Wrigley Field is a baseball stadium in Chicago, Illinois, United States that has served as the home ballpark of the Chicago Cubs since 1916. It was built in 1914 as Weeghman Park for the Chicago Federal League baseball team, the Chicago Whales. It was called Cubs Park between 1920 and 1926 before being renamed for then Cubs team owner and chewing gum magnate, William Wrigley Jr.. Between 1921 and 1970 it was also the home of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League. It hosted the second annual NHL Winter Classic on January 1, 2009.
Located in the residential neighborhood of Lakeview, Wrigley Field sits on an irregular block bounded by Clark (west) and Addison (south) Streets and Waveland (north) and Sheffield (east) Avenues. The area surrounding the ballpark contains bars, restaurants and other establishments and is typically referred to as Wrigleyville. The ballpark's mailing address is 1060 W. Addison Street.
Wrigley Field is nicknamed The Friendly Confines , a phrase popularized by "Mr. Cub", Hall of Famer Ernie Banks. Since 2006, its capacity has been 41,118, making Wrigley Field the fourth-smallest actively used ballpark in 2006. It is the oldest National League ballpark and the second oldest active major league ballpark (after Fenway Park on April 20, 1912), and the only remaining Federal League park.
History
Main article: History of Wrigley FieldThe park was built in six weeks in 1914 at a cost of about $250,000 ($5.3 million in 2008 dollars) by the Chicago lunchroom magnate "Lucky Charlie" Weeghman, who owned the Federal League Dolphins. (The club signed a fifty-five-year lease to use the park for app $18,000 per year.) It was designed by the architect Zachary Taylor Davis (who four years earlier had designed Comiskey Park for the Chicago White Sox), incorporating the new "fireproof" building codes recently enacted by the city. According to some sources, when it opened for the 1914 Federal League season, Weeghman Park had a seating capacity of 14,000. According to another source, the original seating capacity was 20,000.
In late 1915 the Federal League folded. The resourceful Weeghman formed a syndicate including the chewing gum manufacturer William Wrigley Jr. to buy the Chicago Cubs from Charles P. Taft for about $500,000. Weeghman immediately moved the Cubs from the dilapidated West Side Grounds to his two-year-old park. In 1918 Wrigley acquired the controlling interest in the club. In February 1926, he renamed the park "Wrigley Field."
In 1927 an upper deck was added, and in 1937, Bill Veeck, the son of the club president, planted ivy vines against the outfield walls.
Wrigley Field was a hold-out against night games, not installing lights until 1988 after baseball officials refused to allow the Cubs to play any post-season games without lights. Night games are still limited in number by agreement with the city council. Capacity is set at 44,250.
Features
Wrigley Field follows the jewel box design of ballparks that was popular in the early part of the 20th century.
Ivy-covered outfield walls
The ballpark is famous for its outfield walls which are covered by ivy. In the first weeks of the baseball season, the ivy has not leafed out, and all that is visible are the vines on which it grows. However, as the baseball season progresses further into spring, the ivy grows thick and green, disguising the hard brick surface of the outfield wall. Many a ball has been lost in the ivy when hit towards the outfield fences. An outfielder will signal that a ball is lost, by raising his hands. When this occurs, the umpires will call time and rule the play a ground-rule double. Also, there have been occasions of fielders being injured when slamming into the wall after a fly ball. The ivy that covers the outfield wall is Boston Ivy, which can endure the harsh Chicago winters better than its English cousin.
Rooftop seats
See also: Wrigley RoofOld-time ballparks were often surrounded by buildings that afforded a "freebie" look at the game for enterprising souls. In most venues, the clubs took steps to either extend the stands around, or to build spite fences to block the view. Perhaps the most notorious of these was the one at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, which caused a rift between the residents and the team that never healed. The Cubs themselves had built a high fence along the outfield at West Side Park, to hide the field from flats whose back porches were right next to the outer fence of the ballpark.
But at Wrigley it was different. The flat rooftops of the apartment buildings across Waveland and Sheffield, which pre-date the ballpark, were often populated with a reasonable number of fans having cookouts while enjoying the game for free. The Cubs tolerated it quietly, until the 1990s, when some owners of those apartments got carried away: they began building little bleacher sections, and charging people to watch the games. That was a whole different ball game, and the Cubs management became very vocal in expressing their displeasure, threatening legal action. In 2003 they went so far as to line the screens that top the outer walls with opaque strips, to block the best exterior sight lines. That was the closest thing to a spite fence that Wrigley had seen. Therefore the bleachers are sometimes called "The Spiteless Fence" as well as "The Ivy Wall".
This led to meetings and to a peaceful settlement among the various parties. The building owners agreed to share a portion of their proceeds with the Cubs, and the Cubs obtained permission from the city to expand the ballpark's own bleachers out over the sidewalks and do some additional construction on the open area of the property to the west, bordered by Clark and Waveland, and to close the remnant of Seminary Avenue that also existed on the property. The rooftop seats are now effectively part of the ballpark's seating area, although they are not included in the seating capacity figure.
Some of the rooftops have become legendary in their own right. The Lakeview Baseball Club, which sits across Sheffield Avenue (right-field) from the stadium displays a sign that reads, "Eamus Catuli!" (roughly Latin for "Let's Go Cubs!"— catuli translating to "whelps", the nearest Latin equivalent), flanked by a counter indicating the Cubs' long legacy of futility. The counter is labeled "AC," for "Anno Catuli," or "In the Year of the Cubs." The first two digits indicate the number of years since the Cubs' last division championship as of the end of the previous season (2008), the next two digits indicate the number of years since the Cubs' last trip to the World Series (1945), and the last three digits indicate the number of years since their last World Series win (1908).
Today, Wrigley rooftops have become a unique alternative venue to watch baseball games. Many rooftop venues feature bleachers, open bar, specialty food items, and a great game-day atmosphere, although the quality of the view can vary depending on the specific rooftop location.
Unusual wind patterns
In April and May the wind often comes off Lake Michigan (less than a mile to the east), which means a northeast wind "blowing in" to knock down potential home runs and turn them into outs. In the summer, however, or on any warm and breezy day, the wind often comes from the south and the southwest, which means the wind is "blowing out" and has the potential to turn normally harmless fly balls into home runs. A third variety is the cross-wind, which typically runs from the left field corner to the right field corner and causes all sorts of interesting havoc. Depending on the direction of the wind, Wrigley can either be one of the friendliest parks in the major leagues for pitchers or among the worst. This makes Wrigley one of the most unpredictable parks in the Major Leagues.
Many Cubs fans check their nearest flag before heading to the park on game days for an indication of what the game might be like; this is less of a factor for night games, however, because the wind does not blow as hard after the sun goes down.
With the wind blowing in , pitchers can dominate, and no-hitters have been tossed from time to time, though none recently; the last two occurred near the beginning and the end of the 1972 season, by Burt Hooton and Milt Pappas respectively. In the seventh inning of Ken Holtzman's first no-hitter, on August 19, 1969, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hammered one that looked like it was headed for Waveland, but the wind caught it just enough for left fielder Billy Williams to leap up and snare it in "the well".
With the wind blowing out , some true tape-measure home runs have been hit by well-muscled batters. Sammy Sosa and Dave "Kong" Kingman broke windows in the apartment buildings across Waveland Ave. several times. Glenallen Hill put one on a rooftop. Batters have occasionally slugged it into, or to the side of, the first row or two of the "upper deck" of the center field ble
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