Wrigley Field

• 1. Introduction

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  Wrigley Field sits on the North Side of Chicago, in a neighborhood so tightly packed with apartment buildings that fans can watch the game from rooftops across the street. The address is 1060 West Addison, and it has been a place of baseball since the 23rd of April 1914. More than a century later, it still does not have a parking lot. The ivy on the outfield walls, planted in 1937, still runs across bare brick that has never been padded. The hand-turned scoreboard, installed that same year, has never lost time on its clock. And the scoreboard operator working inside today is the third generation of their family to do so, their grandfather having started when the scoreboard was first built. How did a ballpark that opened as a home for a minor league offshoot grow into a National Historic Landmark? What battles were fought over its rooftops, its lights, and its walls? And what happens when a living neighborhood and a century-old stadium try to share the same block?

• 2. A Park Before the Cubs

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  Charles Weeghman hired architect Zachary Taylor Davis to build him a ballpark, and Davis had it ready by the 23rd of April 1914. Weeghman's team, the Chicago Whales, played in the Federal League, a short-lived rival to the established major leagues. The Whales came in second in the Federal League in 1914 and won its championship in 1915, only to find the league itself folding that same year. Weeghman moved quickly. He assembled a group of investors, including a chewing gum manufacturer named William Wrigley Jr., and they purchased the Chicago Cubs from Charles P. Taft for about $500,000. Weeghman relocated the Cubs from the dilapidated West Side Grounds to his own two-year-old park, almost immediately. By 1918, Wrigley had acquired the controlling interest in the club. In November 1926, he renamed the park Wrigley Field. What had been built for a team that no longer existed became, within a decade, one of the most recognizable addresses in American sport. The Cubs played their very first home game at the park on the 20th of April 1916, defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7-6 in 11 innings. That day set a pattern the park has never quite shaken: close games, loud crowds, and a neighborhood that pays close attention.

• 3. The Ivy and the Scoreboard

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  In 1937, Cubs President Bill Veeck was tasked with beautifying the stadium, and he decided to plant ivy on the outfield walls after being inspired by plantings he had seen at Perry Stadium in Indianapolis. The original choice was English ivy, known formally as Hedera helix, but it could not survive Chicago winters and was later replaced with Parthenocissus tricuspidata, commonly called Boston ivy or Japanese ivy. The ivy grew so thick and green as summer progressed that it disguised the hard brick surface entirely. Local vendors even sold cuttings from it. The Cubs tried to grow ivy on the outside of the park as well, but the plantings were repeatedly stolen, so the effort was abandoned. The ivy's status in baseball is now so particular that it carries its own ground rules: a ball that lodges in the vines is ruled a ground-rule double, but if a fielder reaches in and dislodges it, the ball remains live. Because of the ivy, Wrigley is the only stadium in the major leagues without padded outfield walls, having been grandfathered into the rule that requires padding. The scoreboard installed that same year of 1937 was equally distinctive. A number turner watches score changes on a computer and manually replaces steel numbers inside the board, updating the games one by one. The board tracks every National League team through flags on three flagpoles, their order reflecting the current standings. Its clock has never lost time. Not until 2010 was the scoreboard extensively rehabilitated, and even then its essential mechanism remained unchanged.

• 4. Lights, Delayed

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  For decades, every game at Wrigley Field was played in daylight. The Cubs resisted installing lights long after every other park in the major leagues had done so. In 1942, then-owner Philip K. Wrigley planned to finally put lights in, but the equipment was diverted to support the World War II effort before installation could begin. The first night game ever played at the ballpark came on the 1st of July 1943, when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League held its first midseason All-Star Game there under temporary lights. The teams that night were drawn from the South Bend Blue Sox, Rockford Peaches, Kenosha Comets, and Racine Belles. That occasion remained an exception. By the late 1980s, baseball officials announced that Wrigley would be barred from hosting any future postseason games unless permanent lights were installed. Major League Baseball reportedly had contingency plans for the 1984 World Series as well, prepared to move Cubs home games to an American League park had Chicago advanced past the San Diego Padres in the playoffs that year. After 5,687 consecutive day games at Wrigley, the lights finally came on during the evening of the 8th of August 1988, for a game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Rain ended that game after three and a half innings. The first official night game took place the following evening against the New York Mets, with the Cubs winning 6-4. Night games remain limited by an agreement with the city council to this day.

• 5. The Rooftop Wars

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  The apartment buildings along Waveland and Sheffield avenues have offered views into Wrigley Field since the park was first built, but those views did not become commercial until much later. By the mid-1980s, rooftop owners were installing bleacher-style grandstands and organizing their operations as businesses. The Sky Box on Sheffield opened in 1993 and eventually grew into a two-tier roof deck with bars on three levels and an elevator. In 1998, the city began requiring licenses and regulating those venues. Relations between the Cubs and rooftop owners collapsed in 2003, when the team erected a large screen blocking sightlines, and sued most rooftop businesses, alleging they were profiting from the team's product without paying for it. A settlement in 2004 required rooftop owners to pay the Cubs 17% of their gross revenues under a lease lasting until 2023. The dispute reignited when the Ricketts family announced the 1060 Project renovation in 2013. Rooftop owners threatened legal action, fearing new signage would obstruct their views. The Cubs could not reach an agreement, and by the end of the 2016 season the Ricketts family had acquired ten of the rooftop locations outright, with a financial stake in an eleventh. The consequences of those rooftop arrangements could be severe. In July 2016, former rooftop owner R. Marc Hamid was convicted on nine counts of mail fraud and illegal bank structuring. He had underreported attendance at the Sky Box on Sheffield from 2008 to 2011, concealing over $1 million in revenue and avoiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and royalties. In January 2017, he was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.

• 6. More Than a Baseball Park

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  The Chicago Bears of the National Football League played at Wrigley Field for 50 years, from 1921 to 1970, relocating to Soldier Field only because the NFL required its stadiums to seat at least 50,000 people following the AFL-NFL merger. At its peak, a portable structure called the "East Stand" raised the football capacity to about 47,000. The geometry required unusual accommodations: the south end zone was only eight yards deep rather than the regulation ten, and the corner of that end zone extended into the visiting baseball team's dugout, which was padded for safety. Five NFL championship games were played there, in 1933, 1937, 1941, 1943, and 1963. The Chicago Cardinals, now the Arizona Cardinals, also called Wrigley home from 1931 to 1939. Ice hockey arrived on the 1st of January 2009, when the NHL held its Winter Classic at the park, placing the rink from first base to third base for a game between the Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings, won by Detroit 6-4 in front of 40,818 fans. Soccer came in July 2012, when Italian club A.S. Roma defeated Poland's Zaglebie Lubin 4-0 in a friendly attended by 22,181 spectators. On the 8th of June 2024, a regular season National Women's Soccer League match between the Chicago Red Stars and Bay FC drew 35,038 spectators, breaking the league's attendance record. Those were the first women's teams to play at the stadium since 1943.

• 7. Wind and Distance

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  Lake Michigan sits less than a mile to the east of Wrigley Field, and that proximity shapes every game. In April and May, a northeast wind blows in off the lake, suppressing fly balls that might otherwise clear the fence. In summer, the wind shifts from the south and southwest, blowing out with enough force to carry routine fly balls over the wall. A third variety, the cross-wind running from left field corner to right field corner, sends balls bouncing in unpredictable directions. Many Cubs fans check the flags visible from the street before deciding what kind of game to expect. Ken Holtzman's first no-hitter, thrown on the 19th of August 1969, depended on that wind: in the seventh inning, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit a ball that appeared headed for the bleachers, but the wind carried it just enough for left fielder Billy Williams to leap up and catch it. With the wind going the other direction, Wrigley has produced some of the longest home runs on record. Dave Kingman, playing for the Mets on a very windy day in 1976, reportedly launched a ball estimated at some 550 feet, landing on the third porch roof on the east side of Kenmore Avenue. Sammy Sosa and Kingman each broke windows in apartment buildings across Waveland Avenue. The foul lines at Wrigley are currently the deepest in the major leagues, at 355 feet to the left field notch and 353 feet to the right field line, while true center field, unmarked, stretches roughly 390 feet.

• 8. Traditions and What Remains

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  Wrigley Field became the first Major League ballpark to introduce live organ music on the 26th of April 1941. As of July 2019, organist Gary Pressy held the record for 2,653 consecutive games without missing a single day of work across 33 years. The tradition of singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh inning stretch began when announcer Harry Caray arrived in 1982 and has continued since his death through a long rotation of guest conductors. Hall of Fame shortstop and first baseman Ernie Banks gave the park its enduring nickname, "The Friendly Confines". The park was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2020, with the U.S. Secretary of the Interior noting that its significance was woven into the national story of baseball. The landmark designation applies to the ivy as well: in 2004, the Chicago City Council specifically included it in Wrigley's landmark classification. During the 2016 postseason, fans began writing messages in chalk on the outer brick walls along Waveland and Sheffield, the crowds eventually bringing step ladders to reach the upper sections of the wall. The Cubs supplied chalk and added security. A sign that a rooftop club across Sheffield Avenue had maintained for years, labeled in Latin as "AC" for "Anno Catulorum," tracked the Cubs' years without a division championship, a pennant, and a World Series. When the Cubs won the World Series in 2016 for the first time since 1908, the sign was updated to read "AC000000". By 2025, the counter had begun again at "AC050909".