Joe had never been a baseball enthusiast and
had been known to comment with disgust, after watching a few games on TV,
“They’re just reruns with different scores.”
But he was
excited about driving from the northwest suburbs to Wrigley Field, picking up Dad’s
friend, Martin, on the way. Joe also
knew they would be eating hot dogs, chips, and pop—not usually available in
their nutrition conscious home.
When they
left, Mom called out, “Have fun. Don’t
eat too much junk. I’ll have dinner
ready by 6:00.” Right, Joe thought,
broccoli was sure to be on her menu.
After
picking up Martin at his condo, they got to the historic, ivy covered ballpark
in time for batting practice. After the
game started, they ate their way through nine innings of salty, greasy, fatty
treats.
Back at
home, the clock ticked around to 6:30 and they still weren’t home. Even allowing for heavy traffic their mother
thought they should have been home by then.
She was beginning to worry, “What could have happened to them?”
She tuned the radio to the Cubs
station and heard, “Cubs 1, Dodgers 1.
Top of the 17th and still tied.”
Oh, my gosh, she thought, the game is
still on. No wonder they’re not home.
She didn’t know much about baseball since she turned her back on the
game with the treacherous behavior of the Dodgers, but she knew this had to be
a record. She pulled the casserole out
of the oven, so it wouldn’t dry out, and wrapped it in a towel, so it wouldn’t
cool off.
Back at the ballpark, the game was
being called because of darkness. On
August 17, 1982, Wrigley Field did not have night lights due to the neighbors’ determined
objections. The game would continue the
following day.
Joe was annoyed. “This is NOT fair. We paid for a game, we should see a whole
game.”
His Dad tried to explain, “It's
too dark to see the ball. The players
can’t see it, and even if they tried to play we couldn’t see what they were
doing.”
“Why don’t we just go over to
Comiskey Park, where they do have lights, and finish the game there?” Joe wasn’t a White Sox fan by any means, but
he was willing to go to their field if they could see the end of the game. He knew there was no way his Dad was coming
back tomorrow to see the end of the game.
Ann and Beth were tired of sitting
on hard plastic/wooden bleachers and ready to go home. Martin agreed, “Hey, guys I got to get to
work in the morning. I need my beauty sleep.”
They wiped the evidence of greasy
foods off their mouths and headed for the parking lot to start the journey home.
The baseball fans walked in the
front door at 8:25.
“Do you want any dinner?” Mom asked.
“Or did Dad stuff you with junk?”
Dad defended himself saying, “For
god’s sake it was 6 hours, I had to feed them something.”
“Right,” Mom agreed. “I’ll just put this in the ‘frig for
tomorrow.”
The next day, they all watched the
end of the game on TV. The Cubs lost 2-1
after 21 innings.
Joe grumbled, “We could have just
watched the Highlights of the Game and saved a lot of time and trouble.”
The End 