We Missed the Train

I've been meaning to do blog posts about the games I attended in Chicago years ago.  We'll start with the Cubs since I remember that one better and Wrigley Field is far superior to US Cellular Field.

It was my first year teaching and I was on Easter vacation.  I went out to visit some friends at Notre Dame for the Blue-Gold Game and a game at Wrigley Field.  The game was Friday, April 17, 2009.  We took the train from South Bend to Chicago.  It was Jon, Dennis, Tim, Kevin, Joe, and me.  Before the game we went to some bar in Wrigleyville.  I don't remember which one it was and I tried googling "Wrigleyville bars" and I can't figure out which one it was.  We had some food and beer there.  I don't remember if we ate or drank anything at the game.  The weather was warm.  It was about 70 degrees, but we were sitting in the second to last row of the stadium and the wind made it feel pretty cold.

Outside the stadium

The six of us at the game

Anyway, it was an afternoon game, Cardinals vs. Cubs.  P.J. Walters against Carlos Zambrano.  Neither fared too well.  Walters lasted four and gave up three runs.  Zambrano somehow managed to pitch seven innings and give up seven runs.  The Cardinals led 7-5 going to the bottom of the seventh.  The Cubs scored one in the bottom of the seventh and then Alfonso Soriano hit a two-run home run off of Chris Perez in the bottom of the eighth to give the Cubs an 8-7 lead.  Carlos Marmol came in for the ninth and promptly walked and hit the first two batters.  But the Cubs held on after a strikeout and a double play.  I remember there was some stupid song they played when they won.  Soriano's home run was the only one hit by the Cubs.  Ryan Ludwick hit two home runs and some guy named Brian Barden also hit one for the Cardinals.  Appropriately enough, Aaron Heilman was the winning pitcher (he was 15-0 with a 1.74 ERA in his senior season at Notre Dame, 43-7 and 2.49 for his college career).

Our view for the game

After the game we went down by the field and hung out for a little bit.  I remember that there were lots of birds that were feasting on all the stuff left by fans.

Looking out toward center field

After we left Wrigley Field, we walked around Chicago for a bit.  I think we tried to go to Geno's East for dinner (which would later be featured on Man vs. Food), but the wait was too long (I would later get there with my brothers on a trip out to Notre Dame for a football game in 2010).  So I think we ended up getting sandwiches at a Potbelly.  Before we got our train, we wanted to stop and pick up some beer for the ride.  And that caused us to miss our train.  Dennis was not happy about it.  Looking back, it's a pretty good story.  While we waited for the next train, we took a walk down to Lake Michigan.  The next train didn't go all the way to South Bend so I think Jon got his friend Tony to pick us up wherever we ended up.

I had a whole Facebook album with pictures that had captions about how angry Dennis was.  The caption for this one was "Now Dennis appreciates the humor."

I really want to get back to Wrigley.  It was early in the season so the ivy hadn't grown in yet on the walls.  It would be cool to get to a game later in the season.  They're in the process of a multi-year renovation of Wrigley.  I would say I'd wait until that's done, but that's not going to be until 2019.  So maybe I'll get out there next summer.  We'll see.

The only stadium that you can really compare Wrigley Field to is Fenway Park.  I like Fenway better.  The Green Monster is a cool feature.  But the biggest difference is the atmosphere.  I've seen the Red Sox play at Fenway three times (1995, 2009, and 2010).  Now, the Red Sox have always been good when I've seen them.  I'm going up there in a couple of days and they're not good this year.  So we'll see what that's like.  But from my experience, the crowd at Fenway really cares about what's going on in the game.  They sell out pretty much every game and the crowd really wants the Red Sox to win.  But with the Cubs being so bad for most of the last century plus (what's amazing is that Wrigley Field hadn't even been built yet when the Cubs last won the World Series), it's more about just going to the ballpark for their fans.  The people at Wrigley Field aren't as invested in the Cubs winning.  It's hard to blame them.