We're on a Mission....

"And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters."
Field of Dreams, 1989

Charlie says he went to a game at Wrigley Field once: he thinks it was about 1948. I remember going to a game there once too; the memory is vivid even though I wasn't very old. The day was cold; the stadium was empty; the Cubs were shut out. I couldn't sit still, but it didn't matter; there was no one sitting anywhere close to us. What year was it? I don't know but it has now taken me a half century to get back there.

This pilgrimage...and yes, that's the right word for it...has always been just around the corner, a possibility, an option, but never reached the threshold of a plan, a date, a promise....or purchasing tickets. This year I watched the calendar for the Cubs/Cardinals dates like someone looking for the winning numbers in the lottery. There they were: dates in July, away from planting (so I thought!) months from harvest, a Monday night game, perfect for a drive up from our neck of the woods to the friendly confines of Wrigley Field. Shopping for those seats was a labor of love, as I imagined the big green and white manual scoreboard in center field with the pennants atop snapping in the breeze, the bleacher seats above the ivy from which disgruntled fans would fling opposing teams' homers, the fans watching from the housetops across Waveland and Sheffield. This view is what we'd watched on television ever since cable brought us the wonders of baseball on WGN. That was just after Harry Caray joined the Cubs as announcer. Hearing Harry back on the job and watching the Cards in our living room on a summer's eve was about as good as it got for two fans of modest means.

The caravans made their way to Chicago from three different directions on three different interstates, touching base by text and photo...a Five Guys break here, a brew pub there, our lunch at a busy Culver's in Geneseo, Illinois, joining three tables of ladies playing bridge and a remarkably quiet clutch of Girl Scouts in pastel t shirts.

The western Missouri contingent and the St. Louis contingent come to a traffic jam at exit 267 on I-55 simultaneously. We throw down our windows and wave like crazy people: what are the odds? Tracy has traveled thousands of miles to get to St. Louis...and now has ridden another 300 plus miles to watch two teams she doesn't root for play ball! It is Wrigley, of course; she says her husband envies her opportunity to see a game there.

The Illinois toll roads separate us. Text traffic:

Mark: We got delayed at the toll booth. Was coins only and the person in front of us kept throwing pennies. Finally gave up and drove on....

Kenzie: Wait that was us!!! The first 3 toll booths stole all the quarters....

The walk down Addison takes us under the EL. Levi, his neck craned to watch the train, has more big league ballparks under his belt than most fans. He swings and skips between his daddy and great grandpa. Ben is wearing number 7, Holliday's number. Charlie's shirt says "SINCE 56", a reference to Millie and Charlie's 50th wedding anniversary. We tease him, "SINCE didn't have much of a chance in the big leagues if he wore number 56!" The sidewalks and sports bars are teeming, a mass of Baby Bear Blue and Redbird Red.

The seats are heavenly...the panorama of green field and the mosaic of the crowd unrolls before us . We can see the whole field, every position, the ballet of adjustments between pitcher and batter.

The crowd in the ballpark is a live thing, a moody creature flexing and shrugging depending on the caprice of the game. It's a new experience, watching your team play off their home turf.

Levi applauds with the crowd, much to the delight of the Cubs fans behind us. He will get his chance to cheer for the Cards... The lights come on as the sky fades from lavender to blue velvet....

..and then....it rains. Because that's the kind of baseball year it has been. We wait..and wait...and finally open our umbrellas and splash our way back to the cars, our night at the ballpark shortened by an inning and a half.

To paraphrase Harry Caray, it was still "a bee-yooo-ti-ful day for baseball...": a one of a kind trip to a place rooted in the past (never mind those giant annoyingly bright jumbotrons), a place part of every fan's fiber, a game part of our collective memory for years to come....

Actor Bill Murray, rabid Cubs fan, made news the next day calling Cardinals fans 'satan's messengers'. Seems a bit uncalled for and extreme. The Cub fans sitting behind us were loud and not shy about jeering at a Cardinal player or two. But visiting with them after the seventh inning stretch made it clear that no offense was intended to red clad fans: we are all part of Baseball Nation, Red and Blue.

After all, we all stand as one at seventh inning stretch time to sing 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game'...

.... because we are at Wrigley.

P.S...More text traffic:

Mark: Approaching B-U-T-ful Joliet. At least that's what Laura claims from her youthful memories.
Me: We are just a few from I-55...We hear Joliet, we think prison...More childhood memories..
Me: Field trip for my 5th grade class.
Mark: I hear you were in maxim security.
Kenzie: "We're gettin the band back together."
Mark: What band?
Kenzie: "We're on a mission from God."
Me: Nice one! Sing it!

ELWOOD No, they don't got my address, I falsified my renewal. I put down 1060 West Addison,
JAKE 1060 West Addison?...That's Wrigley Field!

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The Century Mark: From Wrigley to Carroll County

"There's just no better place to be on a summer afternoon than in Wrigley Field watching the Cards and the Cubs.... " a paraphrase of John Rooney's call on July 26, 2014

Just knowing the kids were visiting Chicago and taking in a game at Wrigley made my heart glad. Listening to the Cards/Cubs game on this Saturday afternoon as the wheels hugged the two lane was a good thing...not as good as being there, but way over on the plus side of the spectrum of summer traditions.   

Cards/Cubs rivalry, road game, road trip, wind rippling the tasseled fields, tractors gathering the shiny new round bales; these are just a few of the good things gathered this weekend for reflection.  Friday evening I drove the rolling curves of Highway 65 through verdant swaths of countryside, past the Blue Mound, the farm stands and businesses of plain folk, and the architectural blast from the past that is the Tina-Avalon school, to the 100th Carroll County Farm Bureau Annual Meeting in Carrollton.  Every seat was occupied; every plate piled with brisket, cheesy potatoes, slaw and green beans. It was a full house of more than 200 Farm Bureau members joined to celebrate and commemorate the longevity and tradition of their organization.  

I am a sucker for old photographs and other paper ephemera of our ties to the past.  Carroll county historians laid out a table of annual reports preserved from the 1940s and 1950s, from the county, the state, and even the American Farm Bureau Federation.  I wished I had a copy of the black and white panorama shot in the banquet hall of a Chicago hotel of the entire delegation of the American Farm Bureau Federation gathered for a meal during the 20th anniversary of the organization's existence.  The farmers and farmers' wives face the camera...the men clean shaven in white shirts and black suits and many of the women wearing hats.  Its a big group...and a serious group.....except for one errant uppity Nebraska delegate plugging his state sign....and all of them are volunteers. (Some of them might even be Cubs fans.)

I haven't seen inside the policy books from those annual meetings, but I know what consumes the time and energy of dedicated Farm Bureau volunteers today.  Farmers are torn between the day to day concerns folks in that photo would recognize but also threats to their businesses their ancestors would consider ludicrous or silly.  Farmers in the '40s were still 18 percent of the labor force and 23 percent of the population.  No doubt the delegate body in 1939 found plenty to worry about without considering the possibility that agriculture itself would be on trial.

Off to Palmyra in Marion county, where I bet there was a great crowd in 1940 for the Fair parade, just like there was this weekend. 

 The scene under the picnic shelter is straight out of a Thomas Hart Benton painting: farmers and families perched on picnic benches, standing under the shade tree, summery red bronze and baked by the sun, at rest, and the children endlessly busy, flitting from water tank to toy tractor to nowhere in particular, making their own breeze.  And under that tree, the local politicians speechifying, exhorting the crowd for the rights of farmers to farm, and subtly as they can plugging for their own campaigns.

Blake Hurst updates the folks in Palmyra

Baseball may be called America's past time, but to my mind politics has at least a three game lead in the standings, maybe five in even years.  Its a game we all play and sometimes the stakes are very high.  Unlike baseball with its blessedly long 162 games, the folks playing politics this August are facing a sudden death playoff, winner take all.  Farmers are all in, pulling out all the stops, in their efforts to convince the crowd that their goals haven't changed in all the years since 1939.  Volunteers place signs, talk to civic groups, write letters to editors and opponents, send checks to the organizations representing them, but most importantly, tell the world about their farms, their families, their concerns and their wish to continue doing exactly what they do best: feed people by growing food on the lands they love.  

“I just overheard a woman giving her opinion on the abilities of the batsman. You can’t even vote, doll, what gave you the cockamamie idea anyone pays any heed to the musings on sport of your inferior brain?” quotes about Wrigley Field...

OK, call me over the top.  But after the 19th amendment passed in 1920, I can go to the polls just like a man.  As a matter of fact, I already have, casting my absentee ballot this afternoon at my local courthouse.  So, do it.  Go vote.  Support your cause.  Support your local farmers.  Take part in the great American past time...