Highschool Rivalries at the Cub’s Game

I must admit up front, I’m not a huge baseball fan. I have friends and family members that are religious to the sport. It’s just a little slow for me. I do like the excitement when things start to happen, but I tend to get the games fans call a good pitching game. That tells me it will be slow and boring. I do like going to the park and watching a live game though. This is about one such time, a trip to Wrigley Field.

You might remember Jeff, my brother’s partner, in the story Ditka Opened, but Robin Laid an Egg when Mike Ditka opened a restaurant in Chicago. The baseball tickets came from him. He asked if I wanted them because he could not go and I said yes. I brought them home to my wife, Carrie, and she suggested I take our good friend, Dave, since he was a huge sport fan, basketball, football, hockey and baseball. At the time Dave was writing a sports article for a regional newspaper. He ate, worked and slept sports. I thought it was a good idea too so I rang him up.

“Yes. I’m in. I’ll bring my camera for some good shots hopefully” he said cheerfully over the phone. He drove up from northwestern Indiana to our home on the north side of Chicago and we took the train down to Wrigley Field. By now the ballpark had lights and they could host night games. This was a night game.

There was a delay on the train, about fifteen minutes which caused us to miss the first inning. We arrived at the park at sunset and the top of the second inning. Dave said the section was behind the home plate. Great seats I thought. We were escorted to our section by an attendant. As we came up and out into the stands I could feel the cool night air, the smell of ballpark hot dogs and the overwhelming adrenaline from a sport event on steroids.

Our section was full of screaming fans soaked into the game. There were only two seats still open and they were ours. And they were in the front row! Two guys in row two had been using them for their feet. The attendant did not like that and chastised them for it. They straightened up proper and sat down. The seats were ours.

We set in and looked at each other with wild excitement. We were ten feet away from the umpire and the catcher. Within ten minutes we had beers and hotdogs. I mean, how does it get any better than this (rhetorical)?

Dave woofed down the dog and set his half-finished beer down by his feet. He extracted his backpack with camera gear. I knew the stuff, I’d seen it before. It was a good camera designed for shooting sport activities, very fast. What I didn’t know was he had a special lens to attach. It was sixteen inches long. He attached it. When he brought it up to get his first shot, it hit the fencing in front of our faces. We were so close he couldn’t even use the attachment so he put it away. But he did not complain one bit. These seats were good.

The excitement of the game within feet of our eyes was too much to believe. The intensity was unbelievable. I learned what a 95 MPH pitch looked like… lightning. I got to see what a home run looks like to a catcher, with the backdrop of a stadium full of fans. I got to hear the harsh umpire calls and the loose spittle of an angry manager in his face. Baseball, baby.

But it was the top of the ninth inning where things really got serious. Dave had been coaching me on what to look for and help me understand why things were happening the way they were. The Cubs were up by one run, but the St. Louis Cardinals had their best hitter stepping up to the plate with two outs and bases loaded.

Dave turned towards me and says, “Mike, do you know who this guy is?” “No, no idea” I responded. “Howey Standish (fictitious name since I can’t remember who it was) went to Munster High” he said. This made a connection with me. Both Dave and I went to Highland High School and our neighboring town Munster was our rival. Every sporting event, every musical event, stage and marching band was a competition. Tempers often flared throughout the school year. There was a demarcation point called The Bridge. It was on the border of the two towns, Highland and Munster, where a small river flowed. The bridge was littered with graffiti and if there was a turf war to settle, this is where it would often happen. I never understood the tension between the two town’s schools. Maybe it was nothing more than adolescent puberty stress, girls and boys trying to figure out how to become women and men.

“Tell ’em Munster sucks!” Dave blurted out to me with some beer foam on his upper lip. “No way!” I responded. “Do it! What are you a wimp?” “I’m not a wimp, but I’m not going to do it.” I insisted. “Do it!” He continued. He was really putting on the pressure. I took a big sip of my warm beer and decided to do it.

The count was two strikes and two balls. The new pitcher was throwing hot cannon balls across the plate. The stage was set. I stood up and gathered my hands around my mouth. The whole stadium was in pandemonium. The catcher was sending signals to pitcher from his testicle region. The pitcher leaned back for the next pitch…

“MUNSTER SUCKS!!!!”

I did it. The pitch came in to a batter who was momentarily confused and missed his pitch. He turned back looking directly at me. Dave was right. This guy was from Munster. The inning, the game was over. “F*ck you Highland Twit!”

They say that fans can make or break a game. I believe that now.

So, fist-bumps to my friend Dave, you left a mark on me.

Maybe I do like baseball!

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