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| Spoiler alert. |
Of all the professional sports about which I do not care,
baseball is the one about which I care the least. On the other hand, I’ve gone
to more baseball games than I have for any other professional sport.
On my last one, I went to see the Cubs play the Padres in
Wrigley Field with my Dad. My Dad, to my surprise, actually likes baseball
(also to my surprise, he played in high school). We had excellent seats – ten
rows back from third base.
Despite my misgivings, I had an excellent time: can’t really
tell you what happened on the field with any detail, but the ambiance was
amazing. Somehow, in a relatively small and old park like Wrigley Field, the
million-dollar business of baseball feels like an picnic held by your local
library’s ladies auxiliary.
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| Inside of Wrigley. |
We were greeted at our seats by Pat, a retired teacher who
showed us to our seats and carried on an entertaining feud with the beer and
peanut vendors. The field was groomed by what looked to be volunteers from a
local high school. The singer of the National Anthem wasn’t any sort of celebrity
(unlike in Los Angeles or New York) but a talented local.
The other fans in our section were regulars, and knew Pat
and her fellow ushers, and were quite happy to carry conversations with their
neighbors and - despite looking like stockbrokers with a hairdresser on standby - delighted to do their part to sing "Take me out to the ballgame" in the seventh inning. All in all, it felt like being at a village fair, except we were all
there to watch millionaires scratch their crotches spit, and occasionally chase
after a ball.
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| Sneaky sneaky boy. |
Aside from the people watching, I entertained myself by
trying to take action shots during the brief seconds when there was anything
resembling action. I still don’t much like baseball, but apparently I quite
like going to baseball games.
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