There I was in Chicago, having dragged my wife and five-year-old son there under the pretense of a beach vacation – our AirBnB was only a block from Lake Michigan – but of course the real reason we were there was to see my beloved Cubs. My son, Conley, was totally on board with this, having been indoctrinated into the Cubbie Cult (by me), but my wife, Caitlin, was merely OK with it: she thinks baseball is fine, certainly better than football, but she’s not what you’d call a diehard. She’s more like a diesoft, who claims only to like the game because she has a massive celebrity crush on shortstop Dansby Swanson. If lusting after another man gets her into baseball, then hey, I’m all for it.
We went to a lazy Sunday game which I inadvertently jinxed by pulling out our big dumb “W” flag prior to the first pitch. An usher informed me that this was a huge no-no, superstition-wise, and she was right: Swanson hurt himself by swinging too hard in the fourth inning, and the Cubs got obliterated by the Cardinals. We still had a great time absorbing the Wrigley Field ambience, but Dansby’s injury followed by a blowout loss didn’t sit right: we’d traveled all the way to the Land of Deep Dish and Chicago Dogs, and we wanted to wave our big dumb “W” flag and sing “Go Cubs Go,” as is tradition after every home win. So I made the fiscally dubious but potentially spiritually fulfilling impulse-purchase of three tickets to a Cubs/White Sox game, in the hopes that we’d witness some Wrigley Magic. I felt our chances were pretty good, considering the Cubs lead the league in walk-offs this year.
My gut dropped as I hit the pay now button on the SeatGeek app and the economic irresponsibility of my actions sank in. I was green with nausea for several hours afterward, second-guessing my decision as I glumly rode on the red line toward Wrigleyville: if I’d just spent an exorbitant amount of money to watch the Cubs lose again, I’d mentally berate myself for weeks for being so careless. I’d been influenced by what happened the previous night: I’d decided against buying tickets to that game, only to watch Pete Crow-Armstrong (PCA) hit a walk-off homer in the bottom of the tenth, furthering his case for National League MVP. I could’ve been there for that! I thought, and that epic finish was enough to convince me that we absolutely had to attend the next game. I asked my wife: is this insane? She responded: don’t worry, I’m noting this for the next time you give me crap for wanting to spend a lot of money on something, which was fair enough. I tried to justify my irrationality from every angle: I mean, it’s a zero-interest credit card. And when will we have another chance to see the Cubs and White Sox? To which my perpetually sane wife responded: next year, or the year after, or the year after that, which was also fair enough, considering the Shenandoah Valley airport now offers cheap direct flights to Chicago, making this trip relatively easy during virtually any future summer.
My gut dropped as I hit the pay now button on the SeatGeek app and the economic irresponsibility of my actions sank in. I was green with nausea for several hours afterward, second-guessing my decision as I glumly rode on the red line toward Wrigleyville: if I’d just spent an exorbitant amount of money to watch the Cubs lose again, I’d mentally berate myself for weeks for being so careless.
Maybe it was a bit crazy to buy those tickets with a credit card, especially in this economic environment, but what transpired that night served as vindication for my fiscal wrecklessness. The curious thing about it was that the actual action on the field, which was indeed great, was only part of the reason why this game will go down as the best sporting event I’ve ever attended. A big reason for its memorableness, oddly enough, was the hour-and-a-half rain delay (sponsored by Reynolds Wrap): not a single drop of rain had fallen when, in the middle of the eighth, the grounds crew rolled out the massive infield tarp. The 40,000 fans in attendance, which were roughly split 60/40 between Cubs and White Sox supporters, respectively, found a common enemy in the innocent polo-wearing dudes moving with zest to cover the field: the boos cascaded down upon them like they were Santa Claus in Philadelphia.
In retrospect, their timing was perfect, because within five minutes it was if God Himself (Herself? Itself?) turned on an enormous showerhead directly above the field, sending fans that weren’t protected by the overhang shuffling for cover. This is when the fun began in earnest, which is an odd thing to say, given the fact that rain delays are universally maligned by baseball fans for obvious reasons: nobody wants to be marooned in a gameless ballpark with nothing to do but eat $10 hot dogs and resist the urge to buy that super cool $55 hat, because that’s a lot of money for a hat, no matter how cool it is, even if you spent – cough, cough –10 times that much just to get into the game.
Whoever was in charge of the music during the delay was absolutely killing it, playing banger after banger (re: “Mr. Brightside,” “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” “Dancing Queen”) and turning the entire stadium into an enormous, rain-soaked dance party for nearly 90 minutes. It was a sea of madness and jubilation: scores of bros went full-on Tarps Off mode behind home plate, twirling their shirts overhead as the rain intensified and ABBA belted out you can dance, you can ji-hive, having the time of your liiiiife. I caught sight of at least two couples in their 20s with their tongues down each other’s throats, and one woman, perhaps in her 40s, standing behind the Cubs dugout in a lacey bra, arms outstretched and face turned upward like some quarter-nude female baseball Jesus. It was all so sloppily beautiful, in the ridiculous and profound ways that human beings can sometimes be beautiful in spite of themselves.
Another perk of the extended delay was that the four diesofts directly behind us decided to leave, which gave us more room in our section to move around. This allowed Conley to meet who he’d refer to for the rest of the night as his “boys:” a pair of cousins, probably in their mid-30s, one a Cubs fan, the other a White Sox fan, who were genuinely friendly and also pretty well-lit, putting them on roughly the same mental wavelength as a five-year-old. They drummed along to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” and indulged Conley when he started playfully proclaiming that he HATED THE WHITE SOX. Our son was extremely territorial over his new friends: when Caitlin and I tried to talk to them, he informed us that we weren’t allowed to interact with his “boys.” He’d spend the rest of the game sitting next to them, visibly proud to be hanging out with the “big kids,” as it were, and clapping along with the rest of the crowd when the grounds crew began to remove the Reynolds Wrap tarp from the field. A baseball crowd’s love for the grounds crew is a fickle love, indeed: jeering one minute, cheering the next; God help ‘em.
The game itself was incredible. It was, first and foremost, the Cubs and White Sox, a crosstown rivalry that’s widely known as one of the best in sports. Both teams came into the night in playoff contention, which was expected for the Cubs, but not so much for the White Sox, a franchise that two years earlier rose (or sank?) to notoriety for being the worst team in baseball history (41-121). The game started with PCA hitting yet another leadoff home run (his seventh this year) and Michael Busch following later in the inning with a solo shot of his own. The flags on the famous centerfield scoreboard were whipping straight out, and it seemed like the two teams might go tit-for-tat in a classic wind-aided Northside Slugfest.
This theory seemed to have legs, especially when the White Sox’ thick-thighed slugger Munetaka Murekami, known as the “Southside Samurai,” dented the video screen with a Ruthian blast that tied the game at two in the third. A Reddit post the next day described Murekami’s power perfectly: “that dude can hit the shit out of a baseball.” Surprisingly, though, this would be the last homer of the game, and when the White Sox took a 3-2 lead in the top of the fourth, it looked like that might be all they’d need to secure a win, and, in turn, send me back to the red line a defeated fool, lamenting my idiocy for dropping an unseemly amount of money to watch the Cubs lose for the second time in three days.
when the White Sox took a 3-2 lead in the top of the fourth, it looked like that might be all they’d need to secure a win, and, in turn, send me back to the red line a defeated fool, lamenting my idiocy for dropping an unseemly amount of money to watch the Cubs lose for the second time in three days.
But Alex Bregman, the Cubs’ World Series-tested and increasingly-popular third baseman, wouldn’t allow us to go home disappointed: in the bottom of the seventh, with two outs, two strikes, and two men on, he roped a game-tying single to left field. This is when I, and I’m assuming many Cubs fans in attendance, started to lose their voices: the dual homers in the first inning, mixed with Bregman’s game-tying hit and, eventually, the full-throated singing during the rain delay, did a vicious number on our vocal cords. And Bregman wasn’t done yet: in the bottom of the ninth, with the score still tied at three and the crowd somewhat thinned out from the rain delay, he delivered with two outs and a runner on second, whacking the first pitch to center field and causing everyone to rise out of their wet seats in anticipation of a game-deciding play at the plate.
Carson Kelly was rounding third and heading for home: a brown-eyed handsome man, indeed, but also a catcher, bless his heart, and not exactly fleet-of-foot. Thankfully, he didn’t need to be: the throw was a piddly four-bouncer that died in the soggy infield grass, and as Kelly lumbered across the plate, the rest of the Cubs sprinted out of the dugout towards Bregman, dousing him with water and Gatorade in a manic celebration of their 13th walk-off of the year. I shredded whatever remained of my vocal cords. To my left, Conley went buckwild with his boys, or at least the one that was a Cubs fan, and we busted out our big dumb “W” flag and sang the night away – oh, how we sang and sang.
I have video evidence of the exact moment Caitlin, that famous Cubs diesoft, became a legitimate diehard: it was somewhere in the middle of the first-chorus of “Go Cubs Go,” her cheeks flushed with excitement, and not an ounce of irony or self-consciousness in her voice as she sang along in Section 209 of Wrigley Field, long after the storm had passed, and well past midnight.
Having the privilege of watching the Cubs win on a walk-off at Wrigley was equivalent, I think, to a Holy Roller having a spiritual epiphany while throttling a copperhead or hollering gibberish in some backwoods Appalachian church: neither that Holy Roller nor I fully understood what was happening to us in the moment, but when the spirit invaded our bodies, all we could do was gyrate and shout and turn into a helpless vessel for the Rhapsodic Universal Force. Being there for Bregman’s walk-off was, in a totally serious and almost literal way, divinely orgasmic.
Having the privilege of watching the Cubs win on a walk-off at Wrigley was equivalent, I think, to a Holy Roller having a spiritual epiphany while throttling a copperhead or hollering gibberish in some backwoods Appalachian church
I was smart enough to record the game-winner on my phone, and when I watch the video now – which I’ve already done somewhere north of, I don’t know, 30 times – I hear myself bleating and baying, and think: who is that? I’ve never heard those noises come from such a deep place in my throat. It doesn’t even sound like me: I was so absorbed in the moment that I abandoned all pretense of stoicism and social decorum and totally gave myself over to pure childlike joy. I half-jokingly told a friend that it was the best night of my life, but of course this wasn’t a joke at all: I went to Wrigley seeking magic, and by God I’d found it. I’d reached my personal backwoods church, and had hollered my own version of euphoric gibberish.
There’s this cool thing you can do after a game at Wrigley where you stand near the fire station (Engine 78) and wait for the guys to leave in their street clothes, walk across Waveland Avenue, and stroll into the black-gated players’ parking lot. Adults and children are split behind two makeshift fenced-in areas: adults on the left, kids on the right. I gave Conley a permanent marker and a Cubs ball he bought at the team store, and told him to shout every time he saw a player come out. It was almost one in the morning, and we stood there for a solid 45 minutes as all the players Conley recognized from TV emerged one-by-one: Seiya Suzuki, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and, yes, Dansby Swanson (swoon). None of them signed, which was a mild disappointment, but the majority of them at least smiled and flashed a brief wave before disappearing behind the black gate. Caitlin said she was underwhelmed by Dansby’s appearance. Why? He didn’t check me out, she said.
None of them signed, which was a mild disappointment, but the majority of them at least smiled and flashed a brief wave before disappearing behind the black gate. Caitlin said she was underwhelmed by Dansby’s appearance. Why? He didn’t check me out, she said.
It was getting even later than it already was, so I asked Conley if he was ready to go. Noooo, he said, without hesitating. So I told him we’d stay until we saw one more player. We waited. An ambulance backed into the fire station, its red lights illuminating the deepening night. A woman behind us commented that she almost saw Ian Happ, that notorious non-smiler, flash a grin while walking to his car. Then Daniel Palencia, the Cubs injured closer and World Baseball Classic hero, came striding across Waveland. Come back, Daniel! shouted a gangly teenager standing next to me. I couldn’t help myself: we need you, Daniel! I yelled, and he gave a little flip of the hand and half-smile before being swallowed by the black gate. I took a deep breath and summoned a feeling of gratitude for simply being there, at Wrigley, my personal backwoods church, after such an emotional win. Then I yawned a big fat yawn. You ready to go, bud? I asked my son, who was down around my knees with the unsigned novelty ball still in hand. Nah, he said, without hesitating. One more player.
Conley fell asleep in Caitlin’s arms within two minutes of boarding the red line back to our AirBnB. At the other end of the car, a drunk dude was abrasively boasting about how the Cubs would inevitably finish a series sweep the following day (note: they did not), then he started bitching about how he was “sick of these dirty-ass trains” while spilling some kind of sticky liquid all over the seat next to him. I settled in for the rickety 20-minute ride back north, pulling up the video of Bregman’s walk-off on my phone and holding it to my ear to listen the goosebump-inducing eruption of the crowd, still not comprehending my throaty alien howls, yet totally content with the mini-fortune I’d spent on what had become –undeniably, undoubtedly – the best beach vacation I’ve ever taken.
Ourland 
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