Eamus Catuli
It was built in 1914 as Weeghman Park for the Chicago Federal League baseball team, the Chicago Whales. It was also the home of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League from 1921-1970.
It was also called Cubs Park from 1920 to 1926 before finally being renamed for then Cubs team owner and chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr..
Located in the residential neighborhood of Lakeview, Wrigley Field sits on an irregular block bounded by Clark and Addison Streets and Waveland and Sheffield Avenues. The area surrounding the ballpark contains bars, restaurants and other establishments and is typically referred to as Wrigleyville.
During Cubs games, fans will often stand outside the park on Waveland Avenue, waiting for home run balls hit over the wall and out of the park. However, as a tradition, Cubs fans inside and sometimes even outside the park will promptly throw any home run ball hit by an opposing player back onto the field of play, a ritual depicted in the 1977 stage play, Bleacher Bums, and in the 1993 film, Rookie of the Year.
Wrigley Field is nicknamed The Friendly Confines, a phrase popularized by "Mr.
Since 2006, its capacity has been 41,118, making Wrigley Field the fourth-smallest and most actively used ballpark in 2006. It is the oldest National League ballpark and the second oldest active major league ballpark (after Fenway Park on April 20, 1912), and the only remaining Federal League park.
When opened in 1914, Wrigley Field had a seating capacity of 14,000 and cost $250,000 to build.
History
Before the Federal League
At the turn of the 20th century, the block bounded by Clark, Addison, Waveland, and Sheffield streets was home to the peaceful confines of the Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary, along with the Hildebrandt Coal Factory. The extension of the Elevated system into the area in 1900 led to rapid development of the surrounding neighborhood.
As the neighborhood started taking on an increasingly urban character, the Seminary sought to sell its land and find a quieter location.
Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary, circa 1900, seen from Sheffield Avenue. The building in the foreground is located at the site of the present-day Wrigley Field scoreboard.
The building behind it is in the present location of the left field bleachers.
In 1909, the minor-league American Association was seeking to become a third major league. Key to its designs was the establishment of a franchise in the lucrative Chicago market to compete with the Cubs and White Sox.
Charles Havenor, owner of the AA Milwaukee Brewers, and Joe and Mike Cantillion, owners of the AA Minneapolis Millers, saw an opportunity to make profit by snapping up choice property and selling it back to the AA. Since the White Sox played on the South Side at South Side Park, and the Cubs were firmly ensconced on the West Side at West Side Park, Havenor and the Cantillions looked to the rapidly developing North Side as the best place to situate the team.
The Seminary's location represented the best open land on the North Side. The Seminary, eager to move, sold the property to Havenor and the Cantillions for $175,000 and relocated to the suburb of Maywood, Illinois, where it remained until 1967.
The American Association's plans to become a major league and enter the Chicago market fell through, however, and the lot remained idle over the next few years.
Havenor eventually sold his interests to Edmund Archambault, a real estate investor.
Weeghman Park and the Federal League (1913–1915)
The Federal League began its existence as a minor league in 1913, locating franchises in six cities, including Chicago. The Tinker acquisition was the shot in the arm that gave the franchise the momentum to think big for the upcoming 1914 season.
Weeghman chose to relocate the franchise from DePaul to the former Seminary grounds at Clark and Addison owned by Archambault and the Cantillions.
Within several months, however, Weeghman would spend several times that amount in erecting his new ballpark.
Weeghman hired Zachary Taylor Davis, architect of Comiskey Park (which became the home of the White Sox in June 1910), to design the new ballpark. Note the large old Seminary building beyond the fence, which was demolished after the 1914 season and replaced with bleachers.
Work on the property didn't begin until February 23, 1914, exactly two months before the Chifeds' scheduled home opener.
After the grounds had been cleared, groundbreaking ceremonies took place on March 4. Despite a brief strike by construction workers in early April, the new park was ready for baseball by the date of the home opener on April 23, 1914.
The new ballpark, known as Weeghman Park, was a modern steel and concrete baseball plant (as stadiums were often called then).
It featured a single-decked grandstand sweeping from right field behind home plate to near the left field corner. Perched on top of the grandstand roof behind home plate was a small area for the press.
A modern-day visitor to the original Weeghman Park would have difficulty recognizing the outfield aside from the familiar buildings on the opposite side of Waveland and Sheffield Avenues (which haven't changed much at all).
The distance from home plate to the right field brick fence along Sheffield Avenue was around 300 feet at the foul line. Like most of the parks of the day, the field was essentially angular, as it was shaped by the surrounding grid street pattern.
The scoreboard was relocated to center field, where it has remained in one form or another since then.
On the field, the Chifeds were renamed the Chicago Whales for the club's sophomore season. Weeghman Park was fast becoming the best place to watch baseball in Chicago, as the Whales fought their way to the Federal League pennant in one of the closest races in major league history.
The purchase was in reality a merger between the Whales and the Cubs, as a number of former Whales stars, such as Max Flack and Claude Hendrix, found themselves playing in the same park as Cubs the following season.
Weeghman Park, home of the Federal League champion Chicago Whales, as seen from Sheffield Avenue, in 1915. This original grandstand configuration would undergo a massive expansion between the 1922 and 1923 seasons.
After another year in the bottom half of the standings, the Cubs won the National League pennant in 1918 under manager Fred Mitchell. The victory was not without a little outside help, as wartime conditions during the height of American involvement in World War I caused major league baseball to end the regular season on September 1st.
For the Cubs, the experience was a bust, as the club lost the series to Babe Ruth and the Boston Red Sox in six games to relatively anemic attendance. Rumors of thrown games plagued the Cubs during the latter part of the 1920 season gave impetus to the criminal investigations which eventually led to uncovering the infamous Black Sox Scandal across town with the White Sox.
The grandstand would be sliced into three pieces, with the home plate section placed on rollers and moved roughly 60 feet west (away from right field), and the left field section about 100 feet northwest. The team drifted aimlessly through the middle of the standings in 1923 and '24.
Their main objection was that the new left field bleachers were simply too easy a target for right-handed hitters. By late July and early August 1925, reporters were frequently griping about games lost to fly balls which would have been easy outs without the left field bleachers.
Nearly 900,000 fans went through the turnstiles at a park with a capacity of just over 30,000. The original idea was to have the job completed by the opening of the 1927 season, but by April, only the third-base side of the upper deck had been completed, temporarily giving the park a startlingly asymmetrical appearance.
Cubs Park was formally renamed Wrigley Field prior to the start of the 1927 season.
Temporary bleacher seats erected behind the left-field fence as seen during the 1929 World Series.
The seats had been removed in August 1925 after complaints that they were too inviting to right-handed batters.
Despite the half-finished state of the upper deck expansion, the 1927 Cubs drew over 1.1 million fans, becoming the first National League team ever to do so. Batters and bleacher fans disliked it, and it was removed after a couple of seasons.
That would put the closest point of the left end of the bleachers no more than about 350 feet from home plate, a fact many pitchers have cursed over the years. But the shallowness of the left-center power alley, really too cozy for major league standards, and the resultant increase in home runs in the decades since 1937, suggest that the Chicago Tribune's original skeptical assessment was correct.
The "basket", an angling chain-link fence that runs along the top of the outfield wall, was installed at the start of the 1970 season.
He eventually decided never to install lights for a variety of publicly stated reasons, so Wrigley Field remained a bastion of day baseball until the Chicago Tribune Company era, which began in 1981; the first night game was not until 1988.
Chicago Cubs vs Boston Red Sox - Interleague play in June, 2005
Panoramic view of Wrigley Field
Panoramic view of Wrigley field in 2008
"Building a New Tradition" (1981-Present)
Night baseball (1988)
Wrigleyville under the lights during game 6 of the 2003 NLCS
The Cubs had been run almost like a hobby by the Wrigleys, but the Tribune Company was interested in the Cubs strictly as a business. Some Cubs fans also had fond associations with Gabby Hartnett's famous "Homer in the Gloaming," in which Hartnett hit a crucial home run in the bottom of the ninth of a game on the verge of being called for darkness, helping the Cubs to win the 1938 pennant.
The City of Chicago had passed an ordinance banning night events at Wrigley Field, due to its presence in the residential Lakeview neighborhood, so Tribune was unable to install lights unless the ordinance was repealed.
The renovations should go a long way toward fixing that situation.
First, as reported on the Cubs web page and also reported and pictured in the November issue of Chicago Cubs Vine Line, the Cubs official fan magazine (p.4), the outfield and portions of the infield were replaced by turf purchased from an Oswego, Illinois, firm. According to local legend, one day, Kingman launched a bomb that landed on the third porch roof on the east (center field) side of Kenmore Avenue, some 550 feet away.
No matter the weather, many fans congregate during batting practice and games on Waveland Avenue, behind left field, and Sheffield Avenue, behind right field, for a chance to catch a home run ball.
Other Sports at Wrigley Field
Wrigley Field football configuration
The Chicago Bears of the National Football League played at Wrigley Field from 1921 to 1970 before relocating to Soldier Field.
Also, the animated comedy, Family Guy featured a scene at Wrigley Field, which parodied the Steve Bartman incident. The Whales lost the first game, 5–4, in the eleventh inning after having led 4–1 with two outs in the ninth inning.
During a contest with the San Francisco Giants, a hot dog stand near the right field corner catches fire, and Wrigleyville's Fire Engine House #78 (built in 1915) is called in from its "bullpen" across Waveland to extinguish the blaze.
July 23, 1962: Wrigley Field goes international, as Telstar transmits images from the Phillies-Cubs game (patched into the WGN-TV coverage) to overseas receiving stations.
July 30, 1962: Second 1962 Major League Baseball All-Star Game (two were played each year 1959-1962).