Last night’s nationally televised opening night game at Wrigley Field had everything! The Ernie Banks memorial construction area tarp!
Good morning. pic.twitter.com/0lOP4torKR
— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) April 5, 2015
That new video board in left field, which from certain angles looked almost bigger than the stadium itself (and from other angles didn’t look much smaller)!
Fans peeing in cups in the corridor because the men’s room lines were half an hour long!
The tarps and the video board were expected; the peeing in cups less so, and frankly hard to understand, given that the Cubs sold 5,000 fewer tickets than usual thanks to the bleachers being closed for construction. (I guess the bleacher restrooms were closed as well, but still.) Maybe the Cubs were just trying to get all of the awfulness out of the way early in the season — they also got shut out 3-0. Everybody will be peeing in the right place once Kris Bryant is allowed to arrive!
Spring Training seemed to drag on for about six months to me, and then I accidentally missed the start of the freaking season.
Oh well, the Rockies will be in Milwaukee at noon.
That’s filthy. Maybe I’m glad I missed it.
I can hold my pee for ten hours if I have to. TMI…..
Hideous. I’d be so embarrassed if I were a Cubs fan. I mean, even more embarrassed than usual.
Not sure the bleacher restrooms even exist. The underparts of the entire bleacher section are still pretty gutted. Even so, the bleachers are separated from the rest of the stadium. They have their own entrance and I don’t think there is a way for fans to get from the bleachers to the rest of the seats.
Still to prioritize “Get the giant TV working” over “make sure people can go to the bathroom” seems to be a unsurprisingly Ricketts thing to do.
To be fair, those could be cups of beer in that photo. With ballpark beer, who can tell the difference?
you never buy a beer; you just rent one.
They played about as bad as the condition Wrigley is in too.
Michael, when I went last September, the bleacher fans could access the rest of the stadium but grandstand tickets couldn’t go in the bleacher area (I guess that’s so you didn’t get more people in general admission seats than the area can hold). Opposite the way it used to be at a lot of other stadiums.
Ah, Cubs fans acting like the savages they are.
Michael:
Yeah, that’s not an inconsistency at all is it? “Who cares about the fans, we’ve got advertising to sell”.
I will be watching the Cubs attendance figures (and actual people in the seats) closely the next couple of years. People – including long time Cub fans – have had enough of this kind of treatment… and we’ve already begun to see the decline in tickets sold.
Yes, the Cubs have been crappy. But they’ve been crappy for a long time (not just the last 3 seasons).
Wow. That video board is horrible. Too large, out of place for this ballpark. Even with the video board Wrigley field still has the worst lit ballpark in baseball. Not having lights in the outfield gives it that shadowy look and feel. There are minor league ballparks with better lighting. Oh well, you break it you bought it.Give the Ricketts family credit; they killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
@Pauly: I love the new screen. I would say the only thing horrible is the current condition of the bleacher for opening day.
Let this be a lesson to any stadiums that get remodeled or touched up, finish the damn bathrooms first.
People can forget that they didn’t have an extra beer, they can forgive that you ran out of hot dogs and they have to go to McDonald’s afterwards, but pissing somewhere on a wall will not go away.
@Pauly
I thought the outfield last night looked darker than it usually does on night games. That said, part of the bleacher construction will include new light towers in both Left & Right field according to architectural renderings.
I also visited Wrigley to take photos & see construction progress last Wednesday and was shocked to see the depth of the “Jumbotron.” I’m not sure why the Jumbotron needs to be so deep, or what requires it to be so deep, when the panels for the Jumbotron being craned into place looked maybe a foot deep.
Brian: I’ve been out there a handful of time, I guess I never bothered to try to get to the main stand from the bleachers. So, hey I learned something. Anyway, it’s still like a DMZ out there. Guess they could issue people hard hats and cart them around the construction if the bathrooms at the base of the ramps to the bleachers are functional.
Still… Good job. Good effort, Cubs.
The Cubs have treating fans like crap since at least the early 90’s. Surprised it took so long for fans to figure it out, however these are the same people who believed Sammy Sosa could hit all those HR’s.