4. Wrigley Field
Once upon a time, most baseball games were attended by people who lived near the park, and so the stadiums were built in neighborhoods with nice mixes of residences and commercial properties. Since then stadiums have moved to the suburbs, or as anchors of all-commercial downtown areas. Wrigley Field, as the oldest National League park, still anchors a neighborhood, and for that reason alone would be highly rated. Being able to step out of the park and see dozens of places to eat and drink, or to walk a few blocks to your buddy's apartment, is pretty fantastic.
The park itself is nice. Obviously, it's missing many of the modern amenities like big fancy scoreboards (although that's supposedly changing in the coming remodel), and its seats are as small and cramped as the concourses. The team is terrible, and the food options are limited. On the other hand, the ivy and the old fashioned scoreboards are both beautiful, and even with habitual terribleness of the team the high population density and tourist factor usually fill the place with a reasonable crowd. In short, it's old and they'd never build it that way today, but it has a lot of character, in the good way. Renovations are definitely not a terrible idea, but hopefully they don't change the essential "Wrigleyness" of the place too much.
The first time I was at Wrigley was for the first game of my inital ballpark tour. Mike, my sister and I went on a chilly Friday afternoon in April of 2004 and watched the Cubs hold off the Mets behind 7 sterling innings from Hall of Famer Greg Maddux. He was relived by Kyle Farnsworth, who will have to buy a ticket to get into the Hall, but who at least in 2004 had an impressive enough physique that both my sister and the middle aged woman next to us who had somehow managed to sneak in a case of Old Style beer were ogling him and making appreciative comments. For the Mets, Mike Cameron had a solo homer, which let us watch the proud Wrigley tradition of throwing the ball park on to the field. I usually find that annoying, but Cubs fans do it best.
We listened to the organist, stood under the iconic marquee, met Cubs superfan Ronnie Woo Woo and stood next to the super creepy status of Harry Caray that my friend Wayne likes to call "Harry Caray torturing the souls of the damned."
Speaking of Wayne, for many years he and his wife have lived a mere three blocks from Wrigley. I've visited him many times, but somehow most of those visits either weren't during baseball season or were while the Cubs were on the road, so we never quite managed to go to a Cubs game together. We've walked our dogs around the stadium (Tulip has peed on Harry Caray's statue, sorry Harry) but otherwise limited ourselves to eating in Wrigleyville rather than attending the game.
That finally changed at the tail end of my 2013 Midwestern baseball tour. On August 12, Wayne & I and my friend Jenny & her husband Todd watched the Cubs stink up the joint against the Reds. Some small video screens had been added in the intervening decade, but that was the extent of the changes.
Now they're talking about adding huge scoreboards, which naturally leads to lawsuit threats from the rooftops across the street where enterprising businesses let people watch the game. I'm sure it'll get sorted out eventually because there's too much money at stake, but things move slow at Wrigley. They didn't even have lights until 1988, and as everyone knows, they are on year 107 of their rebuilding plan. If they ever do win it all, I hope the neighborhood survives!
Park Rankings
RankParkTeamFirst Visit# Visits
1Wrigley FieldChicago CubsApril 23, 20042
2 Jacobs FieldCleveland IndiansApril 17, 199963
3 Cinergy FieldCincinnati RedsAugust 8, 19984
4 The MetrodomeMinnesota TwinsJune 22, 19923
The park itself is nice. Obviously, it's missing many of the modern amenities like big fancy scoreboards (although that's supposedly changing in the coming remodel), and its seats are as small and cramped as the concourses. The team is terrible, and the food options are limited. On the other hand, the ivy and the old fashioned scoreboards are both beautiful, and even with habitual terribleness of the team the high population density and tourist factor usually fill the place with a reasonable crowd. In short, it's old and they'd never build it that way today, but it has a lot of character, in the good way. Renovations are definitely not a terrible idea, but hopefully they don't change the essential "Wrigleyness" of the place too much.
The first time I was at Wrigley was for the first game of my inital ballpark tour. Mike, my sister and I went on a chilly Friday afternoon in April of 2004 and watched the Cubs hold off the Mets behind 7 sterling innings from Hall of Famer Greg Maddux. He was relived by Kyle Farnsworth, who will have to buy a ticket to get into the Hall, but who at least in 2004 had an impressive enough physique that both my sister and the middle aged woman next to us who had somehow managed to sneak in a case of Old Style beer were ogling him and making appreciative comments. For the Mets, Mike Cameron had a solo homer, which let us watch the proud Wrigley tradition of throwing the ball park on to the field. I usually find that annoying, but Cubs fans do it best.
We listened to the organist, stood under the iconic marquee, met Cubs superfan Ronnie Woo Woo and stood next to the super creepy status of Harry Caray that my friend Wayne likes to call "Harry Caray torturing the souls of the damned."
Speaking of Wayne, for many years he and his wife have lived a mere three blocks from Wrigley. I've visited him many times, but somehow most of those visits either weren't during baseball season or were while the Cubs were on the road, so we never quite managed to go to a Cubs game together. We've walked our dogs around the stadium (Tulip has peed on Harry Caray's statue, sorry Harry) but otherwise limited ourselves to eating in Wrigleyville rather than attending the game.
That finally changed at the tail end of my 2013 Midwestern baseball tour. On August 12, Wayne & I and my friend Jenny & her husband Todd watched the Cubs stink up the joint against the Reds. Some small video screens had been added in the intervening decade, but that was the extent of the changes.
Now they're talking about adding huge scoreboards, which naturally leads to lawsuit threats from the rooftops across the street where enterprising businesses let people watch the game. I'm sure it'll get sorted out eventually because there's too much money at stake, but things move slow at Wrigley. They didn't even have lights until 1988, and as everyone knows, they are on year 107 of their rebuilding plan. If they ever do win it all, I hope the neighborhood survives!
Park Rankings
RankParkTeamFirst Visit# Visits
1Wrigley FieldChicago CubsApril 23, 20042
2 Jacobs FieldCleveland IndiansApril 17, 199963
3 Cinergy FieldCincinnati RedsAugust 8, 19984
4 The MetrodomeMinnesota TwinsJune 22, 19923