Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are the two stadiums that I visited, but didn’t really document my experiences or take many pictures. Thus, the reviews for each of them are by memory and so they’re pretty short. I hope to visit both stadiums again soon so I can review them properly.
I visited Wrigley Field while on vacation in Chicago with my parents in 2007. At the time it was probably my most anticipated stadium visit; I hadn’t quite decided I wanted to see them all yet, but there were a few that I did want to see, and Wrigley was at the top of the list.
We went to a Friday afternoon game against the Diamondbacks and sat in the general admission center field bleachers. Looking back on it today, this was a mistake. For one, buying tickets for the center field bleachers only granted us admission to that area, so we weren’t able to walk around the rest of the park freely and instead were confined to that area. Secondly, the center field bleachers are notorious for attracting more Chicago socialites than Cubs fans, and it seemed like we were among the minority who were actually paying attention to the game.
Where a lot of the experience at Fenway Park – and later Yankee Stadium – felt retro and cool, at Wrigley it felt to me like a fanbase that was simply unwilling to change anything about the way they watched a baseball game. I still feel like the tradition of having a celebrity lead the crowd in “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” is tired and played, and I can’t imagine anyone objectively enjoying that “Go Cubs Go” song they play when the Cubs win.
I’m convinced I just went on a bad day. (Later that night I was sick after eating some deep dish pizza, so maybe I was already feeling the symptoms for the game that day.) I hope to get back to Wrigley soon, and this time I’ll buy tickets for actual seats.