In 2023, I finally visited Minnesota’s Target Field to again complete visits to all thirty existing MLB parks and bring my overall total to thirty-eight parks, including stadiums that were now parking lots. Accompanied by my college friend Lou (from Baltimore), my friend and former coworker Abbie and her husband Andy (from Iowa), we had an amazing time together. We learned all about the history of baseball in the area and of the Twins themselves, and ate fried cheese curds and walleye because Minnesota. It was so amazing, in fact, that we quickly planned a sequel trip. Like every movie sequel, it was more audacious than the original. Thus was born “Minneapolis 2: Chicago & Milwaukee.” We would all meet in Chicago to do a Cubs game, then head to Milwaukee for a Brewers game. Four people, three days, two cities and two ballgames and forty-thousand calories. Let’s do this.

In the course of researching my book Rally Caps, Rain Delays and Racing Sausages, I had made it to Chicago’s famous Wrigley Field a few times. Way back in 2005, I sat in the handicapped section behind home plate — on two folding chairs that an usher retrieved from a closet – to watch future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux pitch for the Cubs after years of extraordinary success pitching in Atlanta. He got hammered that day, but it mattered not a whit. I had the experience of seeing an all-time great pitch in an afternoon game at a ballpark that had been built 91 years earlier, at the only park where daytime games were still generally more revered than night games. I mean, eating bratwurst while sitting behind home plate on a gorgeous day in the Windy City? Hard to beat that.

Wrigley Field opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park, the home of the Chicago Whales of the Federal League. Named for Chicago’s thriving, um, whaling industry, the team won the league’s championship that year before the league folded. A series of business machinations brought the crosstown Cubs to the ballpark, which was later named Wrigley Field in honor of the team’s majority owner. As he also owned a namesake chewing gum company, it was also baseball’s first experience with a corporate name for a ballpark. It would not be the last, as a century later we have Comerica Field, Guaranteed Rate Stadium and Oracle Field. Based purely on their names, those parks could be located anywhere. Wrigley Field, though, is pure Chicago.
Located at Addison and Clark and just a few minutes’ walk from the El’s red line of the Chicago Transit Authority, Wrigley Field – like its American Leage cousin Fenway Park up in Boston – is smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It recalled the way it used to be before ballparks came to be built in and with massive parking lots as the twentieth century progressed and people moved further away from city centers. Wrigley Field long held the charm of the old days, with a manually operated scoreboard that is landmarked as a protected monument. It was the last MLB park to install lights for night games, which did not come until 1988. The park was old, it was charming, and it was the purest form of a baseball stadium: not just old, but old and authentic. People came from all over to see this baseball cathedral, and I was so lucky to be one of them.

I made it back to Wrigley Field in 2009 for a tour, where I saw the tiny visitors’ locker room and heard how Babe Ruth’s called home run there in the 1932 World Series never, *EVER* happened. We reveled in the legendary ivy on the brick walls and sat in the dugout where Ryne Sandberg, Ferguson Jenkins, Sammy Sosa, Billy Williams and so many others had been while losing ballgames over many decades. We also heard plenty about how the Cubs had not won the World Series since 1908. They had been to the World Series one time since - in 1945 when they lost- and two lonely banners denoted their championships in 1907 and 1908. In right field, there was a sign that read ”AC 0063100.” It read “After Championship – 0 years since the prior year’s Division Title, 63 years from their last pennant in 1945, and 100 years since they had last celebrated a World Series win.” I got to sit in the Cubs dugout during the 100th anniversary season of their most recent championship, which had come years before Wrigley Field had even been constructed. The losing and the lack of postseasons wins and postseason games were all part of the culture here on the North Side. In the years since my visit, a new owner had begun an intensive renovation of the park and its surrounding area. These renovations were complete now, but I hadn’t yet seen them. Oh, and the Cubs won the World Series in 2016 in seven games over the star-crossed Cleveland Indians (whose own most championship was and remains 1948).
So things were different now for the Cubbies. The team, aura, and the beloved stadium and Wrigleyville neighborhood had all undergone seismic changes, and looked forward to seeing them. At the end of May 2024, we all converged on Chicago to check it out for the first leg of our two-day, two-city doubleheader.

I flew out from New York and was lucky to have a middle seat with a woman next to me taking the armrest, as I tried not to channel my inner Larry David in a righteous fury. As a bonus, I got to witness a fight between a woman who really needed the restroom while the plane was taxiing, and the man in the aisle seat who refused to get up for her because you can’t stand up during the taxi process. She yelled at him, he yelled at her, and then a flight attendant yelled at everyone to stay seated. She pushed her way out, then returned from the bathroom and they resumed their kerfuffle – I did hear the phrase “I am a grown-ass woman”- as I continued to try not to make contact with my neighbor’s arm on the armrest that was technically mine. Or should have been.

I was the first of our group to arrive, the night before our scheduled game. I exited my plane at Gate 89B in O’Hare, closer to South Dakota than to Iowa. I walked the few miles to the Blue Line at Terminal 2 and took it into the Loop to hit Chicago for the first time in more than a decade. Dying for a Chicago Red Hot, which is a salad and a pickle in a poppy-seed bun and with a hot dog incidentally inside (with absolutely no ketchup!), I was dismayed to find them unavailable in my hotel’s neighborhood in that early-evening hour. After such a long absence from the city, I walked around to re-absorb the energy of Chicago. Finding none, I headed to Pizzeria Due, so named because it was not Pizzeria Uno – the first to serve Chicago’s deep-dish pizza – but instead it was second and, according to the menu, had been located diagonally across the street from that first deep-dish pioneer. It wasn’t Lewis & Clark, but the guy who came later in an air-conditioned Jeep who gave tours of their route. It would do.

Now, being a New Yorker, I know pizza. Being an American, I know pizza. This Chicago thing, this was not pizza. This tomato sauce casserole thing was delicious, but that didn’t make it a pizza. A horse is not a kangaroo, a flower is not an airplane, and these Chicago casseroles are not pizza. I don’t make the rules. The concoction was delicious though, and I happily devoured the entire thing before wobbling outside.

I did a spell around the Magnificent Mile, noting how much wider, cleaner and emptier it was than its 5th Avenue cousin in New York. It was probably because of the lack of streetcarts serving hot dogs. After I walked off approximately 1/5000th of my dinner casserole, I went back to the hotel and waited for Lou to arrive. We had a big day coming up at Wrigley Field and we were going to be ready.

Among other items in my bag, I had packed my Oakland A’s hat. Purchased in 2006 at an A’s game, I almost always wore it when I visited a park that wasn’t Yankee Stadium. No one hates the A’s, especially not in 2024 when their owner was ripping them out of Oakland in an attempt to move them to the much smaller market of Las Vegas.

At 8am the following morning, we went to the lobby with to meet Abbie and Andy for breakfast before heading to our pre-game Wrigley Field tour. A Midwesterner, Abbie was the one in full makeup and perfect hair and clothing at that ungodly hour, and thus was not hard to find. Andy already had a Cubs hat, I had my trusty A’s hat, and Lou had his traditional Orioles garb. We were ready.

Not as ready, it turned out, was the restaurant in our hotel. There was just one overwhelmed server, and our food took long enough that the trip to Wrigley for our 10am tour became fraught with tension as we pondered what to do if we missed the tour. We arrived at the ballpark at precisely 9:58am. The baseball gods had smiled upon us.

The first thing I noticed as I approached the ballpark was how disoriented I was. The longtime McDonald’s across the street was gone, replaced by a massive mixed-use building that had a McDonald’s in it, but the kind that blends in with its surroundings, as opposed to the 1970’s edition that had sat there previously, with its mansard roof and red paint as an urban lighthouse to orient weary travelers to Wrigleyville.

The iconic red Wrigley Field sign was intact, thankfully, but the entire area to the right of it was now a large family area, complete with a music stage, souvenir tables, cornholing and sprinklers. It was a terrific addition to what had previously pretty much been just a neighborhood teeming with life. None of these amenities would have been on the drawing board when the Chicago Whales management was constructing Weeghman Park back in the Woodrow Wilson era, and now more than a century later they were tremendous additions to the ballpark’s environment.

Because our tour was on the morning of a Cubs day game, we did not get to visit the dugout or clubhouse. We did get to step onto the field and learn about the team’s and park’s histories from various spots around the ballpark as the grounds crew prepped for the day’s game. Don’t tell the Cubs I told you this, but the $30 price of the tour was the same I had paid back in 2009. At that time, the price was more than double the Yankee Stadium tour price, and the Yankees have never exactly been known for accessible pricing. This tour couldn’t match the impact of my earlier one, given how the Cubs had not yet won their 2016 title and Wrigley Field had not yet been renovated, but man, it was pretty amazing to re-step onto the grounds of the Friendly Confines. The park was renovated, yes, and the Cubs were no longer legendary losers, but being able to visit this veritable cathedral in any circumstances is always special. It was interesting to see that the “AC0063100” sign from fifteen years earlier was long gone, its purpose obsolete. I also noticed the wall listing the Cubs’ World Championships: 1907, 1908, 2016. Not to take away from the first two, but that last one changed everything.
When the tour concluded, we walked around the grounds a bit and did a turn around the perimeter, and then it was time for food. It was Eating Time at Wrigley Field and we were capital-R Ready. My first stop was getting the Red Hot that I had been unable to lay hands on the night before. This “Grab and Go” thing they had was a revelation – I literally picked up a ready-to-eat hot dog and did self-checkout like at a Target or something. There were no people in front of me trying to decide between menu items or calling their friends to see what they wanted, just me getting a damn hot dog in a poppy seed bun and then filling it up with a pickle and relish and pepper and onions and I just drooled a little while typing this. It was amazing. It was Chicago. Unlike “Chicago Pizza,” “Chicago Red Hots” are a real thing.

Next, we helped Lou on a Treasure Hunt. If there’s one thing Lou likes, it’s unique baseball tchotchkes that you cannot get anywhere else. He saw on the Cubs website that a special drink was available that came with a bear. As far as unique local opportunities, getting a cub at a Cubs game was a good way to go. And not just a cub from a gift shop, but one that you had to purchase a special drink to obtain. Lou, with the rest of us following him like in a Scooby Doo cartoon, ventured to various concession stands to ask about this souvenir cub, putting together clues until we made it to a bar on the second level. Thus it was, as he put it, a trip to a bar to get a bear. He explained to the confused employees what artifact he was seeking, and they finally figured out that… it was a beer glass with an illustration of a bear cub on it, and not in any way a drink that came with a plush bear. Or any bear. “Flabbergasted” is not a word that gets a ton of usage, but it was appropriate here. Lou checked the website again and he was correct; one could read it and reasonably expect that the bar had a bear to go with its beer, but it only had beer from the bar, and Lou bared the disappointment that became his low bar to bear.

The previous year in Minneapolis, there was a promotion that showcased Pepsi-flavored ketchup. Since I have a wife from Atlanta (the home of Coca-Cola) and working taste buds, I do not ingest Pepsi. However, this was something so different that I wanted to try it. Lou felt the same but we were unable to locate this product anywhere, and only a few people were even aware of it as we asked around. Finally, a food services manager told us that a man named Chuck had determined that this product not be available that day. He thwarted us, and to this day he probably has a supply of the stuff in his trunk. So here we now were, a year later in Chicago, and we reasoned that Chuck now had a supply of Cubs bar bears in his trunk along with the Pepsi-flavored ketchup he was hogging. Chuck was now in Chicago, thwarting us meddling kids once again.

As we walked the ancient-but-renovated concourse, I noticed two men wearing Yankees jerseys with numbers 7 and 23. Incredible…here I was in Wrigley Field, seeing two men wearing Yankees jerseys when the Yankees were not even in town. And they were wearing jerseys for #7 Mickey Mantle, my dad’s favorite player as a kid, and #23 Don Mattingly, my own very favorite player ever. The baseball gods were really active buggers here in this park. I complimented the fans on their jerseys, they complimented me on my A’s hat, and we continued on with our lives.
Our merry little group made its way to a second-level terrace overlooking the family area outside the park, and noticed an interesting food item for sale: a bratwurst stuffed with hamburger. I had never heard of such a thing, much less attempted to digest one. Abbie remarked that she would love to see what one looked like, and that’s when I thought “hey, I will try this and I will do it for Abbie!” I made my way to the counter to purchase said item, and was told that….they were awaiting a delivery of more buns. At a ballpark where a game was about to start. Okay. We waited a bit and I checked back twice more, to no avail. Sorry to disappoint you, Abbie, but I was not going to be able to try it. But also, I would probably now make it through the game without my heart giving out.
As we approached the game’s starting time, Lou made his way to our seats while Andy, Abbie and I continued to wander around a bit. The PA announcer introduced the person who would throw out the first pitch: actor, Chicago native and Cubs fan Joe Mantegna! Known for being on the show Criminal Minds for like six hundred years, he’s also “Fat Tony” on The Simpsons and, of course, Joey Zasa on the immortal Godfather III. Here he was in the flesh, throwing a perfect pitch to start the game. This was the first time I would ever see a Godfather 3 actor in person. But wait! They then announced a second person to throw out the First Pitch, which technically made him the first person to throw out the Second Pitch. It was Jason Alexander of Seinfeld. Now, if there’s one thing Lou likes that is not a unique baseball tchotchke, it’s Seinfeld. And here was the actor who played his favorite Seinfeld character, literally right there in our presence, throwing out the First Second Pitch. We hoped that Lou, while making his way to our seats without us, was able to stop for a moment and catch a glimpse of George.
We made it to our seats to find out that not only had Lou missed Jason Alexander while en route to our seats, he had had no idea whatsoever that the former George Costanza had even been there. He thought we were joking, not just that there was a First Second Pitch, but also that Jason Alexander had tossed it for some reason. Mr. Alexander was a New Jersey native who lived in Los Angeles, and was famous for working on a show set in New York in which he worked for the owner of the Yankees. Not sure what the Cubs connection was in all of that, but Lou followed up striking out on the bear by striking out here as well. Chuck had done it again.

Finally, it was now game time. We settled into our fabulous seats along the third base line on this gorgeous afternoon, seeing baseball as it was intended: on a weekday afternoon in Wrigleyville with my skin slowly roasting to a crisp. The opposing team was the Cincinnati Reds, with their nascent superstar Elly de la Cruz in tow. A 6’5” shortstop who could run like the wind, we couldn’t wait to see him in person. The Reds might have been underachieving after lofty preseason projections, but this kid was a special one.
The Cubs took a 2-0 lead in the second on an Iap Happ home run, the Reds tied it two innings later and then the Cubs took a lead in the 5th. It was a tight, well-played game with some great fielding and solid pitching. At one point, we also blinked and when we opened our eyes, Elly de la Cruz had relocated from first base to third.

In the middle of the 6th inning, I decided to take another run at that Burger Stuffed Bratwurst thing. I went back to that terrace, happily discovered that buns had indeed arrived, and promptly ordered this monstrosity along with a local Daisy Cutter beer. This processed tube meat arrived in a hamburger bun, topped with cheese and giardiniera, and served in a grease broth. Oh boy. It was listed as having 310 calories, though surely that figure was missing at least one zero. I sure hoped Abbie would appreciate seeing this thing, because I wasn’t at all confident that I would survive to witness the 7th Inning stretch after eating this. I got this prize back to my seat and dug in. It was….something. It made me wonder if there were cardiologists in Chicago and did they just give up. It made me wonder how many years of my future life were evaporating with each bite. Mainly, it made me wonder if I would even be able to eat more sausage by the time we made it to Milwaukee, if I even made it to Milwaukee with a working heart. I finished it, washed it down with the Daisy Cutter beer, and pondered my life choices.

The 7th Inning Stretch arrived with Joe Mantegna leading the crown in Take Me Out to the Ballgame, with no mention of or participation by Jason Alexander. They did show him briefly, if only to remind poor Lou what he had missed the first time around. And I lived to see it.

On the field, the Cubs had surrendered the lead as the game headed into the 9th inning. A Seiya Suzuki double scored Pete Crow-Armstrong for a come-from-behind win, giving us all a positive note to go out on. Prior to 2016, that did not happen so often. The tour, the walking on the field, the great seats, the Red Hot, the Mythical Lou Bear, and the heartstopping sandwich I ate were now memories to be filed away with my earlier Wrigley Field experiences. We had spent six and a half hours in this historic place and it was sadly time to go, but we still had Milwaukee and more baseball the next day. Thankfully for my soaring cholesterol levels, it was not a city known for hearty pretzels, cheese curds or processed tube meat products.