Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night : Wrigley Field Gives Way Tonight to Its First Game Under the Lights

A park eclipse now. This is the day the Chicago Cubs enter the heart of darkness. This is the edge of night. It is the day the Midwestern sun fades to black. The day Wrigley Field’s piece of the Earth stands still. The day Edison, utility man, pinch-hits for God, player-manager. The day electricity is truly in the air. The day moon glow, not sunbeams, finally filters into the Cubs’ cave, and a dark day for all of us who rage, rage! against the dying of the light.

8/8/88.

Tonight’s the night. Cubs vs. Phillies, 5:05 p.m., Pacific nightlight savings time. For some of us, it is a period of mourning as well as a period of evening. Electric baseball comes to Wrigley Field, the game’s last surviving candlestick park. So, please, light a candle for all of us who prayed this day would never come.

What next--fireworks at lunchtime? New Year’s Eve countdowns at noon? Drive-in movies at dawn? Monday Morning Football? Matinees at midnight? Dan Rather and the CBS Afternoon News? When Sinatra sings about drinking at a quarter till three, he does not mean he is late getting back to the office from lunch. When Sinatra sings about the Cubs playing baseball in that toddlin’ town, he does not expect them to be toddling at 7 p.m.

We have come here to witness the execution of tradition, so go ahead, pull the switch. You can say that the Cubs against anybody is a night of the living dead, but at least we always felt safe watching our adorable little zombies in the daytime. Defeat was not so difficult to accept when we still had time to make the rounds of Rush Street, or to shop along the Magnificent Mile, or even to go jump in the lake. There was plenty of night life to help us forget another bad Cub day.

But this, this is the hour of our deepest, darkest fears. Night baseball has come to the North Side. Riding the “El” train to the Addison Street stop, from now on we must get off when we see the “El” emanating from those light bulbs at the park. There, that’s the signpost up ahead. Next stop: The twilight zone. Tell us this isn’t really happening.

OK, so it’s progress. Progress is our most important product. We need electricity. Without it, our toast would be too cold to butter. Our vacuum cleaner would be a bunch of straw strapped to a long handle. Our computers would use ribbons. Did we really need to take the Cubs, though, out of, or rather into, the Dark Ages? Are we giving more Americans a chance to see them, or giving the Cubs better camouflage so more people cannot see them?

Life at Wrigley was tough enough. Tom Dreesen, the comedian and Cub fan--which is redundant--said Wrigley Field was the only place where, instead of the national anthem, we all sang “Feelings.” The Cubs were almost always lousy, sometimes so lousy, even nuns would boo. But, at least the losing got over with early. Thirty years ago, we knew White Sox fans whose idea of a good joke at the Cubs’ expense was: “At least we’ve got Early Win. “

This business of playing at night, it could even be dangerous. Not just to the people in the neighborhood--if you spot somebody on a rooftop tonight, how do you know it’s not a burglar?--but, as one Chicago sportswriter pointed out, when Harry Caray starts singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch, with that wolf-call voice of his, what’s to become of the Wrigley Field crowd if every light bulb and fixture begins to shatter?

No longer can a Jose Cardenal oversleep his way out of the starting lineup because crickets outside his window kept him awake all night. No longer can a Dave Kingman be too injured to play but participate in a jet-ski promotion on nearby Lake Michigan. No longer can a Gabby Hartnett hit a homer in the gloamin’--’cause there ain’t gonna be no gloamin’ no more. Comes the gloamin’, we flip the switch. Hi ho, Sylvania.

Franklin D. Roosevelt flipped a switch, a telegraph switch, in the White House at 8:30 p.m., Eastern time, on May 24, 1935, and all of Cincinnati lit up. That was the night night baseball began. At F.D.R.’s cue, 632 lamps atop eight towers at Crosley Field burst forth with 1,500-watt voltage.

Red Barber, 27 at the time and there to broadcast the game as part of his $30-a-week duties for WLW radio, remembered that “out of the darkness came this magnificent illumination, then a huge cheer from the crowd, an explosion of joy!”

The crowd was 20,442, the temperature was 40 and the final score was 2-1, Reds over Phillies, in a game that had 10 hits but not one error. It seemed everybody, including Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators and most outspoken opponent of night baseball, was favorably impressed. By 1942, when both leagues voted to raise the number of night games from 7 to 14 a year, Griffith voiced his opposition loudly. He wanted 21 night games.

In a 1983 article that he wrote for a magazine called Modern Maturity, Barber remembered that the Reds were taken over by a bank, the Central Trust Co., 50 years before, after team owner Sidney Weil went broke. Branch Rickey recommended Larry MacPhail to the bankers, so they appointed him general manager of the Reds. Rickey had hired MacPhail in 1931 to run a Columbus, Ohio, farm club for the St. Louis Cardinals.

“About the first thing MacPhail did at Columbus was to order lights,” Barber wrote. “And his installation was the best. (For Cincinnati), MacPhail had General Electric design the most advanced system of lights ever for an outdoor event.”

Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the commissioner, was convinced MacPhail was onto something.

“Players were skeptical,” Barber wrote. “They said lights might work if they were bright enough and there were enough of them, if they didn’t cast shadows, if the ball could be seen clearly by the batter.”

Two days before the game, the Reds held a practice under the lights. Everybody could see, field, hit, run. Nobody tripped trying to find first base. A Cincinnati Times-Star headline the next day read:

REDS PRACTICE

UNDER THE LIGHTS

Reds Looked Faster

Even Ernie Lombardi

(No Greyhound)

As He Ran Them Out

Lee MacPhail, Larry’s son and former American League president, recalled attending a National Football League game in Portsmouth, Ohio, at night, and his father turning to him and saying, “Look, it’s so light, you can read a newspaper.” He said that was the night his dad seriously started thinking about introducing electricity to baseball.

Clark Griffith argued that baseball fans “will stand only for the best, and high-class baseball cannot be played at night under artificial light.” He added: “Furthermore, the benefits derived from attending the game are largely due to fresh air and sunshine. Night air and electric lights are a poor substitute.”

Barber, now 80 and retired in Tallahassee, Fla., flashed back to the historic event, fondly recalling how well everything went. Cincinnati had six more night games that season. Attendance rose dramatically--it more than doubled the previous year’s.

In Barber’s opinion: “I think the fans appreciated being in the ballpark after doing a day’s work. They knew, too, that come the staggeringly hot, humid summer, it would be a relief to be at a night game.”

There were converts everywhere, including Griffith. The aftereffects of the Great Depression were no longer felt at baseball’s gates. Within 13 years, every team in the majors had night baseball.

Except one.

But here we are at last, 53 years and 3 months after the fact, for a day that will live in infamy. Thanks a bunch, F.D.R. Thanks for pulling that switch. Night baseball--another new deal. You shouldn’t have gone around giving people ideas like this. Look what happens. Night baseball at Wrigley Field. It’s like putting apples and pears in a Picasso, like putting a tuxedo on Columbo. Certain things should be left alone. Wrigley Field is an enchanted little cottage, not meant for nocturnal prowlers. It’s the gingerbread park. Must we eat it?

There will be seven such games this season--another one Tuesday, against the Mets, to be televised by NBC--and then 18 more next year? Why? Blackmail, that’s why. The network no-goodniks got together with Peter (The Mad Profit) Ueberroth and decided that if the Cubs did not conform to the baseball laws of the land, they could lose the right to play host to playoff or World Series games, the right to host the All-Star game, et cetera, et cetera. Nice going, Uebie. And if all else failed, we know an arsonist who works cheap.

A morning newspaper owns the ballclub now--we don’t notice them delivering at night. Any day now, the Tribune Co. will be replacing the ivy on the walls with artificial plants, replacing the hand-operated scoreboard with some Japanese JumboTron, replacing the grass infield with something that belongs on a billiards table. This is Wrigley Field, man. We want Ron Santo, not Monsanto. We want sunshine, lollipops and rainbows.

We may get rain, at least forecasters predicted a 60% chance of thundershowers.

Two of Halley’s comets have crossed the sky since the last time the Cubs won a World Series. When we look up from the North Side of Chicago, that is the only light we want to see at night. We will watch this damn thing tonight, only because we must. At least at night, the sun can’t catch you crying.

AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT First home night games at the major league ballparks of the original 16 clubs: NATIONAL LEAGUE

Team Date Place Score Cincinnati May 24, 1935 Crosley Field Reds 2, Phillies 1 Brooklyn June 15, 1938 Ebbets Field Reds 6, Dodgers 0 Philadelphia June 1, 1939 Shibe Park Pirates 5, Phillies 2 New York Giants May 24, 1940 Polo Grounds Giants 8, Braves 1 Pittsburgh June 4, 1940 Forbes Field Pirates 14, Braves 2 St. Louis June 4, 1940 Sportsman’s Park Dodgers 10, Cardinals 1 Boston May 11, 1946 Braves Field Giants 5, Braves 1 Chicago Aug. 8, 1988 Wrigley Field Cubs vs. Phillies

AMERICAN LEAGUE

Team Date Place Score Philadelphia May 16, 1939 Shibe Park Indians 8, Athletics 3, 10 inn. Cleveland June 27, 1939 Municipal Stadium Indians 5, Tigers 0 Chicago Aug. 14, 1939 Comiskey Park White Sox 5, Browns 2 St. Louis May 24, 1940 Sportsman’s Park Indians 3, Browns 2 Washington May 28, 1941 Griffith Stadium Yankees 6, Senators 5 New York May 28, 1946 Yankee Stadium Senators 2, Yankees 1 Boston June 13, 1947 Fenway Park Red Sox 5, White Sox 3 Detroit June 15, 1948 Briggs Stadium Tigers 4, Athletics 1