The Chicago White Sox drew 30,029 for a City Connect Hawaiian shirt giveaway and a baseball game Saturday at Rate Field, while the Savannah Bananas sold out Wrigley Field with a dance-off/exhibition baseball game and the WNBA held its All-Star Game at the United Center.
Street festivals from Pilsen to Wicker Park, the Wrigleyville Mustache Crawl, a Karol G concert at Soldier Field and the usual Saturday night shenanigans made for a busy night in the city, and led to some gridlock on the Drive and expressways as well.
We ask ourselves every January why we live here, then remember the real reason every July.
There’s no better summer town than Chicago, and since it’s so short, we try to cram as much fun in as humanly possible. It goes by in a flash, so don’t waste a moment on the couch when you could be making Instagrammable moments outside.
Here are some takeaways from a Chicago weekend of baseball, partying and being stuck in traffic.
Bananarama
The Bananas might be the most American form of entertainment ever invented, with baseball, dancing, karaoke, wrestling, comedy and some magic mixed in.
It’s no wonder tickets to the three games at Wrigley this weekend were so hard to get. The ballpark was surrounded by merchandising tents selling Banana-related stuff, and even the press box was filled with Banana-run media. This could give the Rickettses some ideas, as currently only half the press box works for the Cubs.
It was enjoyable watching fans try to throw a banana from the upper deck down into someone’s pants on the field, and refreshing to hear the “Showman of the Game” Friday tell the postgame interviewer he was so excited to play at Wrigley he “peed a little” in his pants.
You don’t hear that often from major leaguers, who are “grinding” and “taking it a day at a time.”
Everyone seemed to get their money’s worth, and the ex-Cubs who came back to Wrigley greatly added to the show.
Kerry Wood’s behind-the-back eephus pitch at Saturday’s Bananas game rates as one of his finest Wrigley Field moments, right behind the record-tying 20-strikeout game in 1998, the matchup with Yankees legend Roger Clemens in 2003, the home run in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series in ’03, and the on-field hug with his son, Justin, as he walked off the mound after his final major-league appearance in 2012.
Ben Zobrist rode his bike on the field Friday, a full-circle moment to the 2016 season, and David Ross ripped off a Banana jersey while batting in Saturday’s game to reveal a T-shirt of a six-pack. Ross then singled and received a loud ovation, becoming the first player in history to participate as both a Banana and a “Dancing With the Stars” contestant.
Bears Chairman George McCaskey was even part of the act as an umpire, and Rick Sutcliffe threw out the first pitch in Sunday’s show.
After watching the Bananas play at the Rate and Wrigley, can McCaskey get them to fill Soldier Field next summer?
Mune Sushi Debate
Monday starts the week-long Chicago residency of the New York Yankees, a scheduling quirk as anticipated as Buddy Guy’s annual winter residency at Legends. The Yankees play four games against the Sox at the Rate beginning Monday, followed by three next weekend against the Cubs at Wrigley.
Perhaps the players can pencil in some downtime for a trip to the Dells or Lollapalooza, or President Brian Cashman can make a late-night trade from the Weiner’s Circle.
The Sox-Yankees series should be the season’s biggest at Rate Field, and ditto for the Cubs-Yankees next week. Even with Aaron Judge out, the Yankees’ lore always adds to the drama.
Despite the series loss to the Houston Astros, the Sox have been one of baseball’s best comeback tales, living up to what the players said back in January at SoxFest, when they introduced Munetaka Murakami in a video as “the next Babe Ruth,” and one fan commented, “as long as he’s not the next Adam Dunn.” Murakami is neither, but he did hit two home runs and drive in six runs Sunday on his bobblehead day, which Babe Ruth never did. (To be fair, there were no bobbleheads back then).
Manager Will Venable was asked Saturday if he tried the MuneShot Sushi Push-Pop,” a new item added to the menu at the Rates. Though he said he was “a sushi guy,” Venable had not sampled the product. Marketing guru Brooks Boyer might be able to get him a discount for the $22 item.
“It’s cool to have a bobblehead, it’s cool to have the Mune sushi,” Venable said. “All of that is really cool.”
It’s notable that former Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko sounded the alarm when sushi was first offered at San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium in 1989, writing that historians would one day trace the nation’s downfall to “the deterioration of traditional values, the rejection of our heritage, the plunge into cultural decadence and effeteness” from having sushi sold at Padres games.
As usual, Royko was ahead of his time.
Bobbleheads vs. Bananas
Murakami’s bobblehead depicted him hitting his first Sox home run, and was sponsored by the Japanese company that makes the bidets he requested from GM Chris Getz for the Sox clubhouse. A press release from that company personally invited me to meet Murakami after Sunday’s game, adding the offer was “subject to change.”
Though it might have been the easiest way to get an interview with the reclusive Sox player, I opted for the Bananas, where the ballpark was hopping five hours before the 3 p.m. start.
The Bananas are so big they got Clark Street cut off from traffic from Addison Street up north of the park, turning it into their own version of Maxwell Street and selling tons of Banana memorabilia. It made me wonder why the Cubs couldn’t convince the city to shut down Clark Street on summer weekends when they’re home, or in the postseason, rerouting the CTA bus a few blocks to make it easier for fans to walk around.
Maybe it makes too much sense.
House of Pain
Pete Crow-Armstrong’s season took off in St. Louis on May 30 when he was being taunted by shirtless Cardinals fans in the bleachers before hitting a home run into the middle of the bunch as they were chanting “Over-rated.”
“I need more of that in my day-to-day,” Crow-Armstrong said. “Remembering that this is fun, even when you go through tough stretches and not taking myself too seriously.”
That moment sealed his fate as one of the biggest Cubs villains in Cubs-Cardinals history.
Entering Sunday, Crow-Armstrong was hitting .371 with 17 home runs and 35 RBI since that night, with 14 stolen bases and a 1.233 OPS. He returns to St. Louis on Monday for the first time since that epic game, on track to challenge Shohei Ohtani in a two-way race for National League MVP.
Suffice to say, Crow-Armstrong is having fun and not taking himself too seriously.
