In the Ballpark

It's fun to travel, and it's just as fun to watch the Cubs play from all over the ballpark. I thought a fun exercise might be to capture watching the game from all the different vantage points I find myself in in any given season.

Here's how I watched the game the last two times I've been to the ballpark this season, sans Opening Day. It was 30 degrees and I had my hands in gloves the entire time, even when shelling and eating peanuts.

Chicago Cubs vs. Cincinnati Reds, April 13, 2006. Section 223, Row 13, Seat 110. $11.00. Cubs 3 Reds 8.

Chicago Cubs vs. Florida Marlins, April 24, 2006. Section 215, Row 7, Seat 11. $22.00. Cubs 6, Marlins 3.

Spring Cleaning

Everyone needs to get rid of their junk and a couple of years ago, the Cubs threw out Sammy Sosa and this year, at yesterday's Wrigley Field Garage Sale, they were selling heaps of old Slummin' Sammy shirts and bobble-heads, among other knick-knacks.

By the time I got there, at 1pm or so, all the good stuff -- remnants from the bleachers construction available (benches, bricks) -- was gone. In addition to the Sosa cast-offs, there were shirts commemorating the NLCS against the Marlins from 2003, shirts won by vendors in past years, flags and pennants previously flown from the top of the centrefield scoreboard and rafters and grab bags. I left with a couple of shirts ($5 each) and a stack of cards commemorating Greg Maddux's 300th victory last year (free, but enthusiastically pressed into my hands), and didn't give the grab bags a second look -- I've already had enough uncalled-for surprises this year with the team, the most recent being Derrek Lee's fractured wrist bones.

But, the best part about the garage sale wasn't the opportunity to tote home mis-matched pieces of Wrigley's past, but an open tour of the new bleachers. Not one to enjoy sitting in the bleachers since my college days, it's been a while since I took in a view of the ballpark from the northeast corner. And you know you've got a nice ballpark when it looks good even when empty, from all corners, tarp on the infield dirt, no W sign blowing.

Without a game going on, the bleachers would actually be a great place to spend a Saturday afternoon, basking or trying to get over feeling extremely bummed about D-Lee on the D-L, seeing as how we've played comparatively well without Mark Prior and Kerry Wood and with Juan Pierre, Jacque Jones and Aramis Ramirez not yet playing like they should. Yesterday's loss to the Cardinals was the first consecutive loss this season, and maybe not a true test of how the team will weather this trauma since we traditionally don't do well in St. Louis, new or old Busch Stadium.

It was fun to get under the scoreboard and check out the new nook and crannies they put in this winter. Now that I've explored the new additions inside and out, I'll have to tip my cap and say that they've certainly preserved the spirit of the ballpark's tradition well despite the smaller patch of vegetation in straightaway centrefield and the crazy batter's eye terraced walk-through. Funny, it takes a day when there's no game and no one around to remember again what a beautiful park we have.

A River Runs Through It

It seems sometimes that every city's got a river. New York's got the Hudson, Salt Lake City's got the Great Salt Lake, Singapore's got the Kallang River, L.A.'s got the late Phoenix.

Here in Chicago, we have a river that founded the city, that the French wrestled away from the Indians, that snakes its way through the northwest side of the city like a wild L line (something like a cross between the Green and the Brown). If you were smart, you'd commute downtown on a kayak to avoid the Dan Ryan, but only if you liked perspiration in the summertime and icebergs in winter.

Emerging from a brain-numbing conference call from the Harbinger office, I was biking across the Montrose Avenue bridge when I happened to glance to my left and saw what I thought to be the prettiest sight of the day. On yet another sunshiney spring day, the Chicago River was still, calm and reflective, kinda hanging out with blue skies and white clouds and quite obviously, it did not have any conference calls scheduled at all. There were houses whose backyards led out to the river, and people tied up rowboats to their little piers.

In a way, it reminded me of the backwaters of Louisiana, where my mum and I once toured the bayous in a bateau. You could hang out there for days and no one would bother you, because they wouldn't want to and couldn't anyway -- how would they find you?

"Honk!" went one car to another on that crazy Montrose street, and I continued on my way home.

No Better Place

It was a sunny Saturday, but it wasn't a warm day -- it felt warm because there was so much sunshine and everyone was happy.

The day was so nice we spent 40 minutes of boxing class outside in the parking lot. We warmed up as cars came in and out behind us, scooted away from them, and continued to shadow box as people stared. We ran rounds around the block and then sparred for an audience of impervious people coming in and out of Starbucks across the street.

Then I headed over to Cubs Care Park, the YMCA ballfields at North and Clybourn, for a little volunteering, and after that, volunteered my manual services to Christensen, who continues to work on the new apartment.

Now, there are a million ways to spend such a lovely day. I bet there were people biking, playing catch, dawdling on the lakefront, shopping, drinking outside, whatever. All good times. But painting the kitchen and swigging root beer and cream soda, Johnny Cash on the boombox and sunshine tanning my arms through the skylight, I just couldn't think of a better thing to do. I whitewashed the kitchen nook and Christensen painted the rest of the kitchen "eggshell" yellow, two people with vertigo problems at times perched at the top of ladders cutting and trimming and touching up. I managed OK, but had my confidence shaken at times by yelps from the other ladder. (There was one stray yelp of pleasure at chocolate-covered pretzels from Trader Joe's.)

Things started to go downhill a little when we went from root to regular beer, but we were done painting by then. So we started peeling off wallpaper (circa 1970s?!) that had been painted over. By this time, Pat and Ronnie were on and the Cubs were losing to the Pirates 0-2. So we called it a day and got Mexican from Los Nopales with Grzeca and the other Christensen and I polished off my entire Bistec a la Mexicana clean with four tortillas, a glass of horchata and chips and salsa.

The Johnny Cash record we were listening to was "Unchained," one of his earlier collaborations with Rick Rubin. There's a song called "Country Boy" on it, and it goes something like this:

Well, you work all day while you're waitin' to play
In the sun and the sand with a face that's tan
But at the end of the day when your work is done
You ain't got nothin' but fun

Raging Bull

It's amazing what good spirits my family is in -- maybe it is our way of dealing with what's going on, but I'm extremely proud of them. We're laughing and we're reminiscing, and maybe next Chinese New Year, we'll have plenty to remember about this time.

Today, for the first time since Sunday, Kongkong has shown some kind of response despite remaining in low consciousness and slipping in and out of a coma. My cousins Hui Yee and Hui Ling held his hand and talked to him and he gripped their hands again and again and stroked their hands with a finger. My mom said that he looks great -- if he wasn't hooked up to pumps and machines, you wouldn't think there was anything wrong with him. That is to say, Kongkong is always a wireless kinda guy.

So, who knows. Last year he turned a touch-and-go massive heart attack into a year-long return to normalcy; what will he do with a massive stroke? A comeback would be considered miraculous, but there's always room for more than one Kirk Gibson moment in every lifetime, and he has always been prone to dramatics, doing everything on a grand scale. (It took four paramedics and my dad to get him into the ambulance after Friday's collapse.)

I wish Kongkong could be bench coach for the Cubs.

Gene Pool

This is the story of my Yeye (my dad's dad) and my Kongkong (my mum's dad). Both were husky, gregarious men who ate a lot, drank a lot, smoked a lot and couldn't do it all in one place. They were gourmands -- for the best braised pig's feet, say, they might just have to take a weekend trip up to Penang, Malaysia. When my mum was pregnant with her second child, Yeye said that if it was a boy, he would host a huge banquet for anyone and everyone he knew. On the day my brother turned a month old, 200 people were invited to a 10-course Koh feast at our favourite family restaurant. When I was home for Chinese New Year, we went to brunch with Kongkong and under his direction, our table was soon filled with so much food we hardly had any room to eat. We might as well had invited 200 people to brunch, too.

Both my grandfathers are fighters, and I don't mean boxers, although if you came up against these tall, hulking men, you'd do best to run away. I know I did whenever I did something bad, which was about every hour on the hour as a little kid, but I always came back for the bear hugs. When Yeye was diagnosed with the double whammy of lung and colon cancer, the doctors said he had six months to live. He lived five years, four of which he spent traipsing the country (well, city) by bus, visiting all his favourite haunts and making sure he saw all his old friends before he was ready to take a break. Kongkong suffered a massive heart attack about a year ago in Sydney (of course he was abroad), while visiting Uncle Robert. The doctors said three months, but he bounced back quickly and in the last few months, has resumed his food travels.

On Friday, after a day of suffering through the freezing temperature and piercing northerly wind at the ballpark, after several rounds of the Goose Island Pub Pack and a large pizza and peanut M&Ms and chips and salsa and after everyone went home, my mum called and said that Kongkong had a mild stroke and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. He was paralysed on the left side and his speech slurred, but spent all day gripping with his right hand and raising his fist in a thumbs up.

This morning, my mum called again and said Kongkong had another heart attack and had to be resuscitated after his breathing stopped. Now his brain was haemorrhaging and it may not be long before he joins his buddy, my Yeye, on a whole new trip. It's not an easy time for the family, but in the spirit of Kongkong, we've got our warpaint on as well. We know that he'll be going out at the top of the game -- he only just got back from Malacca, Malaysia, last week. We know that he's lived a long life filled with adventures we'd never know of, because we were never a part of it, from his stint as a purser on an ocean liner, his travels to China as an antique dealer and gallivants all over Southeast Asia. But what we know is that we always had a part of him, whether we knew it or not. I know it from all the times he got back in town when I was a kid, and insisted my parents brought me over to visit with him no matter what time of the night it was. I know it from him getting up at 5am the day before I left for Chicago after Chinese New Year to make me his famous chilli sauce from scratch. And I know it from the long conversations we've had about my new gig and he gave me all the support I needed.

I hope that I will be able to see him once more. I was not home when my Yeye died, and I don't want to make the same mistake again.

Ballpark Banter

Sitting right in the leftfield upper decks during Friday's home opener (oh, the furies of an icy cold wind!), we were talking about the new bleachers and saw that in the rightfield corner, there's now a fence-like gate leading directly out to Sheffield that hadn't been there before. Yesterday, just before game time, I took a walk around the neighbourhood and checked out the renovated ballpark, particularly on its northeast side.

I found the mesh-wire gate we had seen, and as you'll also read from the article in the Tribune yesterday (below), you can get a pretty cool view of the game at street-level. If a ball was ever hit into the rightfield corner, you'll probably see Jacque Jones rushing towards you chasing it down, like you were wearing 3-D glasses. There were about 12 people peering in, causing no trouble at all, letting you in front of them for a better look with a happy chuckle. Here's Big Z firing away.

It's not a bad upgrade, if you had to mess around with something, but the ballpark seems like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde these days -- old school Weeghman at Clark and Addison, manufactured retro Camden Yards (sorry, Uncle Bob) on Waveland and Sheffield. And, what the hell are Bud Light Bleachers anyway?! If I had money, it would be the Bass Bleachers or the Boddington's Bleachers. View the audacity for yourself.

And finally, you'll never bite a burger better than a Bubba! Bubba Burger is the official hamburger of the Chicago Cubs. Speaking of ballpark food, I talked to a guy unloading boxes of Connie's Pizza for the concessions stands. He told me that the pizza was all cold already. Together with re-signing D-Lee in the winter, another upgrade we should have made a priority was in the pizza department.

Enjoy the season!

Hole truth: Fans like changes
By and large, fans give thumbs up to renovations at Wrigley Field opener

By David Haugh
Tribune staff reporter
Published April 8, 2006

From his view behind the "knothole" cut into the brick wall in deep, deep right field, Bruce Tranen saw the ball explode off Derrek Lee's bat.

Tranen did not need to see where the ball landed to know immediately where it was headed in the first inning of Friday's 5-1 Cubs victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in front of a crowd of 40,869.

"That's gone!" Tranen shouted to the dozen or so fans peeking into Wrigley Field from the right-field opening behind him.

For confirmation, Tranen asked a paying customer on the other side of the wall who actually could see through a fence where Lee's drive finally had fallen in the left-field bleachers.

"You can't see everything out here," said Tranen, a Wrigleyville resident. "But you can see more than I expected. This is really kind of cool."

That represented the feelings of many curious Cubs fans who either bought a pricier-than-ever ticket in the new bleachers for Opening Day or ventured over to Sheffield and Waveland Avenues to judge the $13.5 million renovation for themselves.

Cubs officials had said passersby who had not purchased tickets would not be permitted to watch the game from Sheffield. But those willing to look through green mesh and a fence enjoyed a decent vantage point.

The only action out of their view from that angle was anything hit deep to the outfield gaps.

It was the best "seat" out of the house.

"We should put up a sign that says, `Freeloaders stand here,"' one smart aleck shouted from the back of the pack.

Cubs President Andy MacPhail acknowledged the group with a wave as he passed through the new walkway behind the right-field wall inside the park. Security guards were not sure whether to stop fans who lingered at the fence and obstructed the view of those outside the park or leave them alone.

"I can't complain," Tranen said as the game continued. "I didn't buy a ticket."

The mood was less joyful beyond left field, where Wrigley Field ball hawks bemoaned their new reality. Adding six rows and moving the exterior walls 8 feet out as part of the 1,790-seat bleacher expansion meant fewer home runs flying onto Waveland.

Moe Mullins, who said he has hawked balls outside Wrigley since 1958, counted 1,000 homers flying out of the ballpark in 2005 and estimated a drop of as much as half this season.

"Now we have a new problem out here because we can't see the ball because of how far the walls come out," said Mullins, wearing his black glove before Friday's game. "Before we could pick up the ball [sooner], so hopefully there will be someone who's a spotter sitting in the bleachers.

"Entering those bleachers Friday immediately reminded fans they were walking into an updated section and a new era. The impossible-to-miss "Bud Light Bleachers" sign above a modernized entry, promoting the sponsorship that helped finance the project, made some traditionalists long for the past.

"The `Bud Light' is bigger than the word `Bleachers,' and I hate it," said Sheila Keating, a North Sider who said she has been sitting in the end seat of the 10th row in the right-field bleachers for 20 years.

Keating and her sister Sharon moved up to the new top row to give the new look a fair shot. It pained them to look down at the red rope marking off the $60 bleacher box seats in the right-field corner, many of which stayed empty.

"I don't like the [exclusivity] of the box seats and the [Batter's Eye Lounge]," Keating said. "It's nice to see a few of the same people year after year for the past 20 years, but it's not nice to see people with ties and people wanting to get on camera and people just coming here to drink beer. It has gone from the Bleacher Bums to the Bleacher Yuppies."

Most of the other gripes leveled by fans' offering their first impressions of the new bleacher area involved more constructive criticism.

Dave Carter of Bensenville appreciated how much room he had to roam in his wheelchair in the new section in center field for disabled fans but suggested chairs for people who accompany handicapped and wheelchair-bound fans.

"But it's really a nice view and a lot better than it was," Carter said.

Over in the new patio area behind the left-field bleachers, Jeff Douglas' only complaint was that the televisions added so fans buying food and drinks could watch the game still were covered in plastic. Douglas also pointed out he still had to go down one level to go to the washroom.

"The changes are good, but I'm not sure they're great," said Douglas, who brought his son and a friend to the game from Rockford.

Several fans were overheard wondering if there had been any changes at all.

"I've heard people say they think it's a little better now with the walkway, more room and you can go into main part of the ballpark now," said Don Mazza, who was starting his third year as an usher in left field. "But if you weren't out here before and just looked at the bleachers, you wouldn't be able to tell."