Wrigley Field Ticket Hottest Item in Chicago

In the old days--we’re talking 1983 and before--one of the charms of Wrigley Field was the ability to walk up to the ticket window at gametime and tell the seller you wanted a couple of seats for the game.

Chances are you could be pretty well assured of getting a good seat. If you were lucky and the wind wasn’t blowing in off Lake Michigan, you could relax with a beer and get some sunshine while you watched the Chicago Cubs.

Then something happened to change all that.

The Cubs started to win.

As Wrigley Field is the last holdout in the major leagues as far as lights are concerned, it might have been the last in the league to realize the benefits winning can bring.

With 1984’s Eastern Division championship, a ticket to a Cub game became the hottest item in town. There was even a lottery to get ducats for the playoffs and World Series and more than 1 million entered the sweepstakes for tickets at cozy Wrigley Field.

Those days of walking up and getting a ticket may be gone, possibly forever. The days of a lottery for any post-season games may be antiquated as well.

Chicago sold about 5,000 or so season tickets one year ago. In less than one month after they went on sale for 1985, more than 18,000 were purchased. Season ticket sales had to be suspended.

Sales were finally broken off at mid-March at the 24,000-25,000 level.

Bleacher tickets, a last bastion of hope for fans who wanted to wait until game day to see how much of a tan they could get while rooting on the Cubbies, are also hard to find. In a controversial move before the season, the Cubs had actually sold bleacher tickets on a reserved seat basis ahead of schedule.

In addition, because other commitments by the Cubs had raised the number of obligations for any future playoff games to 25,000, no tickets will be made available to the public this year. The Cubs have to allocate 10,000 tickets to the commissioner’s office and another 1,000 have to be made available for the media.

“The response was unbelievable,” said Frank Maloney, ticket manager for the Cubs. “I think we realized after the playoffs that if you wanted a good, guaranteed ticket for a game, some sort of season ticket plan would have to be purchased.

“This is only an estimate but it will be somewhere between 24,000 and 25,000 seats,” Maloney said of the 81-home game package. “We don’t count them until they’ve fully paid off, so it will be some time before we have an official total.”

Maloney points to the Cubs’ success in 1984 and the subsequent pennant fever that promises to spread to the start of the 1985 campaign. But the problems the Cubs had in filling requests for playoff tickets last year has also carried over to regular season.

“Wrigley Field seats only 37,000 people,” Maloney says, “and along with that come some problems as far as filling orders for seats.”

In the past, the Cubs used to make a practice of holding out 18,000 grandstand seats, often general admission in the second deck, to be sold on the day of the game. This was done to promote day baseball and to urge businessmen and fans to ride the “el” to Wrigley Field, catch a Cubs’ game, and then still have time to go back to work.

This practice, initiated when the Wrigley family owned the Cubs, was actually the forerunner of the “businessman’s specials” and afternoon “ladies’ day” promotions that have become popular in other ballparks across the country that have the luxury of night games.

In addition, if you wanted to be a bona fide “bleacher bum” you could line up along Sheffield Avenue and purchase a ticket to sit in either the right or left-field bleachers. Except for opening day, the bleacher seats could also be bought up until game day.

But lines were out to get the bleacher tickets before the season began although Cubs’ officials have insisted there would still be some bleachers--and around 5,000 standing room only seats--available for most games during the year.

While the public relations aspect of the Cubs’ ticket policy was a good one, it resulted in generally small crowds during the weekdays, even when the Cubs had their infrequently good clubs. Big crowds were reserved for the weekend when families would motor into Chicago for a weekend of games at Wrigley Field.

“Group sales used to be the thing,” says Cubs General Manager-President Dallas Green. “But the idea was not just to fill up the park on the weekends but every day as well.”

When the Chicago Tribune Co. bought the Cubs in 1981, it was obvious they were not going to settle for sellouts on selected weekends against the rival St. Louis Cardinals or the Dodgers. Marketing people were hired to try to sell the Cubs to Chicago.

“It wasn’t easy at first, especially when you had a club that won only 71 games,” Green says. “We had to come up with promotions, novel ticket plans to get people to come to the park.”

At the same time the Cubs began winning in 1984, the promotions also started to click. Major league baseball honored the Cubs’ organization as being the tops in marketing in 1984.