It seems kind of quaint that Wrigley Field once didn’t have light towers

I’m old enough to remember the days when Wrigley Field didn’t have light towers and the Chicago Cubs tried to claim a sense of superiority out of the fact they didn’t play baseball at night in their home ballpark.

A very popular poster of the past

Which means I must really be getting old if it has now been 30 full years since the date the Cubs were able to get in a full ballgame under the lights.

NOTE THE SIGNIFICANCE of the phrasing of that last sentence. For many news organizations have published stories that focused on Wednesday being the 30^th anniversary of the first night game. When actually, it was Thursday.

Yes, the Cubs tried playing baseball under their then-newly-installed light fixtures on Aug. 8, 1988 (the marketing people liked the idea of the first night game ever being played on 8/8/88). I also remember all the hoo-hah that arose once it became apparent the people determined to keep lights out of Wrigley Field were going to lose.

It was regarded as a significant moment in city history – almost as though they think the Chicago city flag ought to get its fifth star to celebrate the lights being erected at Wrigley Field!

But it rained that night. They barely got in a full inning before heavy rain came down and (more than two hours later) the game had to be called. Since baseball rules say five innings must be played for a game to be considered official, the happenings of 8/8/88 officially didn’t mean a thing.

The light-less Wrigley Field, compared to … 

IT WAS THE following night that the Cubs got in a full game, and started the fight that continues to this day – the one about just now many night games can be played in any given season.

For the simple fact is that more people are capable of going to ballgames if they’re scheduled around the standard-issue work day. Even the Cubs realize that, and likely wish they could be like all the other ballclubs that typically have about 60 of their 81 home games played in the evening hours.

As one who back then, and still to this day, is more inclined to check out Chicago White Sox games (personally, I could care less about anything related to the National League), the whole idea of thinking anything special about day baseball was always strange.

… the brightly-lit environs of Comiskey Park

If anything, the idea of going to a game following a day of work seemed to make the event all the more a treat. Because all too often, being able to go to a weekday day game means you’re skipping work or school – or else you’re unemployed and one-time Cubs manager Lee Elia wasn’t exaggerating that long-ago day of his obscenity-laced rant about Cubs fans.

AND EVEN IF you’re not old-enough to remember pre-lights Wrigley, you’ve heard enough about the “85 percent of the world that works” compared to the rest of the people who have time to go to daytime Cubs games on a regular basis.

For what it’s worth, I wasn’t at that “first” Cubs night game. That particular year was the one during which I worked an overnight shift for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago.

Meaning I remember covering the overblown outcry over trying to play night baseball, but was actually asleep when they attempted a ballgame.

Elia had own thoughts about day game crowds

When I came in the following early night, it seemed almost humorous to learn the marketing efforts fell to naught, and that the Cubs had to come crawling into the 20^th Century some 53 years after the Cincinnati Red brought night baseball to the major leagues (May 24, 1935 – the night that then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a Western Union telegram message to the Reds, giving team President Larry MacPhail (whose grandson, Andy, became Cubs team president many years later) the go-ahead to turn on the lights.

SO FOR THE record, the first successful attempt at playing night baseball at Wrigley Field was 30 years ago Thursday.

The Cubs played the New York Mets and actually managed to win 6-4, with Cubs pitcher Frank DiPino getting credit for the victory and Hall of Fame pitcher Rich Gossage getting a “save.”

Somehow, I doubt there will be any similar remembrances next week – which technically would be the 79^th anniversary of the first night game played in Chicago overall. The White Sox beat the St. Louis Browns 5-2 on Aug. 14, 1939.

I suspect more people next year will point out the 40th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night (or maybe even the 100th anniversary since the 1919 World Series) than the 80th anniversary of night baseball in this city.

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What did Thursday's ‘Day w/o Immigrants’ accomplish?

I wasn’t the least bit shocked when I read through some of the commentary posted on Facebook in response to several stories that had been written about the “Day Without Immigrants” protests that took place Thursday.
 

I complied, inadvertently

The nativist nitwit segment of our society wanted to make sure we all knew they think the people who participated in protest are irrelevant to our society, and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials would be wise to arrest protesters so as to garner a large share of future deportees.

IF ANYTHING, WHAT appalled me the most was the poor grammar of most of these nattering nabobs of negativism (to steal from the spirit of one-time Vice President Spiro Agnew’s quote that was his one positive contribution to our society).

Their spelling stinks and their grammar was atrocious. This coming from the people who go about thinking they’re the “real” Americans.

I suspect many of the immigrant protesters for whom English is an acquired language probably speak and write it better!

For it would seem that these protesters, consisting both of immigrants to this country and people who want to make it clear that the nastiness emanating from the mind of our current president has nothing to do with the American Way of life!

PEOPLE WERE ENCOURAGED not to go to work or school or spend any kind of money. The protest was meant to be a one-day example of the economic impact the so-called foreigners (or whatever stupid slur one might choose to use) have on this country.

Spirit reminiscent of this 2004 film

There were noon hour protests in Chicago with people marching from Union Park on the Near West Side to the Federal Building plaza. Which actually seems like a common destination for protests in Chicago these days.

The women marched there. Now the immigrants – although they didn’t achieve the hundreds of thousands of participants that the ladies did when they chose a Saturday morning to participate.

It makes me think that many immigrant types had to work for a living. Otherwise the crowds could have been larger.

AND WHAT DOES it say that many of the xenophobic types had the time to take to Facebook (and probably Twitter too, I haven’t bothered to check) to write their rants all through the afternoon?

Was Elia really talking about nativists?

It reminds me of one-time Chicago Cubs manager Lee Elia’s famed obscenity-laced rant when he said “85 percent of the world are earning a living” while the other “15 percent” have the time to go to weekday afternoon Cubs games so they could harass the ballplayers.

Could it be that the “15 percent” who write these pathetic rants and the “46 percent” of people who voted for Donald Trump to be president are the same people?

It also amazed me the degree to some businesses acknowledged reality and closed for the day – and not just a few shops in the Little Village neighborhood. Chicago’s famed Berghoff Restaurant forced its usual noon-hour lunch crowd downtown to have to acknowledge the immigration issue.

Bayless joins in the cause

WHILE CELEBRITY CHEF Rick Bayless closed four of his Mexican-oriented restaurants, and said he’ll donate proceeds from the two restaurants he kept open to groups fighting to defend those immigrants being harassed.

Certainly a good move on his part – since he can now claim to have made an economic sacrifice and gain positive publicity by taking an action he had little choice but to do. Although I expect the Latino activist types who get all worked up that the pop star chef of Mexican cuisine is actually a white boy native of Oklahoma won’t want to give him any credit.

Forced downtown lunchgoers to address issue

There was even the Pete’s Fresh Mart chain of supermarkets that focuses its business on neighborhoods that often are ignored by Jewel. Their Southwest Side stores were closed. I wouldn’t know personally because I didn’t do any shopping Thursday.

Sure enough, I complied with the protest by not doing shopping or engaging in commerce. Athough I did keep a previously-scheduled doctor’s appointment – does that make me a “traitor” to la causa?

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What a wimpy response!

Perhaps it was the ghost of Lee Elia lingering in a corner of the manager’s office at Wrigley Field, but someone clamped their hand over the mouth of Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella.

The Elia diatribe (which White Sox fans love to quote, particularly the part about 85 percent of the world working for a living, and the rest being Cubs fans) has become the standard by which all baseball managers are judged when they lose their tempers.

PINIELLA HAD THE potential to top it when he was asked following a particularly pathetic Cubs loss to the Milwaukee Brewers whether he had considered replacing star hitter (but lame defensive player) Alfonso Soriano in left field.

“You’re damn right I thought about it,” Piniella snapped. “You think I’m stupid or something?”

But then, he silenced himself, although the look in his eyes gave the impression of someone who had many dozens more words to say.

Which is too bad, because if ever there was a baseball personage with the potential to top Elia’s obscenity-laced schpiel of 26 years ago (it repeatedly implied that in addition to being unemployed, Cubs fans are the types of people who perform certain sex acts often featured in pornographic films), it is Piniella.

PINIELLA THE BALLPLAYER was actually a favorite of mine when I was a kid who actually enjoyed the on-field antics of the 1970s-era New York Yankees (particularly the play of former White Sox players Rich Gossage and Bucky Dent). It’s hard to say how many baseball dugout water coolers got bashed beyond repair because Piniella took out his on-field frustration on someone else’s drink of water.

That same attitude was maintained during his managerial stints in New York, Cincinnati, Seattle and Tampa Bay. Although the one time I covered him as a reporter (the first round of the 2000 American League playoffs, when the White Sox got stomped by Piniella's Mariners), he was mellow and in good cheer. I guess winning does that to you.

I always wondered just how Piniella would cope with the notion of being affiliated with the Chicago Cubs. The organization’s losing ways were bound to make him crack, and are bound to put a blot on his baseball career – similar to how Dusty Baker may have won a division title in his first year as a Cubs manager, but finished his four-year stint in Chicago with a losing record.

Despite his attempt at manners on Thursday, I wonder when the memorable outburst will come. There’s no way “Sweet Lou” is going to be able to “stifle” himself forever.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Another Cubs loss nearly provoked a Lou Piniella outburst (http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=406953)