Cubs Fans Get a Little Rowdy

Saturday I took the El to the Chicago Diner, to have fantastic vegetarian food with friends. (Thumbs up on the Radical Reuben, incidentally.)

We took the train after realizing there was a Cubs/White Sox game going on, which meant that driving and parking were nearly impossible. Due to lack of planning, we ended up parting from our friends just as the game was letting out, and walking against the exiting crowd like salmon swimming upstream as we tried to get back to the El.

During the game, Cubs fans got riled up when A.J. Pierzynski hit a last-minute homer that turned the tide and allowed the White Sox a narrow win, and expressed their feelings by throwing cups and bottles all over the field. The game was halted for five minutes while the ground crew ran around picking up the garbage. Excellent sportsmanship.

On the way to the diner, we saw a party literally hanging out the window of a third floor apartment right on the corner by the stadium, and a bunch of drunk girls screaming at passersby and trying to start arguments with White Sox fans on the street. One of them was threatening to lob water balloons and looked at serious risk of falling out the window. After the game, the same girls were still there, only now they were more drunk, and more pissed off because their team had lost. One of them was screaming so hard you could practically hear the damage being done to her vocal cords.

Did I mention that the exiting crowd was populated with
leering, hooting jerks who reeked of beer? It was. Not every single person, of course, but enough to be really bothersome.

We walked through the intense heat past the Addison stop up
to the Sheridan stop, but the ballgame crowd was still thick, and somehow
only one entrance turnstile was open, so the backed up fans were
grumbling and being a little pushy.

I like baseball. That is, I like playing baseball (or, rather, since I'm a girl, softball). Actually experiencing the sport. Feeling the tingling bang of the aluminum against the ball, diving for a ground ball, sliding into a gloriously stolen base. But, forgive me, my beloved Chicago, the crowd behavior of fans continues to puzzle me. And next time I'm going to have lunch with veggie-inclined friends on game day, we're going to the Heartland Cafe.