Sitting in the stands under the hand-operated scoreboard at Wrigley Field, there were constant, welcome reminders of the recent past, as nostalgia filled the spring evening.
Jon Lester was on the mound, Kyle Schwarber was in left field and in one section of the bleachers, Cubs fans were shoulder to shoulder on a warm night on the North Side of Chicago.
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“This is everything I wanted it to be,” said Wayne Pugh, a 45-year-old Cubs fan who lives in North Center.
In the eighth inning of the Cubs’ 7-3 win over old friends Lester, Schwarber and their new team, the Washington Nationals, I saw a guy wearing a Kosuke Fukudome jersey booing a Cubs employee who confiscated a cup snake in our section.
And that’s when I knew nature had damn near healed.
For one series, the Cubs are hosting a “fully vaccinated” section in the upper section of the center-field bleachers. On Monday, there was no social distancing and for the most part, no masks. And things were basically like they were.
It was a mixed crowd, young and old, hipsters and diehards. There were at least a half-dozen people in my view wearing jerseys representing the 2008 Cubs. The air was redolent of Hot Doug’s sausages.
A couple of days after I heard about the special sections, I bought two tickets (they lasted longer than I expected) and took my 10-year-old son, Gabe.
To sit in this section you needed a wristband, and to get that wristband you had to show proof of vaccination with a matching ID. Fans under 16 needed a negative test within 72 hours. Over the weekend, the White Sox’s vaccinated section didn’t require tests for fans under 16. I liked the extra precaution at Wrigley.
Despite the normal annoyances of a packed bleacher section, the crowd was overwhelmingly pleasant, an observation that was backed up in brief conversations with ushers and the employees who were in charge of checking vaccinations and passing out wristbands.
“I don’t care that it’s crazy crowded,” one usher said to me. “I’m just happy to be out here.”
We got to our seats early before the section filled up, but there were already people behind us when we sat down, and that felt strange, sitting so close to strangers. Until it didn’t.
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“This is normal,” said Pugh’s friend Blake Nagel, who was wearing a Carlos Marmol jersey. “This is nice.”
People came in groups, but I noticed the return of an auditory sensation: Conversations between strangers. Think about it: with masks and social distancing, how many conversations have you had with strangers, in person, since last March?
The Cubs advertised the tickets as $20, but they’re the only team in town that doesn’t bake in the amusement tax to the sticker price. Still, for $30 a pop, it was a deal. The center-field deck, where Bill Veeck used to tan with his wooden leg during games, is obviously miles away from the plate, but it offers a unique bird’s-eye view of the action. In the top of the eighth, I felt like I could see Nico Hoerner’s game-saving defensive play happen in slow motion.
We picked a perfect night to try this out. The weather was springtime warm and the bleachers get the last rays of the setting sun.
The added benefit, of course, was the return of Lester and Schwarber, both of whom look odd wearing Washington Nationals uniforms. They resembled famous athletes who do cameos in movies playing for other teams. (Think Bobby Hurley playing for Indiana in “Blue Chips.”)
The Cubs non-tendered Schwarber and let Lester walk after giving him a lowball contract offer. For two players who were so instrumental in ending the Cubs’ World Series drought, it was a bitter way for it to end. But we’re going to see more of those cold roster moves soon. Pretty soon, the 2016 team will be celebrated like the 1985 Bears.
Lester got cheers from the scant fans in attendance when he walked into the outfield to do his pregame running exercise. He even had to break his usual icy kayfabe and tip his cap when he warmed up to his usual song: Jason Aldean’s “Gonna Know We Were Here.” He got a round of applause when he stepped to the plate and a standing ovation when he was pulled from the game after giving up a Javy Báez home run in the sixth.
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It’s not often fans can root for a Cubs homer and then give a non-ironic salute to the pitcher who gave it up.
Lester also gave up homers to Jason Heyward and Willson Contreras. It wasn’t his night, giving up five runs in 5 1/3 innings.
In that regard, Lester admitted he was walking a tightrope between bathing in the adulation and trying to win a game for the last-place Nationals. That love-fest will be easier to handle Tuesday when the Cubs honor him before the game, as they did Schwarber on Monday.
Schwarber seemed touched by the video and the No. 12 scoreboard panel he got from manager David Ross before the game. He had to step out of the box as fans roared when he walked up to “Thuggish Ruggish Bone.” As he told reporters after the game, Kris Bryant left him a Twix bar to snack on in left field. He homered after that energy boost.
Needless to say, both Lester and Schwarber will drink for free as long as Wrigleyville is standing.
Both deserved a full house for their return and Ross joked the Cubs should petition Mayor Lori Lightfoot to let fans pack Wrigley for Lester’s pregame ceremony Tuesday.
While Lightfoot isn’t ready to eliminate the mask mandate in Chicago just yet, earlier in the month she did insinuate that the city could be fully open by July 4, which would seemingly allow for the Cubs and White Sox to go to full capacity.
To ease into that scenario, the Cubs and Sox will increase capacity from 25 to 60 percent at the end of the month. For the Cubs, that starts on May 28.
On Monday, the Cubs drew a season-high 11,144 because of the vax section, which allowed them to surpass the 25 percent limit. (The Cubs said there were about 500 seats in the section, but that’s a slightly low estimate. There were 801 more fans Monday than in previous sold-out home games.)
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Sixty percent capacity is around 24,000 fans, which, to be honest, is actually a comfortable number for the fans who can get tickets, if not a profitable one for the team collecting the money. I can’t say I missed being crammed next to people, which is why I bought seats at the end of a row.
For a variety of reasons, Cubs president Crane Kenney told the Tribune’s Meghan Montemurro he didn’t think they would continue a fully vaccinated section after this series, something that his White Sox peer Brooks Boyer told reporters last week.
“The last thing we want to have happen is for us to have a flawed system where everyone’s going to be sitting elbow to elbow, and those folks may not at some point be wearing masks,” Kenney told Montemurro.
After buying a ticket to this section, I got an email with rules and notes, which said fans had to “wear a face covering unless actively eating or drinking in your ticketed seat location,” due to city of Chicago rules. (Mayor Lightfoot recently said she wanted clarification on the CDC’s recent rulings about masks.)
This was not only not followed but not even mildly enforced in our section and also in the regular bleachers, where fans were still spaced out. With vaccines in our blood (or a recent negative test in my son’s case) and the CDC declaration that masks generally aren’t needed outdoors, I didn’t feel nervous at all. Obviously, this was a self-selecting group, so not everyone would feel that comfortable in this environment.
But it wasn’t as if there weren’t any precautions or reminders of how the pandemic isn’t over. When fans were coming and going to their seats from the concession stands, most wore masks, which were still required in the concourses. Most of us have been doing this long enough, the instinct is to be safe.
While I’ve been to games on both sides of town since last year, going from empty stadiums to small crowds, for my son, it was his first sporting event since NBA All-Star Saturday night last February.
As I watched him eat ice cream from a helmet and crack open peanuts from our bag, surrounded by happy strangers in the historic bleachers of Wrigley Field, I thought about how lucky we were to be there, safe and happy after more than a year.
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As we left the game in the bottom of the eighth with the Cubs holding a comfortable lead, fans in our section were chanting “Free cup snake!” as they desperately tried to stack and pass empty beer cups.
An older usher standing off to the side could only smile.
“It’s funny stuff,” he said.
(Photo of Jon and Gabe Greenberg: Wayne Pugh / Special to The Athletic)
