Constable: Cubs move me to erect video scoreboard
Now that the 2014 Cubs and their fans said goodbye to Wrigley Field on Wednesday night with an uplifting 3-1 victory over the playoff-bound St. Louis Cardinals in the final home game of the year, the future begins today.
To make room for that future, the Cubs must move me out of the way.
As one of the members of a group that has been sharing season tickets in the upper deck along the third-base side of the press box for nearly two decades, we will be "relocated" to comparable seats in another section. Our old seats, which I loved, will be ripped out and the space converted into a control room for a new video scoreboard.
Considering that I'm still adapting to the 1988 addition of lights to Wrigley Field, it makes sense that the Cubs must literally move me and my antiquated opinions to make possible a 3,990 square-foot video screen that should be looming above the left-field bleachers in time for the April 6 Opening Day of the 2015 season.
At least I still have a seat in Wrigley Field. Season ticketholders in the old Chicago Stadium and historic Comiskey Park had to move into new buildings to accommodate the future with the United Center and what is now U.S. Cellular Field. Former Blackhawks season-ticket holder Michael Jay Fiddich of Roselle remembers his last game as a fan at the original Madhouse on Madison.
"I sat there for the longest time after the game and said, 'This is it,'" remembers Fiddich, who had accumulated more than a decade of memories from his seats RB 1 and 2 in the first balcony.
"They were on the organ side, on the turn, a little short of the blue line," says Fiddich, a professional musician who quickly made friends in the Stadium with legendary organist Nancy Faust, who lives in Mundelein.
"A fight broke out and she said, 'What do I play?' and I said, 'Play "Getting to Know You,"' and she did," says Fiddich by phone during a break for his band, New Odyssey, during performances at The Big E, a giant fair and music festival in West Springfield, Mass.
A 1969 graduate of Wheeling High School, Fiddich sang the national anthem twice at Wrigley Field for day games in the era before lights. The first time, he visited the opposing team's dugout to surprise his brother's good friend Mike Marshall, a 1978 Buffalo Grove High School graduate, who won a World Series ring with the L.A. Dodgers.
As a present for her 90th birthday, Fiddich's aunt, Laverne Gilboy, sits in a section in front of me when she sees a game at Wrigley for the first time in years. She's seen changes, starting with the cost of her ticket.
As a child, she and her mom didn't pay a dime for their tickets because the Cubs celebrated every Friday home game as "Ladies' Day."
"We had really good seats, and my brothers sat in the bleachers," Gilboy recalls. "I don't remember what Mom paid for their tickets, but it couldn't have been a lot or we wouldn't have gone every Friday. We lived on the North Side, near Diversey and Ashland, and we used to walk to Wrigley, and that was a walk. But it was worth it."
She can't remember the names of her favorite Cubs players from those teams in the 1930s and '40s, but she remembers her anticipation when the Cubs won the National League pennant in 1945. She was doing a fine job running the office for a school-supply company, and her boss had two tickets to a World Series game at Wrigley.
"He knew how much I liked the team, but he took this other guy," Gilboy says. "I was so mad, I could have killed him."
Maybe she can go to a World Series game at Wrigley next year if the Cubs team lives up to the future of fans' dreams. The Blackhawks, the Bulls and the White Sox all won championships in their new stadiums.
In the old Chicago Stadium, voices of hockey fans carried all the way down to the net minded by goalkeeper Murray Bannerman.
"I could yell at Bannerman from the balcony and he would turn to look at me," says Fiddich, who remembers moving to comparable seats in the new stadium.
"It was beautiful and gorgeous, and the aisles were wide. But the intimacy was lost," says Fiddich, who says he gave up his season tickets after a few years at United Center so that he could spend more time with his wife and daughters.
Wrigley might add a new video screen or two, new signs, new seats and a new feel, but Fiddich says fans, even we romantic fools who love the old Wrigley, will adjust.
"Time takes care of that. A new atmosphere is created. Fans are still fans," Fiddich says.
"I don't know if it (the video scoreboard) is going to be a good thing," his aunt says, "but I'll always watch the Cubs."
Same here. But I have a plan to keep my old seat. I just need the Cubs to hire me as a video-scoreboard operator.