Cubs at Wrigley Field (1986)

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The season of American baseball has begun. You feel again "the sound of the crack of a bat." Last season for me was the best ever, because my beloved Cubs won the title after 108 years. In the first game of this year they have returned to old habits: they lost. Now they are 1-1, with160 games left.

I fell in love with the Cubs in 1986, when I was in Chicago (to be precise, in River Forest, IL) for a summer English course. Two years earlier they had gotten to the semifinals, but that year they were losers again. Even in my college they made jokes like "Yesterday the Cubs lost only 12-2" (it was true) "It 'a success, they usually lose 12- 0 ". I went to their stadium, Wrigley Field, one afternoon, because then games could only be at that time: there were no lights! It was a point of pride for them to maintain the tradition, even giving up many revenues. Before each game the two sides, for amd against the lights faced each other, with their T-shirts and banners. Finally, in 1989 they gave in and introduced the lights: for the opening they called  one of the few who still remembered the last championship won, in 1908, he had gone to the ballpark for the first time in 1906.

The stadium was always full, even if not sold out, even on weekday afternoons, with over 30,000 people. The first thing that surprised me, accustomed to Italians stadiums, was the fact that the most expensive places went always sold out first, because the price difference was far less than by us: the most expensive seats costed $ 10.50, the most economic, the standing ones, $ 4. The first time I found a standing place, sometimes I could also sit. Other typical features of Wrigley Field were and still are the ivy on the home run fence and the hand-controlled scoreboard (now integrated, but not replaced, by an electronic one).

I saw 4 games in total, if I remember well the Cubs' record was 1-3, but I am not sure. The only of which I remember the exact score is a 13-11 defeat to the Los Angeles Dodgers: the Cubs had scored 4 runs in the 8th inning, going ahead 11-9, but then played the 9th with a makeshift defense and they allowed 4 back, with the attendance calling for the pitcher to be shot (one said this, but other similar things). The attendance was always ready to get excited even for opponents' plays and, in case of disputed officials' calls, as worst they threw toilet paper into the field, to great scandal of the commentators. Another magic moment was the "seventh inning stretch" (the break between the two halves of the 7th inning) where they sang the  ritual, more than a century old, song "Take me Out to the Ball Game" (here the lastversion of old speaker Harry Caray in 1997, he died in February of the year after). At the end of the match, Caray ended with "Remember that, win or lose, I am a Cub fan, I am a Bud man, and I hope you are too. At the time I could not even drink beer, Budwieser or not: the drinnking age was 21 in Illinois.

I also watched  4 games of the other Chicago team , the White Sox, at Comiskey Park. I watched one with some classmates from countries where baseball is the national sport, Japan and Venezuela. It was against the Boston Red Sox, which played the great pitcher Roger Clemens. But there was not the same magic, "there's no place like Wrigley Field"