid."
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Regrettably, this is more typical of life in the Windy City today and the one that Frank Sinatra immortalized with the lyrics “On state street that great street I just want to say, They do things that they never do on Broadway say”.
As America’s National Pastime, baseball has always been there to serve as a outlet from the pressures of our daily lives. And hopefully that never changes and the sport continues to grow exponentially as witnessed by the historic television ratings for the World Series and the five million people who will be talking about yesterday forever and always opening the stories they tell with “I was there when Joe Maddon……”.
America can’t afford to lose the spirit we saw yesterday in Chicago. And the City of Chicago can’t afford to lose the spirit that baseball and the Chicago Cubs brings to its people. But at the same time……
10 million residents. Five million at the parade. Two gunned down and dead on the streets of Chicago.
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And if those two don’t count, then nobody counts.