If there are two things Yankees and Cubs fans have in common, it's an affinity for pinstripes and history.
When I walked into Wrigley Field for the first time ever Saturday night, I felt this familiar, yet distant, experience -- like my first trip to Fenway or the first time I went to the old Yankee Stadium. Every step I took, every inch of the field that came further into view, the history just enveloped me.
I've written before about that feeling baseball gives you: when it first hits, it leaves you short of breath, heart racing, a pit in your stomach -- almost like love at first sight. Admittedly, I grew up thinking that feeling was unique to being a Yankees fan -- not because of a sense that we were "better," but because it was simply all I knew. That feeling is what sucked me into baseball and broadly into this beautiful thing we call sports with all the camaraderie, community and kinship that comes with it. How could that feeling ever exist in multiple places?
I had that feeling Saturday night for the first time since Sept. 21, 2008, the day the Yankees played their final game at the old stadium. While I love my team more with each passing year, the new ballpark doesn't elicit anywhere near the emotion as the original. There's little history, little sense of the players and fans who walked before you. If anything, I'm grateful to Wrigley for reminding me what it's like when your building is just as meaningful as your team.
When I first walked into Wrigley, it was nothing short of magical. The first sight of the ivy, the manual scoreboard, the rooftops across the street from the outfield, the sheer beauty of the perfectly manicured field -- it's pure baseball, an old-school American experience with the benefit of modern optimism. The montage of last year's World Series win -- their first since 1908 -- set to AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top," hits you at your core, whether you're a Yankees fan, like me, or for the Red Sox and Mets fans who were also in our group.
Throughout the stadium, you can sense both the century of futility and the satisfaction of triumph -- the pent-up frustration building to the ultimate celebration as the ghost of Ernie Banks looked down.
Sure, it was so cold I couldn't feel my face by the third inning, and yes, the 103-year-old ballpark shows and smells her age. It's not the easiest to navigate, nor does it boast the fanciest amenities or concessions. But what it lacks in flash, it makes up for in substance, staring down the desires of real estate developers, celebrity guest chefs and those wanting more luxury suites. I'd trade the Hard Rock Café, elevators and the Loebel's steak sandwich at new Yankee Stadium for a Mike's Special and seemingly endless concrete ramps at the old ballpark any day. People might have called that park a toilet bowl, but dammit, it was our toilet bowl.
It's easy to get jaded in today's sports climate, especially when your heart rests with a one-percenter team with a fan base that can be both cruelly fickle and unjustly entitled, or with owners who at times seem to forget about the fans themselves. (Trust me -- I'm also a Knicks fan.)
But when you talk to a Cubs fan, that childlike approach, that innocent enthusiasm for this beautiful game, is immediately restored -- even when their team is losing in what would become an eventual sweep. I was waiting in line for a Wrigley dog in the fourth inning when former Cub Starlin Castro hit a two-run home run to put the Yankees up 8-0. Earlier, they scored five runs in the first before the Cubs even saw a single pitch. Their fans had every reason to be salty. Instead, a guy in line turned to me, and, upon seeing my Mariano Rivera jersey, asked if I came from New York just for the game. We had a whole conversation about the Yankees and the Cubs, with the familiar refrain from non-New Yorkers of, "I hate the Yankees, but man, when I was growing up I wanted to be Derek Jeter."
In the seats themselves, that old notion that the real fans are the ones sitting in the nosebleeds certainly rang true. In section 536, far above the right-field line, we had the benefit of having several Yankees fans around us. But the row in front of us was entirely Cubs, flanked by two Yankees fans who were trying their best not to rub the score in their friends' faces. Even with the lopsided game, the Cubs fans just wanted to talk baseball, even if it meant dredging up memories of their crosstown rivals winning it all in 2005. There was obligatory Yankees banter, a predictable argument about the DH, the inevitable Aroldis Chapman lament -- nine innings of two cities and two longstanding fan bases coming together on the common ground of the baseball diamond.
This kind of thing happened throughout the weekend, no matter where we went in Chicago. I got the sense that a lot of New Yorkers flew in for the series, and Chicagoans were incredibly welcoming. It might be a stereotype of Midwestern friendliness, but every Cubs fan I talked to, from bartenders to taxi drivers to tour guides, genuinely just wanted to talk about baseball. You can throw perfect strangers on the street into that mix; when I was walking from Wrigley to a nearby bar, a guy in a parked van yelled to our group, "Remember when Kerry Wood struck out 20?!" "Yep, 1998!" I yelled back. (That bar, by the way, had a Yankees flag flying alongside a Cubs flag, a sign of just how ridiculously far Midwestern graciousness extends.)
I wish I had made it out to Wrigley before the Cubs had won the World Series just to compare; I can't tell you from experience whether this joviality is a byproduct of the team finally winning -- the honeymoon or hangover period creating a sense of relief and euphoria in the months following October. At least that's the theory thrown out by the lone Red Sox fan in our group, and she would know better than most. I never got along with Bostonians better than in November 2004.
Whether the 2016 World Series changed their tone or Cubs fans are just naturally good-natured, I'm genuinely appreciative of my first experience at Wrigley -- hopefully the first of many. If history is what binds us, it's also what hides in every shadow of every outfield in a Major League park, and none more so than at Wrigley.
When Jeter retired in 2014, I wrote that the nature of baseball -- and in particular, being a Yankees fan -- is looking forward while keeping an eye on the past. For four days in Chicago, the Cubs, their ballpark and a handy series sweep allowed me to live squarely in the present.