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03. Eamus catuli, or Bibere bonum if you know Latin: 7.8
The bulk of Wrigleyville's residents and visitors make an interesting crowd. Everyone is just what I pictured middle-20s to early-30s state college Greek system graduates to be. It's not quite a drunken frat party, because it's ratcheted down a few notches from there. It's more like a high school reunion after the third hour and the seventh keg. People are singing favorite songs, guys are hitting on girls they would have passed by if sober and no one really knows what they're doing there at that particular moment.
So most revelers have at least a bachelor's degree, and some enterprising folk have put their grammar-school Latin instruction to good use, creating an entirely new intellectual dimension on baseball. One of the rooftop decks – on which you can sit and watch the game over the east wall of Wrigley Field if you know the right people (read: pay enough money) – displays its famous “Eamus Catuli” sign as well as one that currently reads “AC005996.” I'm not going to explain the meanings here, as that's what obsessive-compulsive bloggers are for , but suffice to say it typifies the area's resident: polo shirt/Tiffany chain bracelet-wearing, more likely than not to drive a SUV and professionally repressed, which explains the need for the entertainment triumvirate of beer, screaming and sports. Long live the state school party system.
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04. The Sports Corner, or nutty bullshit: 3.9
To be perfectly descriptive, the scene outside the Sports Corner after a Cubs win could be best described by the phrase “nutty bullshit.” Then again, the scene after a Cubs loss is “slightly more subdued nutty bullshit,” so you're really in for a good time either way.
A simple litmus test for anything is to see how it reacts when provoked. This has been the tradition in the hard sciences as old as the disciplines themselves, and it extends well to the social sciences as well, I think.
Trial # 14A5943, “Consumption in the Sporting Environment: A Case Study.”
Participants ranged in age from 17-38, and were 78 percent male. Each was fed between 12 and 144 ounces of draft beer and was closely monitored for telltale “sporting” behaviors, including
- Discussion of the “Cubs” (also referred to as the “Cubbies”) or the “White Sox” (also referred to as the “Sox,” the “ Chicago Sox” or “those South Side assholes”), which are both baseball teams located in Chicago ;
- Screaming “Woo!” or “Yeah!” at the slightest provocation; and
- A predisposition to engaging in said behaviors more than twice weekly.
If nothing else, we learn that drunks are gullible. After the photographer finished with a wide-angle shot of the beer garden, a few guys were wildly trying to get my attention, most likely hoping they would appear in the photo for the cover story in tomorrow's Chicago Tribune , under the headline “Passionate fans lend Cubs support,” or “Mental hospital escapee located.” One asked why I was taking the pictures, to which I replied they were for a magazine.
Tip: Don't perpetuate conversations like this with drunks. They don't shut up. Naturally, he wanted to know which publication, and this is where it got interesting. After telling him several times it was for sixosix, he was still asking questions like “Don't you have a contact at like Newsweek or something? I think this would be a good story for Newsweek ,” apparently referring to the isolated phenomenon of people drinking during baseball games. The conversation was going nowhere, so I told him he would soon be getting a call from National Geographic .
To the editors at National Geographic : I have a great scoop on baseball and drinking for you. I can guarantee an exclusive interview.
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05. Paying tithes to the gods of Wrigley, or drinking too much: 6.5
This is the heart of the whole neighborhood. The church at 1060 West Addison , the second-oldest ballpark in the nation, serves as the magnet, bringing people from all over the country to witness Cubs baseball. Stand on the corner with the Harry Caray statue and witness the slice of humanity that is America . An elderly gentleman asked me to take a photo of him and his granddaughters in front of the monument to the former Cubs announcer just before I saw a guy on his phone looking confused with the makings of what the next day would be an amazing black eye and while I was trying to decipher what had happened I saw a couple quite literally stop in the middle of a crosswalk to kiss. To be more accurate, I should say “to eat each others' faces,” but that's nitpicky. I found myself lost in patriotic nostalgia, thinking of times when baseball was really the national pastime and we all worked together cooperatively for the better good of the group.
Then I turned back to the statue and saw the same face-sucking girl laying at the base of the Caray statue, almost like a virginal sacrifice to the gods of Wrigleyville. Except she was just passed out from a day of baseball and Old Style. Ah, America .
Like any good reviewer, I’m completely arbitrary. Final score: 7.3.
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