The Buns Rule Wrigley

We came down from Milwaukee on I-84, our bellies filled with bratwurst and German beers. We were flush from a Brewer victory and 12 stadiums deep in our family’s quest to make it to all 30 MLB parks. Halfway to Chicago I shed my new Prince Fielder Brewers t-shirt and new Brewers hat and donned my Cubs shirt and hat. We came into the Windy City anticipating the quintessential Wrigley Field experience. Sadly for us, that’s exactly what we found, that fateful and wet night on the North Side.

Did you know that the first team to take the field at the ballyard now known as Wrigley was not, in fact, the Cubs, but a squad known as the “Buns?” Back then, (in 1914), it was called Weeghman Field, named for Charlie Weeghman, who built it for his baseball team that played in the short-lived Federal League. Weeghman had made his fortune as the owner of a thriving string of Chicago luncheonettes called “Weeghman’s”. Lacking an official team nickname, legendary baseball writer Ring Lardner helped give rise to the unofficial name “Buns” as a reference to the typical luncheonette fare.

The Buns were the only team ever to celebrate a championship on the field now known as Wrigley, in 1915. (By then a fan vote had named Weeghman’s squad “The Whales.”) Even this faraway and forgotten title had its asterisk. The Whales benefited from two rainouts which did not get made up, affording them (after winning the second game of a darkness-shortened doubleheader on the last day of the season) a fractional .0009 percentage edge over the St. Louis Rebels, who actually won 87 games on the season to the Whales’ 85. The Federal league folded after the Whales won the last game, and Weeghman bought majority shares of the Cubs and moved them to his field on the North Side.

World War I at once spelled doom for the leisurely luncheon counter lifestyle and introduced gum-chewing cynicism throughout the world; consequently Weeghman saw his fortune dissolve as William Wrigley’s wealth multiplied. When the gum magnate bought out Weeghman in 1918, that was the official beginning of 89 years of remarkable failure in the still-continuing saga, known as the Cubs “curse”. It’s a saga that does anything but leave a minty fresh taste in their fans’ mouths.

The Wrigleys’ legacy is plain as day the moment you walk into the park, even now in 2007. The field is impeccably groomed by a groundskeeping crew at least three times as large as any I had seen at other stadiums. The park itself is a jewel, the team, traditionally, not so much, evidence of the allegedly reversed priorities of the Cubs’ ownership. P.K. Wrigley (William’s son) notoriously did not care about the team’s success as long as he could reap the stadium’s profits. A pirated scorecard sold to my Dad in front of the stadium was filled with these same accusations of the Chicago Tribune, the present owner.

In keeping with this greed-before-baseball philosophy, you’d expect the Cubs to milk the concessions as much as possible in a rain suspension situation. That’s exactly what we witnessed. After a soaking rain kept the tarp on the field for 30 minutes, we waited and waited for our game with the Cardinals to resume, even waiting long after the drops had completely ceased. We ate the hot dogs and drank the beer of necessity, trusting in our hearts that the end of the real rain must mean there would be baseball.

Alas, after a full two hours of delay, the announcement was made that the game was called. Fans booed loudly and those in the outfield bleachers littered the warning track with garbage, in protest for wasting two irretrievable hours of their already dismal lives (as Cubs fans). Interestingly, no announcement was made about not throwing garbage on the field. The army of groundskeepers just came trotting out to scoop it up in their big garbage bags, like it was part of their job, like they were expecting it, like it was just an acceptable expression of Cub-fan frustration.

We learned that casually throwing on the mantle of Cubs fanhood for one night is a potentially perilous proposition. There are many years of baggage and many hardened scars that you instantly put on when you toss that blue cap with the red “C” on your head. The hot dogs, however, really were the best we had at any park this summer; I guess great dogs are necessary as the last line of defense against fan riots. They’re grilled to a blackened color and served with onions, in a perfect poppy seed bun that really makes the dog experience. The Buns, after all, have Wrigley’s only winning legacy to uphold.