April 01--Another opening day, oh my. Two, in fact, this town being doubly blessed, the Cubs consumed with conviction and the White Sox free to be whatever they can.
Great expectations and wishful adequacy, the smiling faces of Chicago baseball.
The Cubs may be forgiven for over-commemorating because celebrations tend to be spare and rare, but to be 100 years old twice does seem a bit of a glut.
For anyone not keeping count, and triple figures have a way of causing the casual bystander to nod off, the Cubs will remind, as they did two years ago, the world that a century has passed and they are still around.
Like a kid with two sets of grandparents, Wrigley Field gets another birthday cake, this one marking the time the Cubs began playing baseball there.
In the next decade the Cubs can celebrate the actual naming of Wrigley Field, the change from Cubs Park, which changed from Weeghman Park, and still ahead, next year in fact, will be the anniversary of the ivy, planted 80 years before.
The Cubs have endless opportunities to kiss history on the mouth, and somewhere, maybe soon, maybe never, will be the moment of moments, a championship, the last one predating the field and living memory.
Until then, as it has been for generations, there is Wrigley, security blanket and picnic table, or maybe the other way around. A little cluttered at the moment but promised to be ready for opening night, a designation dripping with disrespect.
All of baseball ought to open in daylight if only to honor tradition, but at least this season it's opening on U.S. soil, rather than, as has been the recent habit, in outposts as far away as Australia and Tokyo. The Cubs, we recall, began this century in Japan against the Mets.
My favorite ballpark was old Comiskey and still is, if only as a screen saver on my laptop. The sun is bright and Bill Veeck's original exploding scoreboard with its pinwheels and cigarette ad (extra points if you can name the brand) awaits a rally. The classic arches frame the trees in Armour Square Park, the American flag atop the roof in left-center field is starched by the wind, pointing west and the bleachers are nearly empty.
This tableau is from the last season at old Comiskey and I can't recall when I took the picture, sometime in August or early September.
The Sox have two on and I believe that is rookie Robin Ventura at the plate. What happened next does not matter, only that the moment is frozen and forever, now a quarter of a century gone.
Opening days are the same. The score does not matter, only the occasion does, only the memory.
Not that a polished pile like U.S. Cellular Field looms for the Cubs, but change creeps on. The sun and the ivy and the bricks, the depression-era scoreboard, the classic antique logo on the facade, as much a Chicago landmark as the Water Tower or the "L," all of it is surrendering slowly. The city looms beyond the bleachers like a watchful sentinel, enduring inconvenience and tolerating renewal.
Giant video scoreboards were as inevitable as were the lights installed to eliminate free sunshine. Regrettably, all the modern meddling tends to cast friendly shadows as each intrusion settles in.
Wrigley Field means more than a ballpark name, in the way Yankee Stadium does, if in the opposite way. Failure is a cherished friend and hope is the abiding adhesive of generations.
Nowhere else can a mere place name summon both joy and agony, expectation and dread, delight and despair. And all at the same time.
In no other place does a name bring instant empathy. Wrigley Field conjures a gentle warmth and a sense of connection, to another time, to a vanished innocence, to a simpler age.
Opening day reaches for that, for the bond of new beginnings, seizing the sports soul. It touches the happy face of faith, rouses the comfort of illusion.
All of this may last an inning or for a whole summer, but this is where it starts. Again.
Bernie Lincicome is a special contributor to the Chicago Tribune.
