Mayor Lori Lightfoot and local Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) have agreed to loosen restrictions on the number of Friday and Saturday night games at Wrigley Field during this pandemic-shortened, 60-game season to minimize the health risk to players.
The one-year exception to the night game ordinance is on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting of the City Council’s License Committee.
It would pave the way for the Cubs to play 11 weekend night games — six on Fridays and five on Saturdays. All but one of those weekend night games would start at 7:15 p.m.; the home opener on Friday, July 24, starts at 6:10 p.m.
The current night game ordinance limits Saturday night games to two-per-season prohibits any Friday night games.
The restrictions were tailor-made to prevent baseball crowds from overwhelming the already-congested neighborhood on weekends.
“You were trying to help the theaters and restaurants. When there’s a night activity at Wrigley, people don’t come into the neighborhood unless they’re engaging in Major League Baseball,” Tunney said Tuesday.
“Now, it’s all gonna be virtual. I don’t foresee fans in the park yet. If you look at the mayor’s directives — even if Crane [Kenney, Cubs president of business operations] wants 8,000 people inside — there’s no approval of that yet. When you’re seeing the potential relapse or even the concern right now [with cases spiking across the country], I just think from a public health perspective, that it’s gonna happen this year.”
Cubs spokesman Julian Green portrayed the one-year exemption as a safety measure, primarily aimed at protecting the health of visiting players.
“Given that we’re playing in the middle of a pandemic, the goal is to, if you’re starting a weekend series on Friday, have the visiting team come in on Fridays instead of Thursday nights, which limits the nights in a hotel,” Green said Tuesday.
“Whether it’s Pittsburgh or Milwaukee, if they come in Friday morning, playing a game Friday evening would be better than playing a game at 1:20 p.m. just getting off the plane. … For now, there’s no fans in the stadium. So you wouldn’t have the additional traffic. Nor would you have the additional activity with crowds in bars because there’s a limit in terms of capacity.”
In 2013, the Cubs got the go-ahead to play up to 46 night games per season and stage four concerts under a deal that pleased neither side.
The Cubs complained about four last-minute tweaks that failed to appease Lake View residents.
They required the Cubs to foot the bill for security and sanitation costs tied to more than 40 night games per season and forfeit a night game after any season that includes more than four “non-baseball events,” including concerts or college football games.
The team was equally unhappy with then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to cap Saturday night games at two per season and give the city “unprecedented” control over when rained-out games are rescheduled.
Over the years, Kenney has repeatedly called for the city to lift the cap on night games at Wrigley to allow the league average of 54 games under the lights. He has portrayed the Cubs as “one of the few teams that not only has to beat everyone in our division, we also have to beat the city that we play in to try and win games.”
Still, Green said the Cubs have no intention of turning the one-year waiver into permanent permission to hold weekend night games.
“We’re certainly not leveraging a pandemic to get more night games. That’s not what this is,” Green said.
“We’ve always wanted more night games. But this is an exception. … We know what it is. ... The goal here is to limit the exposure to our players.”
Tunney and the Cubs have been at odds over all things Wrigley — so much so that the billionaire Ricketts family that owns the Cubs tried to defeat him in the last election.
But Tunney said he was more than willing to assist the team during this extraordinary season of 60 games, empty ballparks and a thousand asterisks.
“It’s a one-year exception. We’re gonna deal with it,” Tunney said.
“We want to help. We’re here to help. It’s born out of necessity. They’re gonna have an abbreviated schedule and they want that flexibility.”
