Long, long ago, more years than I care to count anymore, I was one of the youngest members of the original Chicago Cubs Bleacher Bums. For three years, I went to nearly every home game during summer vacation, and caught as many games as I could in April and May, August and September. The older regulars out there, once they got to know my friends and I, they’d hold our front row seats for us, right above the distance markers in the left field power alleys. It was a fine, fun way to spend a summer. Even my mom loved it. She knew exactly where I was, she knew the older Bums kept an eye out for us kidlings, she knew I wasn’t getting into any trouble, and she knew all the friends I went to the park with. All was well. What could be better than baseball in the bleachers of a summer’s afternoon?
Back then, both bleachers and grandstand tickets were sold on a day-of-game basis. There was even a “Ladies’ Day” promtion where women and girls over the age of 14 could get a grandstand seat for free. You got down to the park early and you stood in line, waiting for the gates to open. When they did, you’d shell out the cash for your ticket right there and walk on in past the ushers and ticket-tearers at the turnstile. Only the season ticket holders and the rich people who sat down in the box seats bought their tickets in advance. The rest of us hung out daily, queued up and waiting, taking turns making coke and coffee runs to the McD’s a block away from the gates until the ticket box took the shades off the windows. Once in, we sat through batting practice, watching the players run wind-sprints in the outfield. We cheered on our favorites, razzed the opposition players, hoped for a home run ball to come our way. Occaisionally, someone would autograph a baseball for you. My prize ball from those years had the signatures of several Hall of Famers; Billy Williams, Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins and several quality players who never got the Cooperstown Call, like Ron Santo and Ken Holtzman. My nose was perpetually sunburned during those years in the sun out in left field. (I’m durned lucky I’m not genetically prone to skin cancer.) I knew all the players by number and could quote you stats and scouting reports and kept a scorecard that a newspaper sports reporter would have been proud of. Baseball’s ins and outs, strategies and styles of play, standings and statistics were a source of endless interest and converation with the other Bums. The bleachers were “an experience” but they were affordable fun as well, and it was all about the game, not about being trendy and being seen at the park.
Back then, a seat on the bench out there in the outfield cost all of $1.00. Bus fare usually cost me $0.70 round trip. We’d pack a peanut butter bag lunch, and shell out another dollar or so for a soft drink during the game. You see what I mean? There was no advance planning needed, and even a kid wouldn’t be breaking the budget to take in a game or several. It was a great way to be growing up.
I went through another phase at Wrigley, in the summer after my first year in law school. I was back in Chicago after 12 years away, in college and working, and it was the year Andre Dawson showed up ownership’s hiring and contracting collusion, and tore up the rest of the league playing for baseball’s minimum wage. He was the The Man that year, and the MVP for the National League, even though the Cubs finished dead last. I spent quite a few games at the park, this time in right field cheering him on as he made his way to 49 home runs and about 130 RBIs while the rest of the team pretty well stunk the place up. Even then in 1987, when most tickets to Wrigley were available as advance sales, you could still get day-of-game tickets for the bleacher, and a seat on the benches over the outfield was still affordable fun at $4.00 a ticket. And in a pinch, I had a good rapport with a reasonably honest ticket scalper who could get me tickets even for sold-out-in-advance games at a not-too-unreasonable markup. I took a friend to the 2nd Billy Williams Day with tickets bought from my contact, tickets that were otherwise wholly unavailable. Those were steep, but still not unreasonable. And the bleachers were still the cheap seats, as they should be. Let the suits have their skyboxes and field box seats; we students on a tight budget and blue collar types were fine with the backless benches and the view from behind.
Turn your back on the past and come up to 2009.
I just looked at the prices for bleacher seats. If you can get them -IF – the tickets will set you back on average a cool $50.00 each.
That’s right. It’s not a typo. $50.00. They can go as high as $60.00 on premium days to as low as $25.00 on five days either early or late in the season when you’re likely to freeze you buttocks off, but for the majority of home games you’ll be paying either $40.00 or $50.00. This for a seat on a bare, backless wooden bench with splinters, squeezed in between a bunch of hairy, raucous strangers doing their best to get a buzz off the 3.0 beer, and mixed in with them, a bunch of young ladies who care more about working on their tan than about what’s going on on the field. In the sun, in the wind, with pigeons picking up the dropped popcorn and your choice of hot dogs with or without mustard and onions for refreshment.
They market it as an iconic Chicago experience. Come And Enjoy A Day In The Sun At Beautiful Wrigley Field. But genuine baseball fans don’t sit out there in the bleachers anymore. It’s the tourists and the trend-seekers; people for whom it’s The Thing To Do. Sit on the benches above the ivy, enjoy the fine weather, maybe have a beer or three. Hang out and soak up the atmosphere. And, oh, wow, is that a real major league baseball game going on out there? How quaint! It’s almost as if the game is incidental to the ambiance. Enjoying the performance of the players takes a far back seat to being there and being seen.
A child is forever barred now from the kind of baseball fandom that I lived in and enjoyed all those years back. A baseball game isn’t casual entertainment anymore, it’s an outing you have to plan for well in advance. And it will set you back a fair piece of change.
There are still affordable seats in the park. If you’re willing to sit in the nosebleed zone, way up in the upper deck above the left or right field corners, those tickets run from $9.00 to $25.00, depending on the time of year, the team being played and whether its a day or night game. Moving in a little bit from the corners to the infield area, it runs from $11.00 to $28.00. And lower level seats, in the far back area of the grandstands where the sun never reaches, those you can get at a relatively moderate $16.00 to $45.00. This is not including your transportation, your parking if you drive, and your refreshments.
Oh, yeah. And they check your bags at the gate to be sure you’re not bringing in your own food and drinks. “Bottles and cans not allowed” is the rationale. I suspect that $7.50 for a cup of beer and about $5.00 per hot dog might have something to do with it as well.
I rarely go to live baseball games any more. As an adult, who can afford it? For The Boy? Well, we’ve made a point of visiting ballparks around the major leagues when we vacation. He’s been to Wrigley and Comiskey Park (a/k/a U. S, Cellular Field), to Milwaukee both at the old County Stadium and the new Miller Park, and to St. Louis at both the old and new Busch Stadiums. We’ve seen games as well in Kansas City, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh. On the way to Pittsburgh, in fact, we flew over games going on in Yankee Stadium, The Mets at Shea, and the Phillies in Philadelphia. But those have all been carefully planned and scheduled trips. He collects baseball cards as a potential investment, not in the hope of getting the card of a particular favorite player, and he discusses their market value at great lengths with his friends who are similarly inclined. It just isn’t the same.
I’m still a Cubs fan. I’ll probably die a Cub’s fan. But I’m not sure I care for what Baseball has become. It’s a business. It’s all about the bottom line. And like any other entertainment business, they’ll charge what the market will bear. And the parks fill up, even at those prices. I don’t know who’s buying those ticket, but the Cubs at Wrigley sell out every year, no matter how well or badly the team plays.
But I no longer sit in the bleachers. The experience, nostalgic as it may be to an ex-original-bleacher-bum like me, just isn’t worth it.
