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City allows Chicago Cubs to play a Friday night game

The Chicago Cubs will make history of sorts next week.

The Friday, Sept. 8, game against the Milwaukee Brewers at Wrigley Field has been switched from an afternoon game to a night game, beginning at 7:05 p.m. The game originally was scheduled to start at 1:20 p.m.

This will be the first scheduled Friday night home game during the regular season for the Cubs, who have played postseason games on Friday nights.

Cubs business president Crane Kenney issued this statement regarding the city's lifting of the Friday-night restriction: "We thank Mayor (Rahm) Emanuel for his receptiveness to address this scheduling issue which has posed a challenge for Cubs teams over the years when returning home from the road. We are glad to have been able to work together to address this issue and help our team and organization as we compete to play October baseball."

The team was seeking some schedule relief following a 7:05 p.m. Eastern time (6:05 Central) start to next Thursday's series finale at Pittsburgh.

Manager Joe Maddon is fully in favor of the switch. He would like more night games at Wrigley in keeping with how other teams operate.

"Excited about that," Maddon said of next week's game. "That's a great idea. Let's do it more often.

"I guess there were some concessions made, but it really helps us out schedule wise. And it's just a good idea in general. I'd love to see it on a week-by-week basis."

The Brewers, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal, are not happy about the change even though they are used to playing Friday nights. The paper reported that the Brewers "did not say Cubs get advantage by switching to night. They just thought schedule should remain same." Earlier this year, the Brewers were upset the Cubs called a game at Wrigley Field because of weather, even though it did not rain during the day after the decision to call it was made.

The Cubs have been playing night baseball at Wrigley since August 1988, but Friday night games have not been allowed under the team's agreement with the city of Chicago.

However, the team has hosted many Friday night concerts at the ballpark, and Friday night Cubs represent the next frontier. The Chicago Sun-Times' city bureau did term this situation a one-time deal.

Next week's game will not push the Cubs over their limit of 47 night events. This coming Sunday's game against the Braves and the Sunday, Sept. 17 game against the Cardinals were listed as TBD on the season schedule, meaning they could have been selected by ESPN for Sunday Night Baseball. The network chose not to take those games, and they will be played during the day.

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