Word: wrigley
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Trains are still the best conveyance for transporting a mood. Last week's destination was either the past or the future -- Chicago anyway, Wrigley Field. After two or three switchyards, a traveler gets turned around, and the sensation is of highballing one way and the other, backward and forward, in time...
...railroad tracks don't sing anymore. Sinatra barely sings anymore. The new sleeping compartments are capsules resembling John Glenn's old accommodations on exhibit in the Air and Space Museum (without the air and space). And all the ball clubs have long since flown away. Wrigley Field fell in line with the age last week, when, 53 years after the innovator (Cincinnati) and 40 years since the procrastinator (Detroit), the Cubs finally put in lights. That makes everyone...
...former tire dealer named Harry Grossman, 91, pushed the electric button. "Let there be light," he proclaimed in a biblical voice. The Cubs' holiest relics, Ernie Banks and Billy Williams, threw out first balls. Chicago's most sentimental pitcher, Rick Sutcliffe, took the mound. "It's like sunshine and Wrigley are saying goodbye to each other," he thought, though only eight night games are scheduled this season and just 18 a year for the calculable future. Looking hard at the Phillies' leadoff man, Phil Bradley, and straight into a light show of Instamatic flashes, Sutcliffe was struck by history...
...does no good to lament little deteriorations on every side. Constant comparisons with better old days are illusory and unreliable. It's enough to say we used to have Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and now we have Michael Douglas and Cher. If anything has been lessened at Wrigley Field, it is probably something quite small, certainly nothing to cry over, only a momentary feeling of letdown, like missing the train...
Much to our surprise and contrary to what we printed in the August 9th issue of The Crimson, George Will has publicly supported the installation of lights at Wrigley Field. David J. Barron, a questionable baseball fan himself but an ardent Will opponent, now longs for the days of hot dogs smothered in mustard and baseball under the sun. He now joins Julio Varela in opposing lights. After all, he got his facts straight...