Rozner: Even bad baseball at Wrigley Field is a good thing

On the drive to Wrigley Field Saturday morning, I attempted to do some math.

While fairly certain that seven remains one more than six, and that 60 is fewer than 162, the rest is a something of a mystery.

The reason for the exercise was to figure out approximately how many times I've been to the Friendly Confines, and this requires more than a few fingers and toes.

My first job here was flipping up seats to make way for the cleaning crew, a way to get a free pass to another game. One time, I was handed a burlap bag and sent out onto the field to scoop up garbage, hardly my last job cleaning up trash.

Anyway, math. Well, there's 30 years covering baseball, all the radio and TV shows, plus games attended as a child and eight years as a vendor, and I figure it's in the neighborhood of 2,000 games — maybe 2,100 — at Wrigley Field.

Pretty good neighborhood.

Just when I thought I had a handle on the equation, I began considering games on the South Side, road games, spring training and playoffs, and it quickly got out of hand.

Good thing it was a 45-minute drive to the yard.

I settled on 3,900 games _ a ballpark figure _ as I walked up to the stadium, had my temperature taken and was told to travel directly to the press box, prohibited from stopping to gawk, passing go or collecting 200 photos.

I thought I had seen it all, but Saturday's match between the Cubs and Brewers was a new experience, minus the fans and with no access to players and managers or any other part of the park.

Reminded me of an April game in the early '80s when it was snowing an hour before game time as I was selling upper deck pop. The number of people in the upper deck Saturday was about the same as that frozen game 40 years ago, but this time we were sequestered.

There were some games in Montreal that felt like this, the very loud noise coming only from the speakers and echoing off the empty seats.

OK, so it was odd being at a game under these circumstances. To be certain it was odd, but it was a baseball game. And it was good to be at a sporting event for the first time since early March, more than four months ago.

It felt considerably longer.

It was mostly what you would expect, weird being in an empty park with piped-in crowd noise and advertising covering the bleachers, with even those on rooftops relatively subdued on a perfect summer day.

It is far from normal to hear outfielders calling for a ball or seeing first baseman Anthony Rizzo offer an opponent a dab of hand sanitizer

.

Home plate ump C.B. Bucknor was typically terrible and had no problem hearing it from the dugout when he missed calls, and the players could absolutely hear fans yelling from across the street.

Most of the virus precautions MLB has instituted are sound and reasonable, necessary for keeping players comfortable and safe, but some border on the laughable, like tossing a ball out of play if players mistakenly throw it around the infield after an out, or a new rosin bag for every pitcher that enters the contest.

Whatever, the baseball itself looked very much like baseball. Players were spitting and hugging and high-fiving, and at the end of the third there was nearly a bench-clearing incident, such a clash undoubtedly a city of Chicago social distance violation.

That falls under the category of unintended consequences. Without fans, players can hear the other side cursing under their breath and chirping, and that's going to lead to more of these issues.

Unlike Friday's quick and excellent work by Kyle Hendricks, Yu Darvish was slow and far less effective, managing 4 innings and 73 pitches, allowing 3 runs on 6 hits. Relievers Duane Underwood, Brad Wieck and James Norwood combined to give up 5 runs, and the Brewers pretty much coasted, save a Jason Heyward, bases-loaded strikeout to end the seventh.

The Cubs' 8-3 defeat featured botched rundowns on both sides of the ball, Ian Happ misplayed a ball in center and the home team was generally sloppy in 3-hour, 36-minute slog. Then again, it's 2 games and 2020 being 2020, expectations for clean and fast baseball should be fairly low.

It was comforting to see Harry Caray on the video board for the seventh-inning stretch, but unsettling when the game ended in total silence, except a single boo from across Sheffield Avenue.

It felt quite different not engaging players before or after the game, not sprinting down the ramps toward the clubhouse with two outs in the ninth, trying to get ahead of 40,000 exiting the park.

Anyway, yes, it was peculiar being in an empty park, but a cynic might suggest there were games in the late '70s and early '80s when the crowds were similarly sparse on the North Side. Even then you could hear the fans — and a vendor could make a few dollars.

A strange but true way to play a game these days, but it is baseball. And real baseball is a very good thing.