Landmark, Relic

The Cubs announced yesterday that Wrigley Field is officially a National Historic Landmark. The Ricketts’ family has spent upwards of a billion dollars—much of it coming from you, Cubs’ fans—renovating the ballpark, and the designation could allow the team to recoup somewhere in the neighborhood of $100-$125 million in tax credits. Talk about a stopped clock getting something right. The story I read in today’s Tribune mentioned such iconic features as the scoreboard, ivy and marquee (sans Network). I mention this because, back in the late 1980s, I attended a public meeting on the fate of Comiskey Park where some shill for the White Sox asked, what part of the ballpark should be preserved? This fellow had a mindset which basically held that the park Babe Ruth visited as a member of the Yankees had to be exactly the way it was back in the 1920s. No exploding scoreboard, no Picnic Area, no change in dimensions. If the Ricketts all felt the same way, Wrigley Field would’ve been razed for yet another mall park. Baseball fans everywhere should thank their lucky stars that it wasn’t. Meanwhile, Sox fans can always console themselves that, if they don’t have a landmark ballpark, at least they’ll have a Hall of Fame relic managing in the dugout.