There's nothing like watching dawn break over the scoreboard at Wrigley Field. Huddling in the dark stands with the wind whipping pellets of ice, I wonder if the first shot at Cubs tickets is worth freezing my ass off. And I'm not alone. The crowd that's assembled for the 6am ticket lottery - the organization's first attempt at warding off camp-out artists and scalpers - is pretty pissed.
"What the hell is going on," is the common conversation. "It's a total fuck up. They don't know what they're doing." Everyone is scratching their arms where the lottery number wristbands, handed out the day before, are beginning to chafe. Considering the warnings that came with the wristbands - "Alter this in any way and you aren't getting tickets!" - it's a good bet no one has showered. "Man, is that bar across the street open?" asks one dazed loser who says he stayed up all night drinking just to make it by six. "Damn, buddy," says another bar crawler. "If it was open, I'd already be there."
Slowly but surely, ticket hopefuls are trickling out of the stands and back down to the street, looking for a reprieve from the chilling breeze of exterior openings. There ain't any.
The first number - 7,199 - is shouted through the tunnels by helpful employees who lay down how things will go. You need two forms of ID just to buy tickets, and certain tickets must be paid for by credit card only.
Numbers will be pulled into the Stadium Club in groups of fifty or 100, who will then line up to start buying tickets at 7:30am. They're calling up to 9999 and then will turn around and start back at zero. I check my wristband: 1024. Shit.
What they don't say is that it will take them about three hours just to advance by 1,000. By 7:30 they're only up to 7,600, most people have read the Sun-Times twice and are fed up. "Fuck this man. At least with the line I would know if I was getting tickets or not," shouts one disgruntled fan. Most people don't notice; the cell phone crowd is busy dialing up Ticketmaster trying to score seats by phone. "Kids don't have two forms of ID or a credit card," an older guy laments. "It's gotten so no youngster can come in, buy some bleacher seats and spend a day at the game."
At 9am, it looks like the yuppie schmucks in Wrigley can't get tickets either. At 10am, cash sales open up Carson's and Dominick's - a whole new ballgame. A gaggle of guys head for the door, waxing philosophic on the Cubs appeal. "Man, one good season and it all goes to hell."
(Elaine Richardson)
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.