Manual Scoreboard : Fans Count On Him to Have Cubs’ Number

Art Sagel’s “office” is anything but posh. Springs and stuffing jut from the seat of his chair, the lighting is terrible, the air stifling and the noise from the el tracks and the crowds outside is often deafening.

And heat? Holy cow! Corrugated steel walls turn the summer swelter outside into a 100-plus-degree sauna inside, and Sagel’s white T-shirt and beefy, tattooed arms always seem to be drenched in sweat.

But, mind you, he is not complaining. Sagel might have the best job in Chicago. He runs one of the last remaining manual scoreboards in major league baseball, a piece of Americana gone the way of the steam train, bowling pin boys and the central switchboard operator at the phone company.

‘Eat Good, Live Good’

“It’s steady work,” says Sagel, 57, who grew up in the shadows of the board at Wrigley Field, home of the National League Cubs. “I eat good, live good and I see a hell of a lot of ballgames.”

At Wrigley, unlike most major league parks, there’s no razzle-dazzle in the scoreboard--no videos, no instant replays, no exploding fireworks to distract the youngsters. Cubs fans get hits, runs and errors, all posted by hand. At this field there are no lights; there is no Astro Turf, no Diamond Vision, no designated hitter. It’s the national pastime for purists, baseball the way Abner Doubleday created it.

“Wrigley is unique among ballparks,” said Ray Medeiros, editor of the Ballparks Bulletin, a Seattle-based bimonthly publication dedicated to news about stadiums. “It has no lighting system. Since the Depression it’s had ivy on its walls in the outfield, which gives its interior a warm, cozy feeling. The manual scoreboard complements everything else. It’s a throwback to the good old days.”

“This is a scoreboard for the baseball generation,” agreed Terry Norton, a Concord, Calif., high school history teacher attending a Cubs-Phillies game as part of a pilgrimage to ballparks in Chicago, Detroit and Boston, the remaining shrines of baseball’s early Golden Age.

“The electronic eyepoppers are selling shoes or the local bank or entertaining the kids but they’re not telling you about baseball. My daughter just watches the pictures, not the game, when I take her to Oakland. But this, this is American culture.”

Of the 26 major league ballparks, only Wrigley, Boston’s Fenway and Oakland’s Coliseum still have hand-operated scoreboards. And Oakland installed its version, a small add-on to the main electronic board, only this year to spice up the atmosphere in an otherwise bland, concrete arena with a little pop nostalgia.

Golden Anniversary

By contrast, Wrigley’s scoreboard, part of a 1937 park renovation, is celebrating its golden anniversary. Towering above the center field bleachers, the green-coated behemoth charts inning-by-inning line scores for all major league games. (Well, almost all. Expansion has forced one game to be crowded off the board on busy days. Sagel gets to pick which game is dropped.)

On a recent Sunday, as Sagel scanned scores and pitching changes ripped from a wire service printer, he and two assistants, including his son, Artie Jr., scampered up and down three stories of steel scaffolding, shifting heavy rectangles of numbered sheet metal between grooved holes in the scoreboard face.

Over the years the crew has developed a language of its own. “Artie, National League in-betweener, zero on the ends,” Sagel barks to his son like a waitress in a diner shouting orders to the cook. The “in-betweener” is whatever game line lies in front of a structural steel beam that spans the inside width of the board--today the New York Mets against the Montreal Expos. The zero means the Mets failed to score in the top of the second.

Frantic Search

Minutes later, Artie comes flying up from the lower deck to the middle level and begins poring through stacks of 1s and 2s and other digits in a frantic search for a 7, the number he needs to denote the starting pitcher for the White Sox in their game just getting under way in Milwaukee. Workmen mixed up all the numbers when they repainted during the Cubs’ last road trip.

Baking in the sun, the metal numbers get hot to the touch. Sagel’s biggest fear is that he might drop one on the crowd below him. He has never dropped one, but his predecessor once did, tearing a hole in the bleachers. Luckily, it was before game time and no fans were in the area.

Other responsibilities go with the job too. In keeping with tradition, one of the crew climbs to the top of the board before the game and raises the pennants of all the National League teams in their order in the standings. The Cubs, all too often, are near the bottom. And at the end of a game, a flag bearing either a white “W” or a blue “L” is hoisted, depending on whether the Cubs won or lost, a signal to tell the surrounding Wrigleyville neighborhood how its warriors have fared.

Electronic Message

A modest upgrade occurred three years ago when the Chicago Tribune Co., the media conglomerate that bought the team in 1981 from chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, tacked a small electronic message crawl to the bottom of the board, but its use is limited to little more than indicating batters and averages.

There have been other improvements. Four years ago, for instance, Sagel got an electric fan. A little later, the constant “rat-a-tat-tat” of the decades-old Western Union ticker that spewed out scores on the middle deck gave way to the soft purr of a computer printer.

Little else, however, has changed, either in the scoreboard or around it. Most of Sagel’s life has revolved around the Cubs. As a boy he hawked newspapers and score cards to fans in front of the stadium, and after the games he picked up trash in the stands in exchange for a gate pass. When they could not get in for free, Sagel and his pals slipped in under gaps in the wooden fence that once lined the park.

In 1954, Sagel wangled a ground crew job through a teammate on a sandlot ballclub whose mother dated a Cubs official. Fourteen years ago, he moved up to the scoreboard.

Sagel has seen thousands of ballgames in his years with the Cubs, including more than 1,100 from his prime scoreboard lookout, but he has never seen a ball hit the scoreboard during a game.

‘That’s My Boy’

He remains an avid fan at heart. “That’s my boy, Ryno,” he shouted like a reflex when second baseman Ryne Sandberg pounded a single to left in the first inning of the game with the Phillies. “Ooooohhhhh boy,” he screamed moments later, when Sandberg stole second and took third when Philadelphia catcher Lance Parrish threw the ball into center field.

During the week, when the Cubs play in the day and most other teams are playing at night, Sagel has more time to relax and enjoy the games. Until a few years ago, smoke sometimes belched from openings of the scoreboard as the crew barbecued steaks, chops and hamburgers during those weekday games.

But this is a Sunday and the crew is kept hopping by a full slate of 13 major league games. Oddly, the Cubs game may be the easiest to track because, despite the Cubs’ threat to score in the first inning, it’s a scoreless pitchers’ duel most of the way and all there is to post is a string of goose eggs.

Clutch Home Run

Finally, in the top of the eighth, Philadelphia scores two runs on a home run, two walks and a single. The Cubs get one back in the bottom half of the inning, but trail, 2-1, going into their half of the ninth. Then, with the Cubs down to their last out, shortstop Manny Trillo lofts a clutch home run into the left field bleachers.

It’s still tied, 2-2, in the bottom of the 10th, but the Cubs quickly get runners on second and third with two walks and a wild pitch. The crowd is tense as Sandberg steps to the plate, but Sagel has confidence in “my boy.” He shuts off the fan and prepares to go home. Sandberg does not disappoint, lofting a single to right that scores the winning run. There is just one more task before leaving. Sagel sends Artie up to the roof to hoist the victory flag. What a game! What a job!