Ah, this evening was most excellent.
I left earlier than I needed to, forgetting about the joy that is the Purple Line Express that got me to Addison in 20 minutes. So I did a lot of wandering around before the game. I scouted out a couple of bars, and the guy at Murphy's Bleachers hassled me about my ID. ("From New Jersey, huh? What're you doing in these parts?" "Going to school." "Ah, good old Newton." "Actually, I live in Fredon, it's just outside Newton." "Does Fake still live there?") He let me in, though, but I decided I didn't like the place much and went back to the bar at Addison and Sheffield.
I spent the first three innings there, which was much fun, especially because in that point at the game it was still suspenseful, and the joint went nuts when Sammy hit the home run to make the score 5-0. By the end of the third, though, I was sweating in the packed, hot bar, my legs were tired, I was hungry, and the Cubs were up by 8. So instead of buying overpriced bar food, I decided to wander.
I found $2 cheese fries, a seat, a TV, and a friendly crowd of maybe 20 Cubs fans across the street. When I was fed and rested, I made my way around Wrigley to Waveland Avenue, where those crowds you always see on TV are gathered. (Of course, I couldn't get into the crowd you always see on TV, because they were blockaded off and the police weren't letting anyone over-- I would have had to walk all the way around the stadium to get to them from the other side, and who knows if I'd have been able to get in there, either. So I was in the "second-class" crowd.) Maybe 15 minutes after I got there, Alex Gonzalez's home run flew over the fence, hit the street, and bounced up and into the crowd about 50 feet away from me. That was pretty neat.
Waveland Avenue was fun, but the main problem was that it was very hard to follow what was going on, since all we had to go by was the scoreboard (so we knew if there was an out or a run had scored) and our interpretation of the noise of the crowd. ("Did that cheer sound like he hit a double or a single?") So eventually I left. After a brief encounter with the inflatable Harry Caray, I made my way to the 7-11 and grabbed a slurpee. I sipped it happily outside the bar I was at before and watched the TV through the window, feeling pleased with myself for having a $1.19 slurpee instead of a $5 beer while being kind to my recently taxed liver to boot. That's how things went for the last couple innings, and then I screamed in glee with everyone around me, snapped a picture of "Cubs Win!" on the scoreboard, and dashed for the El ahead of the stadium crowd.
Ah, baseball, how I love you. And we shall conveniently forget that the Yankees lost tonight.
