Wrigley Field's Planned Renovation Threatens a Chicago Rooftop Tradition

Eric Wolverton is drinking a beer at a Cubs game. Actually, near a Cubs game. As 40,500 people—a near-sellout crowd—settled into their hard plastic seats at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, Wolverton perched on the bleachers on a rooftop across the street. He paid $124, roughly the cost of a field-level ticket at other Major League ballparks, for the privilege of cheering on the Cubs from atop 3643 N. Sheffield Ave., one of the 16 for-profit spectator spaces that make up the Wrigleyville Rooftops Association. The Cubs, who currently have the league’s third-worst record, are playing the third in a four-game series against the Dodgers, who’ve already beaten them twice. “You don’t go to a Cubs game to watch good baseball; you go to see Wrigley,” Wolverton says, and the ballpark, he adds, is best viewed from above. “Everyone talks about how historic Wrigley is, how going to a game is like stepping back in time,” he says. “And it is.” “But,” interjects Mike Gordon, Wolverton’s friend and fellow Cubs die-hard, “that place is a dump.”

Wrigley Field, built in 1914 on Chicago’s north side, was once considered cutting edge; it was the first ballpark to include concession stands, the first to have an organist, and the first to allow fans to keep foul balls. But efforts to improve it have been largely unsuccessful, getting mired in fan outrage and the Windy City’s unique brand of nostalgia-driven politics. Wrigley was the last big-league ballpark to install lights for night games, in 1988, and even that inspired fierce resistance from the Chicago City Council and a group of activist fans called C.U.B.S. (Citizens United for Baseball in the Sunshine). That six-year battle, for essentially the right to host games after working hours, fell in the Cubs’ favor after the team threatened to relocate to the suburbs.