While strolling south on Clark Street, I stopped momentarily to peer into the window of one of the neighborhood’s sports bars to see what baseball feat had prompted a deep roar from the thousands packed into Wrigleyville on Wednesday night.
The night of game seven truly did feel like an ethereal dream, and not just because the Cubs won the World Series for the first time in more than a century. It was the communal spirit. On most nights, the blocks surrounding Wrigley Field feel like the Unfriendly Confines—the last place in Chicago you’d have poignant or positive moments of bonding with strangers. Beyond the standard drunken boorishness, there’s an aggressive quality to the bacchanalian spirit of the area that’s encapsulated by the biting insults that fly freely at Wiener’s Circle, located a mile and a half south of Wrigley Field in Lincoln Park. You go to Wrigleyville at the risk of being shoved, insulted, cursed out, or vomited on—which is why many locals avoided it last night. I asked several people to accompany me and they acted like I said “Mordor” instead of “near the Metro.”
I wasn’t surprised to read that only 14 people were arrested in Wrigleyville last night—the drunken mob was the most polite and thoughtful one I’ve ever been in. That conviviality was evident when we began collectively singing the delightfully cheesy “Go, Cubs, Go” song after David Ross’s improbable sixth-inning blast into the far reaches of Progressive Field. Or groaned together and exchanged crestfallen frowns after the Indians’ late-inning comeback. And then, finally, when we wildly danced together in the streets after the final out. And the high fives! My wrist is still sore from all the ones I gave to fans. Surprisingly, I even witnessed moments of quiet devotion: some gathered around the Ghosts of Cubs Past, with heads bowed, saying silent prayers to the statue of Ernie Banks.
