Take me out to the ball game

For hours on Sunday, until the sun bowed and left, we drove across the blessed plains of the American Midwest, keeping to the backroads and cutting through the towns where the franchises have yet to arrive. We saw Fat Boys Garage and Hank and Wilma's Good Eatin' Joint and Crazy Herbs Crazy Golf World. All still out there.

And we saw that every town had its little sand-lot baseball park, the home plate hemmed in by gleaming wire, the outfield fringed by long grass and wooden bleachers. Mainly in the towns they played softball, putting down a long Sunday afternoon swiping at lazy pitches delivered underarm and artless, ambling from base to base to the sound of their own unironic cheers, moseying through the innings until the sun was low and the shadows were long.

It was so peaceful, so pastoral, so American and so splashed with the colours and mood of Rockwell that when Monday evening came and we spied the crowds drifting north on Clark Street towards Wrigley Field we felt obliged to make our first pilgrimage of the season to Chicago's baseball shrine.

How it goes at Wrigley Field is a little different from your Old Trafford experience. For a start, the resident Cubs aren't about winning. At Old Trafford you support a plc and contribute to its well being. At Wrigley, well, you just make a journey. Leave your prejudices at home.

"Welcome to the Friendly Confines," says the woman at the ticket desk, as she slips four tickets through the window. Two adults, two kids; $36 all-in. Okay, okay, okay. "Friendly Confines", is corny, but it's better than "Welcome To Hell", it beats "You're Just a Town Full of Pakis", and it makes one shudder to think of "Always Look on the Runway for Ice".

My eight-year-old daughter, Molly, is something of a baseball connoisseur now after a year in Chicago. Seat position in the ballpark is all-important. We're upper deck, with the lick of the lake breeze cooling us as we look down on to home plate. Hard to judge the dip of a slider here, but the belly of a curveball or the pace of a fastball will be evident to us.

Molly is satisfied, but notes that only stray balls from left-handed batters are likely to reach our section, there to be fought over by kids like herself. It takes me two innings to work out that she is correct.

We get to our seats at the bottom of the first inning, just in time to see Sammy Sosa amble up to the plate and thump a drive to right field for a single. Sammy is the marquee name here and a portion of the crowd would rather watch him flail for home runs all year than watch the Cubs lay to rest various curses and traditions and actually win something. Amongst the cognoscenti, though, Mark Grace is the preferred star. Bah! If dey wuz all like Gracie, da Cubs wounna suck like dey do.

Gracie and Sammy are in form tonight and soon the home runs are booming towards Waveland Avenue like howitzers. The Cubs streak to a happy lead against a blunt Milwaukee outfit and everything in the world seems perfect. We get the beer and hotdogs in. Crackerjack for the kids.

Wrigley Field is a place to be on a gentle summer's evening. The field is penned in by bricks and ivy and blue sky. Alone of the ballparks in major league baseball, the place imposes a ban on all corporate advertising.

They do everything right here except win baseball pennants. Across town, say, the White Sox are leading their division, playing exciting baseball in a big soulless stadium which seldom gets to be half full. The Cubs played to 92 per cent capacity during last year's long ache of a season. One smell of a hot streak and you can't get near the place, but the temptation to jack up the ticket prices has been resisted. The most expensive seats in this beautiful house cost $25.

There are no corporate boxes, there are no ads, there is no sense of intimidation. Many of the houses on Waveland Avenue have stuck little rows of seats on their roofs and the sight of people coming and going about their business atop the three-story houses just adds to the quaintness of the scene.

We missed the old organ belching out its favours before the game began, but the kids give it a lash when YMCA belts out in the middle of the fifth inning. Then, like 29,500 other people, we get to our feet for the traditional singing of Take Me Out to the Ball Game during the seventh-inning stretch. No alcohol after the seventh, so we'll miss the almost ornithological mating call of the vendor shouting Old Style, Old Style, Anyone for Old Style.

Shouldn't it feel corny? Shouldn't there be more of a sense of menace? Where are the cops? Why is the guy behind so insistent on making conversation? How come you can sit at a major sports venue and have your kids explain the details of the game to you without in turn having to explain the meaning of several racial epithets to them?

Late in the game the Cubs run into a typical Cubs piece of trouble. The pitcher's arm goes asleep and Milwaukee pull back four runs in the ninth inning to tie the game. The great big, green, hand-operated scoreboard in the outfield solemnly records the bad news. The scoreboard is a wonder in itself, providing instant statistical detail on the game at hand, as well as running scores from all the day's other baseball fixtures. On top, the pennants of all the National League Baseball clubs are flown so that their order tells us each team's place in the league.

So the game goes late, slips into the 10th, wherein the Cubs manage to scrape a win which does little to regain the favour of the crowd. The extra inning has lasted for the guts of an hour, and no sooner have the Cubs cracked in the run that wins the game than the skies open, lightning forks down and thunder roars. A general air of wet grumpiness prevails. "Rain! Jeez! You do us no favours Cubbies. No damn favours."

Over the big green scoreboard a man bent against the weather hoists up a large white flag with the letter W printed in blue in its centre. Cubs win! Anyone passing shall know the news.

It's an evening and a place we'll look back on with sentiment. We take it all back. Just by being themselves the Chicago Cubs do us all a favour.