WRIGLEY FIELD SUCKS ROCKS

And not just because the cubbies have never been to a World Series in my life. It's just typical chicogo.

The only time I've ever gone there, I found out Courtney really did know Todd Zeile, met Marty Prather the "Sign Man", and saw the Cardinals lose two on the last Saturday of the season in 1990 or so.

We left Mt. Vernon about 6 am in the Hicks' van to make the five hour drive or so to the windy shitty. We had been given 8 field boxes in row five or so behind the makeshift Cardinal pitching mound. To call it a bullpen would have been a stretch. Kinda like calling the Little League above ground dugouts. Typically freezing weather in late September. I know it must have been September because the cubbies rarely if ever play in October. Scott had to use napkins for socks since it was a nice warm day when we left Mt. Vernon. (Side bar: at the Rams game on October 9 I ran into an old student of mine as we were leaving the Dome. Scott Parks yells, "Hey, TQ. You still working at MTV?" Two walkers by snapped their heads around to see if I was someone important. Satisfied that I wasn't, and certainly unaware that he meant Mt. Vernon High, they continued their exit from the game.)
Arriving early for the games, we took in wrigleyville and all its amenities. We ran into the stupid ronnie woowoo decked out in cub uni. We met and chatted with Marty Prather who had brought his signs. We've stayed friends with him and his wife Karin through the years. The Cardinal team bus pulls up and we stand in a line as they walk between us to get into the field?stadium?park?outdated, antiquated,Vernois Gym excuse for a baseball park. Zeile reaches out and pats a ten-year-old Courtney on the head and says, "Hi Courtney." She said he knew her and he really did.
Once inside we head to the awefullest bathroom I've ever been in. The guys anyway. Dirty pee smelling trough. And the game hasn't started. And these are the box seat area. I guess the cheap seats had restrooms with dirt floors and holes in the ground.
We find our seats and leave excess baggage with the women while we head down to get autographs of the Cardinals just a few rows in front of our seat. Wrong. We are told to return to our seats by the rudest ushers I have ever seen anywhere. They wouldn't even allow us to walk 5 rows back with a better chance to catch batting practice foul balls. This prompted me to tell one of them that they should issue seat belts to the fans, too. During the second game, I took Courtney to the right field bleachers to sit for awile in the seats we had seen on tv. The usher asked where our seats were. I pointed and showed him our stubs. "Well then, that's where you need to sit." Hey, there might have been twenty people there. Rude.
We left for our hotel shortly after that and watched the rest on wgn. I remember Gilkey hit a home run, but some anonymous cubbie won it for them with a blast of his own. Neither made the playoffs that year, which was diappointing for the Cardinals and typical for the cubbies.
To be honest, I was expecting to like wrigley and its surroundings. Again to be honest, it was the worst place I've ever been to in a major or minor league stadium.