A Cardinals Fan’s Experience in the Belly of the Beast, Wrigley Field

Karsten Maurer ‘29 

maurerkka05@lakeforest.edu

On Tuesday, March 31, I had the opportunity to visit one of baseball’s oldest sights, Wrigley Field, where a couple of friends and I bought tickets for the right-field bleachers to watch the Cubs face the Angels.

As a Cardinals fan with absolutely no skin in the game except to root against the Cubs, I decided to wear my Cardinals Ozzie Smith jersey. If you don’t know much about baseball, the Cardinals are the Cubs’ fiercest rivals, meaning this is not the smartest thing to do, considering the bleachers are where all the diehard fans sit. Even on a Tuesday, I was still met with jeers from the bleacher bums whenever I decided to leave my seat, to which I responded with a vain attempt to explain myself. 

The actual game turned out to be a bit of a bore as the Cubs, who had just come off a game where they scored 8 runs, failed to score a single time and only managed four hits while the Angels scored twice. As the frigid March wind ripped across José Soriano’s sleeveless arms, he pitched another gem, making it 12.0 innings pitched without giving up a single run so far in this early campaign. 

Cubs relief pitcher Phil Maton, however, was less dominant, only pitching 0.2 innings, giving up two runs on two hits and getting credited for the loss. Logan O’Hoppe came up big for the Halos, driving in two with a single at the top of the 6th inning. These ended up being the only runs scored all night as the game ended 2-0. Nobody was able to hit a home run, partly due to the wind whipping past my group and into the field, stalling at least two balls hit high into the night sky.

 All in all, I had a good time at Wrigley Field, a very painful sentence for me to write, and I cannot wait to go back and cheer on my Diamondbacks.