Cub Fans Have Party Up On Roof : Wrigley Field’s Neighborhood Is Trendy Hot Spot

By game time, rooftops along North Sheffield and Waveland avenues were packed. Smoke billowed into the chill night from dozens of charcoal grills, and beer flowed freely.

Hundreds of people crowded onto fire escapes and peered out of apartment-house windows across the ivied outfield walls of Wrigley Field. Almost every building featured at least one sign. “Official Firehouse: 1989 World Series and Playoffs,” proclaimed the banner adorning Chicago Engine Company 78 beyond left field. The sign on the house next door said, “The Official House Next to the Official Firehouse of the Chicago Cubs.”

On one rooftop outside right field, eight cheerleaders, promoting a nearby bar, waved blue-and-white pompons from atop a newly built platform. They wore spandex tights and sweatshirts and called themselves “Murphy’s Bleacher Buns.” Not far away, over the stadium wall, is the lair of the “Bleacher Bums,” the raucous outfield crowd.

Jerry Palys, an ad man, stood on the rooftop next door, mandatory beer in hand. This was a big moment for him. “I was born the last year (1945) the Cubs were in the World Series, and I have lived and died with them ever since,” he said as Cub Greg Maddux threw the first pitch of the National League Championship series with the San Francisco Giants Wednesday night.

Palys had a terrific view over the right-field wall. “I used to come to the park and sit in the bleachers for 75 cents,” he said, pointing across the street. “The Cubs were so bad you always had your choice of seats.”

Those days are gone. With a seating capacity of 37,272, picturesque Wrigley Field is the smallest ballpark in the National League, and tickets have become scarce.

When the Cubs held a telephone lottery for playoff and World Series seats, 28 million calls tied up phone lines throughout the city for hours. Scalpers are asking as much $250 for bleacher seats and $700 for box seats for the Giants series.

Whereas many ballparks sit in the middle of asphalt parking lots on the edge of downtown or in sterile suburbia, Wrigley is in the heart of a big-city neighborhood, surrounded by houses, apartment buildings, bars and small businesses. Fans take to the rooftops and the streets. They make baseball here different, zanier, more colorful.

“There is no other park in the country where you can hit a home run and break someone’s front window,” said Mike Quigley, vice chairman of Citizens United for Baseball in the Sunshine (CUBS), a Wrigley Field watchdog group that unsuccessfully fought installation of stadium lights last season.

Chicago is a hard-drinking, workers’ city, and the neighborhood around Wrigley Field reflects that. Almost every intersection has a bar with a name such as “Cubby Bear Lounge” or “The Sports Corner.”

Not long ago, the neighborhood was almost a gritty slum. Now, it is becoming trendy, with a heavy influx of yuppies renovating aging homes and, to the delight of real-estate developers, even a new name: Wrigleyville.

Old-timers such as Alderman Bernard Hansen, who represents the area, hate that name. “That’s a creation of the media,” he complained. “We like to be called Lakeview. That’s the way we’ve always been known.”

Some people have rented apartments on North Sheffield simply to watch Cubs games from their rooftops. During the regular season, most landlords have an informal rule allowing tenants to invite one or two friends or relatives to join them for games.

That, too, is changing. The first major break with tradition came when ERTA Development, a real-estate company, received a license last spring to open a private viewing area called the Lakeview Baseball Club atop a building it was renovating across North Sheffield. It began charging $600 to rent the club for each game.

The Chicago Tribune Co., owner of the Cubs, hit the roof. Saying the Lakeview club would compete with expensive “sky boxes” installed for this season, the Tribune Co. threatened to build a huge fence to block the view from all neighboring rooftops. “They’re stealing our product, and that just grates on us,” Cubs President Donald Grenesko said at the time.

The giant media conglomerate and CUBS joined forces on the issue, and an ordinance prohibiting other such clubs sailed through the city council.

Nevertheless, commercialization of the rooftops continues. Before Game 1 Wednesday night, security guards were posted at five buildings near the Lakeview Baseball Club, taking tickets for rooftop viewing. Each building had a bar, television sets and newly constructed men and women’s restrooms on the roof. Several had bleachers.

Two large corporations had rented the rooftop where Palys stood. He was a client of one and could barely contain his excitement at being invited. Not even the Cubs’ poor start bothered him.

“With Cub fans, it doesn’t matter what the weather,” he said. “It has nothing to do with whether we win or lose. We just want to be here. It’s like the ivy on the walls. It just gets in your blood.”