On Friday, the Cubs will be in Miami to play the Marlins.
If the game starts to drag, fans will have the opportunity to tune into a 17-episode rom-com to be posted that day on the team’s TikTok account called “Nine Innings to Love.” The plot line centers on 20-somethings finding romance in the stands at Wrigley Field.
The production may not win any awards, but we expect the curiosity factor will be intense. And we salute the Cubs for this creative way of marketing the singular Wrigley experience, which revolves around sunshine, beer and, yes, flirtation as much as it focuses on baseball. Heck, owner Tom Ricketts met his future wife in the bleachers way back when.
But of late the Wrigley bleachers experience has taken on a different sort of character.
One more akin to “Fight Club.”
There have been two brawls in the outfield stands in the past few weeks, the first involving several, er, gentlemen during the Crosstown Classic with the White Sox on Aug. 17 and the second being more of a one-on-one bout just 12 days later during the Cubs’ 17-5 drubbing of the Cincinnati Reds.
Perhaps there’s another multi-episode Wrigley-focused drama crying out to be created. This one could be centered, say, on the life of a fan permanently banned from the park after fisticuffs with a fellow attendee who insulted his family and his elaborate schemes to get back into Wrigley to see his favorite team. The possibilities are legion.
The Cubs, of course, would want no part in that production, preferring naturally to accentuate the good vibes that permeate Wrigley Field the vast majority of the time — certainly during the many games we’ve attended over the years.
Even just general rowdy behavior has lessened in our experience over the past few decades, a period in which the Cubs have become more of a perennial contender for postseason play instead of the “lovable losers” of lore.
So we’re hopeful this rock-em-sock-em-robots era at Wrigley is short-lived and will be remembered simply as an aberration once this season is over. In the interest of fairness, we wish for the same on the other side of town at Rate Field, where a nasty fight erupted in the upper deck stands on Aug. 23.
They say all is fair in love and war. Let’s stick to love at the ballpark.
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