Constable: Streaks get asterisks as change comes to Opening Day at Wrigley Field

Opening Day of the baseball season is a time I think about streaks. But we haven't had a normal Opening Day at Wrigley Field since 2019. The pandemic pushed Opening Day 2020 into late July, and even then it kept fans from attending.

The Hrubys, a longtime Wheaton family of Cubs fans, were working on a streak of 36 consecutive Opening Days in the Wrigley Field bleachers when the coronavirus stopped everyone's streak. Matriarch Debby Hruby notes her family's bleacher streak comes with asterisks. In 2015, when renovations delayed the opening of the bleachers, she and her son, Sean, and grandson, Cal, had to make due in the upper deck until the bleachers opened the day after Mother's Day and Sean took her to a second opening game. Last year doesn't count against the streak, and neither should this year's opener with the crowd limited to 25% of capacity and the bleachers reserved for vaccinated health care workers, she says.

The streak I find myself focusing on today is my own. It's been 551 days since I've watched a ballgame in Wrigley Field, and that was a 9-0 spanking delivered by the hated St. Louis Cardinals. That's the longest I've gone without catching a game at Wrigley since I turned 16 and got my driver's license.

Driving to Wrigley for the first time with a buddy from high school back then, and nervous about traffic and parking, we left so early that we ended up paying for parking in a premium spot in a lot next to Wrigley Field. We knew it was a great spot because the friendly guy getting out of the car next to us was Lou Boudreau, the Hall of Fame player and legendary Cubs radio announcer.

That parking spot now is part of the Gallagher Way. People do yoga on the grass in the same spot I used to buy Yum Yum Doughnuts.

Granted, I don't handle change well, as my 1980s' "No Lights" T-shirt could attest. But if you told me in 2019 that the following changes would come to Wrigley Field for Opening Day 2021, I would have thought they were April Fools' Day pranks:

• Paper tickets are gone forever, and mobile tickets are tied into an entry system that gives you an appointed time and place to enter Wrigley.

• Each fan entering Wrigley will be given a KN95 mask and a bottle of hand sanitizer, courtesy of Advocate Aurora Health.

• All fans who are 2 years old or older must have those mobile tickets and wear masks throughout the game unless actively eating, drinking or, perhaps, breastfeeding.

• All transactions in Wrigley Field, including buying hot dogs and beer, must be made by credit card, debit card or mobile app, as cash is no longer accepted.

• A new concession item is Oatly soft serve, a dairy-free, vegan desert made from oat milk.

• Unless you have a medical bag or a diaper bag (with baby), the only bags allowed inside Wrigley, including wallets, purses and Cubs tote bags, can be no bigger than 9 by 5 inches.

For fans who care more about the team than about the Wrigley experience, there also are changes brewing.

This might be the last home opener for Anthony Rizzo, the lovable Cubs first baseman who does so much to help kids with cancer. He's entering the final season of a seven-year, $41 million contract and just told his agents to end negotiations so he can concentrate on this season.

Rizzo, catcher Willson Contreras, former MVP Kris Bryant, shortstop Javier Baez and right fielder Jason Heyward are the only position players who were around when the Cubs won the World Series way back in 2016. Kyle Hendricks and the recently re-signed Jake Arrieta are the only pitchers who won rings with that squad.

The 2016 World Series legend and fan favorite Kyle Schwarber is slugging in the middle of the order for the Washington Nationals, whose roster includes former 2016 Cubs legend Jon Lester as well as Starlin Castro, who has been gone from Wrigley for eons but actually just turned 31 years old a week ago. Castro is the Nationals' starting third baseman and has amassed 1,633 hits, the 13th-highest total for active players and more than Baez and Bryant combined.

Nico Hoerner, the 23-year-old former first-round pick of the Cubs, was demoted to the minor leagues for Opening Day after batting .364 in spring training. By holding him down, the Cubs extend his eligibility for salary arbitration until after the 2023 season and potentially save money.

Another fan favorite, TV play-by-play announcer Len Kasper, will be 2,016 miles away, doing radio play-by-play in his new gig as a radio announcer for the White Sox at their opening game against the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim, California.

Perhaps the greatest consistency between this Opening Day and most of the ones in recent memory is that the game-time temperature should hover around freezing.

There is, however, one change brought on by the pandemic that I am glad to see. Male fans will still urinate en masse in a trough, but new social distancing rules have led to the installation of a partition between participants. Thanks, 2021.