Ballpark Stars, Wrigley & Comiskey-- Part 4: Rookies, Weddings and Balki

7.  "ROOKIE OF THE YEAR" (1993)

It's the last game of the season and the Cubs are facing the Mets.  A win and they go to the National League Championship Series.  On the mound is 12-year-old Henry Rowengartner.  After breaking his arm he learned that the healed tendons can allow him to throw 100 mph balls.

But, during this game, he reinjures it and loses the ability.  Lots of shots of worried fans, a manager and announcer, but then mom tells him to "float it."  An underhanded and backhanded pitch.  The Mets slugger strikes out and the Cubs win!!

8.  "MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING"  (1997)

New Comiskey plays itself.  A prewedding gathering brings everyone to a ballpark suite.  That Julia Roberts doesn't spill a tray of beers as she makes her way up and down is movie magic.

9.  "PERFECT STRANGERS"  (1986-1993)

There is no better example of Wrigley Field being used to convey Chicago than in one of the opening credits of the old ABC sitcom.

Week after week Larry Appleton and his distant cousin from faraway Mypos, Balki Bartokomous, could not be more excited to attend a Cubs game.

DaCootRookie

Ballpark Stars, Wrigley Field & Comiskey Park-- Part 3: Chased Across Wrigley and Selling Hot Dogs

5.  THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH CONAN O'BRIEN (2009)

The very first Conan O'Brien show after he replaced Jay Leno on June 1, 2009.  He discovers that he needs to be in Los Angles instead of New York.  Unable to get a cab, he sprints across the country a la Forrest Gump.  To the tune of Cheap Trick's "Surrender" he runs and goes through Chicago and across the field at Wrigley with security guards in hot pursuit.

Watch the video on You Tube.  Hilarious.

6.  UNDERCOVER BOSS  (2010)

New Cubs owner Todd Ricketts grew a beard and wore fake glasses with the name Mark Dawson (from Cubs players Mark Grace and Andre Dawson) and applied for jobs in and around the ballpark.  Some of the jobs he did was cleaning restrooms and trying to organize a remote parking lot.  He wasn't very good at either job.

But, he really failed at selling hot dogs.  His solution was to buy them all himself and toss them in the garbage.  But, his supervisor caught him.

--CootRicketts

Wrigley Field's Center-Field Scoreboard Through the Years-- Part 3: Lights, Abbreviations and Grid Lines

LIGHTS--  Lights were added to the scoreboard in teh 1980s, anticipating Wrigley Field's first night game on August 9, 1988.

ABBREVIATIONS--  The abbreviations on the scoreboard--  "SP" (starting pitcher) and "RP" (relief pitcher) -- once designated to columns of numbers identifying the battery of the pitcher and catcher.

GRID LINES--  The white grid of lines (going up and down) separating the inning-by-inning score of each major league game on the scoreboard is not original.  It was added in 1987, along with red horizontal lines that draw attention to the Cubs game.

--CooterBG (Blog Guy)

Wrigley's Center-Field Scoreboard Through the Years-- Part 1; Original Board and Clock

From the June 28, 2015, Chicago Tribune "Technology 1, Tradition 0."

The Cubs' famous center-field scoreboard you see today is not the one that was always there.  It has changed over the years.  The Tribune had a center section of two full pages of coverage of it and the new video board.  Best of all are the pictures of it over the years.

ORIGINAL BOARD

The original board was  a reddish-brown.  In 1944, it was changed to green after batters complained that they were distracted by the reflections of the sun.

THE CLOCK

The board's circular clock, which has dots instead of numerals, was added in 1941.  Its original face was white before it was painted green in 1944.  Of course, these days, younger folks can't tell time on it.  Must use their cell phones to tell the time.  What's a watch?

Let's See, Big Hand on Three, Little on One.  --DaCountingCoot

Technology Versus Wrigley Field Center-Field Scoreboard-- Part 2

But what really makes the scoreboard at Wrigley so neat is that the numbers are turned by humans.  And, even better, occasionally you'll see them put the numbers up.  As Blair Kamin says, "...it's like peeking into Santa's workshop."

My neatest experience with the center-field scoreboard was the time the Cubs had the San Diego Chicken at the park and at one point, the Chicken had his head out one of the number slots and was really hamming, well, chicking it up.

But, things are different at the old ballpark this season because of that huge video board in left field.  It just overwhelms the old one, especially at night.

The new board's designers have incorporated some things that harken to the old board and ballpark.  Its colors are green and white, blocky type and graphics that bring back to the park's Art Deco marque outside.

I sure would like to spend a game inside that scoreboard and move the numbers.

Progress Goes On, But Keep At Least Some of the Old.  --Cooter

Technology Versus Wrigley Field Center-Field Scoreboard-- Part 1

From the June 28, 2015, Chicago Tribune "Technology 1, Tradition 0" by Blair Kamin.

"A few simple changes can keep center-field board in the game."

In most baseball stadiums, the scoreboard is simply what its name implies-- a medium that delivers the messages of the score, not to mention whatever ads are plastered on it.

"But at Wrigley Field, the center-field scoreboard rises beyond the merely utilitarian and becomes--  I hesitate to use the word, but it fits-- transcendent.  Installed in 1937, the scoreboard is the apse of Wrigley's baseball cathedral, culminating the upward sweep of the bleachers with its symmetrical backdrop of dark green and white.

"The scoreboard's flagpoles, with their flapping pennants, resemble the masts of a yacht, acknowledging nearby Lake Michigan even as they reveal whether the wind is blowing in or out."

Mr. Kamin Sure has a Way With Words.  --CooterField

Born and Razed: Chicago's Comiskey Park-- Part 2

We'll never know how much hoopla would have gone with the 100th anniversary of Comiskey because it is now a parking lot for the new Comiskey Park across 35th Street, later renamed that other name which I shall not mention.

Said Sox fan (yes, there are a few of us) Doug Bukowski:  "With all due respect to Wrigley Field, it's not that important that Jimmy Buffett and Bruce Springsteen went there.  What is important is there is a place on the South Side where the color line fell in the American League, and where Joe Louis became heavyweight champion of the world."

"And, yes, Babe Ruth went to Wrigley Field.  But guess what?  He did it like twenty times a year at Comiskey."  It was the Babe that owner Charles Comiskey to double deck the outfield stands to pack more fans in to see him.

Bukowsky, now 61 was even part of an effort to save the old Comiskey Park back in the late 1980s.  At that time, most Sox fans were more worried about losing the team to Tampa-St. Petersburg, in Florida where the club owners Reinsdorf and Einhorn had threatened to move if they didn't get a new, state-funded stadium.

Well, the Sox didn't move and are still here.  Thankfully, but....

Always a Sox Fan.  --Cooter

Roseanne's House-- Part 3: Producer and "A League of Their Own"

From NancyCarol.squid.com.

"Roseanne"'s creator and producer Matt Williams, is a native of Evansville.

Evansville also has the third oldest ballfield in the United States (behind Boston's Fenway Park #1 and Chicago's Wrigley Field).

The game scenes of "A League of Their Own" were all filmed there and it served as the homefield of the Racine Belles. Something else from the screen to see in Evansville.

--Cooter

Advertising At Other Parks-- Part 1: It's a Color Thing

Continuing from the April 16, 2013, Chicago Tribune "Here's the Pitch" by Mark Jacob.

WHITE-OUT--  In 1912, when the old Comiskey Park (and I still call it by that name) was new, a tobacco company's large white sign in straight center made it hard for hitters to see pitches coming at them.

White Sox manager Jimmy "Nixey" Callahan asked owner Charles Comiskey to remove the sign.  Comiskey said he would, but, being the sort he always was, if Callahan bought out the advertiser's contract.  Callahan did.

Signage at Comiskey never approached the wall-to-wall level like at some stadiums.  But, the new Sox ballpark, named commercially for that cell phone company, is full of ads.


GOING GREEN--  And you know which ballpark Jacob is talking about here. 

Fenway Park is the only older stadium than Wrigley Field.  The Red Sox have removed some advertising to make the place more special.  In 1947, they took down some garish left field ads, including a Gem Razor sign "Avoid 5 O'Clock Shadow."

Instead of the ads, the wall was painted green, creating that famous "Green Monster."

That Is One Really Big Green Wall.  --DaCoot