Friendly Confines: a great place for a reunion

Tim Engstrom, Pothole Prairie

Published Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The Iowa Cubs defeated the Las Vegas 51s on Sunday at Wrigley Field in Chicago in front of more than 16,000 people, and Lisa, Forrest and I were among them.

So the players weren’t the actual Chicago Cubs; the star of the show was Wrigley Field. The nickname Friendly Confines is apt. It is small with twisting and turning corridors, ramps and steps. And Chicagoans, like true Midwesterners, are friendly, even the concessions clerks when they holler, “I can take your order here, sir!”

By yelling, the clerks really are doing us all a favor. They speed up the lines by taking the order of the next person in line while the person at the front pockets his change and collects his goodies. It seems like in some stadiums the clerks just stand there waiting for the customer to go, as if they can only take face-to-face orders. I only wish clerks at more places were nearly as efficient and eager as the Wrigley Field clerks. The fans become trained at ordering their food and beverages from the second-in-line position.

I was there because my former boss owns the Iowa Cubs. Editor Michael Gartner sold the Ames Tribune in 2000 and bought the I-Cubs. He had gameday duties on Sunday, so our group didn’t run into him, but many of the reporters who worked for him in Ames gathered in the right field bleacher seats for a reunion.

Tribunion 2009.

We watched some baseball, but mostly we were drinking beer — $3 a cup — and catching up. Newspaper journalists and ex-newspaper journalists are the greatest people. Smart. Honest. Clever. Capable of understanding an off-beat concept or a fine point. Reporters get a bad rap, but they really are good-hearted and often unsung folks. There was plenty of extra space in the stands for children to play with cars, dinosaurs and other toys. Now and then, some of us would look up to watch a baseball coming our way or to see what other fans were cheering about. We had some talking to do as we played with our smartphones.

For us, it was more like a reunion at Wrigley Field and, oh, by the way, there was a baseball game there.

We did run into Scott Sailor, one of Gartner’s assistants at the Iowa Cubs who also worked with us at the Ames newspaper. He walked around the outfield warning track and made sure Cubbie Bear waved at my son, Forrest, and he made sure the China Hut of Atlantic, Iowa, appeared on the scoreboard in the fourth inning.

Why the great publicity for the China Hut? It’s just a thing we have. The parents of a friend who couldn’t be there own the place.

And we had a surprise visit from a journalist friend who has become a diplomat in Senegal. David Mosby was back in the States for two weeks with his two boys.

I had been to Wrigley Field twice before, both in the summer of 2000. Back then, I only saw the part of the place where we came in, sat, bought goodies and left. It was packed.

I ended up on a journey through the Friendly Confines because of a diaper malfunction. Forrest needed a new pair of shorts, and the only vendor that sold shorts for toddlers was behind home plate. I walked from right field through Wrigley’s narrow corridors to behind home plate.

It is like I was a mouse in a maze. This is no Metrodome mezzanine. I guessed the routes or watched others, many from Iowa who were pointing this way and that as they figured out how to get around without accidentally ending up outside the place.

The vendor only had shorts in a set with a top. I paid the $35.

I couldn’t go back the way the I came, of course, so I continued around. A tricky part was finding how the corridor behind the third-base seating connects to the left-field bleacher seats. Up the stairs or down the corridor? Probably either way would work, but I went up the stairs.

Most of us sat in the sun, but Lisa and Forrest sat in the shade under the big, green manual scoreboard with a handful of others. What a neat place! Two-year-old Forrest was running around in diapers without shorts with William McNarney, the 1-year-old son of the friend who organized Tribunion.

As cool as it was to see them play together, surely neither realized the significance of being at Wrigley Field. Good thing they got in free.

Tribune Managing Editor Tim Engstrom’s column appears every Tuesday.

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