Day 6 - Chicago

Wednesday, July 8th. No driving today - whoohoo!

Today was Wrigley Field. The Cubs have played ball at Wrigley since 1914 and they haven't won a World Series for more than 100 years. Normal people would have given up on the team by this point, but not Chicagoans. It seems like everyone in this city loves the Cubs. A Wednesday afternoon game in the rain was completely packed. The fans are crazy. Half the stadium was completely drunk, the other half was half drunk.

Since every Cubs game for the entire season is sold out - we settled on getting tickets from Stubhub.com. $25 each for upper deck - not too bad for Wrigley.

Marshall's cousin Micah and his wife Anna joined us for the game. We all went to Bernie's, a local Wrigleyville bar, for a few beers before the game:


Wrigley was fantastic:



The game was under rain delay for about 40 minutes. Marshall passed the time eating sunflower seeds and drinking Old Style. Michelle watched.



What a great park! Here's Marshall in all his glory - Old Style, sunflower seeds and the Cubs:



Here's a picture of Kevin Gregg pitching his way to 2 unearned runs in the 9th. I think 38,000 crazy, drunk fans wanted to strangle him:


Somebody a few seats behind us said it wouldn't be a proper Wrigley Field experience if the Cubs didn't lose. At first, I thought this was funny. Well the Cubs lost, and we were exposed to 38,000 deflated fans - what a downer, the whole place was depressed. I suppose this is what Cubs fans have felt like for the past 100 years...

Marshall was happy to be down by the field:



Here's a picture of the Harry Caray statute, he was a famous Cubs announcer during the 80s. He used to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch - this a time honored Wrigley Field tradition:



Final recap: I'm putting Wrigley Field at #2 on my list. I still think Camden Yards is #1, but this park was great. The weather was crappy and the Cubs lost, but the field was fantastic. They better not rebuild this stadium! Coming to Wrigley made me even more annoyed that the Yankees tore down old Yankee Stadium. When a ballpark has this much history, I think it should be left alone. There aren't enough of these historic ballparks left.

Final Score: Braves 4 - Cubs 1
Memorable moments: Singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" with 38,000 belligerent fans. Casey Kotchman from the Braves hit a home run to right field and the guy that caught it threw it back onto the field. I love it when people do that.

After the game we met up with some Chicagoans, Zebro and Liz (the hosts of the Honda Pilot), and went to dinner. Michelle was incredibly thankful for the company and conversation, she was getting really tired of talking about baseball: