I have spent more time in Chicago (4 hours away) than Detroit (1 hour away) in the last 15 years. I think in that whole time I have been to Detroit once and that was just to pass through to Grosse Pointe. I have never seen the Tigers at Comerica Park, although I have seen them at spring training in Lakeland. On the other hand I have twice seen the Cubbies at Wrigley, have taken a historic tour of Wrigley, and spent a number of summer afternoons in Wrigleyville watching the games in the bars just outside the stadium.
In fact, one of the most delightful summer activities I can think of is renting a bike at Millennium Park or Navy Pier and riding up the Lakeshore trail along the Lake Michigan beaches past the Lincoln Park Zoo to Addison and then dashing a few blocks inland to Wrigleyville. You can probably scalp a ticket if you want, but I'd suggest just settling in at one many restaurant bars within a two block radius and watching the game on the big screen in comfort. Honestly, I'm sad I didn't get a chance to do it this year.
I was especially envious when I saw the World Series victory celebrations. I should have been there. I read that it was the 7th largest gathering of people in history. 5 million people. If they had decided to form their own State they would have been the 23rd largest. Remarkably, and somewhat surprisingly, there was no rioting, no looting, in a city that is known for an outrageous murder rate. Chicago from The Loop north, and for maybe 6-8 blocks west of the lake is really a remarkably safe city. Angry people accuse the city of herding the bad element into their bad neighborhoods, generally abusing them and ruthlessly and unconstitutionally punishing them if they bring their evil activities into the business and tourist centers. It wouldn't surprise me if that was true. It also wouldn't surprise me if the forces that express such outrage at the practice are the prime beneficiaries and are glad to be the beneficiaries even if they can't admit it publicly or even privately. For better or worse, when you see the population of an average sized State crushed into the area of Grant Park without it turning violent, you have to think something has been achieved, for better or worse.
I can't claim the Cubs as my team, despite my love for their city and their neighborhood and their ballpark. Even if I don't go to Detroit to see them, the Tigers will always be my baseball team since I was 8 years old and the '68 took the World Series in wonderfully dramatic fashion. That started my lifelong interest in baseball which admittedly has waxed and waned over the years. My second awakening of baseball fandom came when I was around 1980 when Bill James' Baseball Abstract came to my attention and rekindled something in me which had previously made me fascinated with the stats on the backs of baseball cards. It was a vision of rationality -- of a minor corner of the universe that made sense, even if the rest of the world wallowed in ignorance. It would be another couple of decades before Billy Beane proved those principles correct (and even longer than that until Moneyball made it common knowledge). Since the Red Sox couldn't convince Beane to come work for them, they went looking for a another stat guy to run things and found Theo Epstein who used those principles to end the Red Sox curse, then moved to Chicago where he managed to lift and even longer curse. You can read about that angle here.
It was an interesting ongoing lesson for me in the resistance of humanity to the rational. Something that the data showed so clearly and definitively, yet the world was quite content to just not believe it. Something that has grown more clear to me everyday I live -- people are not rational, they are emotional, even when they think they are rational they aren't. That includes me, although I hope I am not just making myself feel good when I say I am more aware of it and therefore guard against it more than most people. Even now, evidently, I can't just be glad for the Cubs. I have to look for the sharp angle. Sad.
But not sad. Happy for the Cubs, happy for Chicago, happy for a victory for rationality that is celebrated by 5 million people. Maybe there is hope after all. I must never to let another summer pass without an afternoon in Wrigleyville.
