Wrigleyville was humming on a sunny Saturday morning with the first real hint of a Chicago spring in the air.
It doesn’t take much to get people out of the house on a day like this, especially after another long winter of bearing down, masking up and shoveling snow. When the thermometer hits 60, it reminds us once again why we chose to live here.
The bars were decked out with their St. Patrick’s Day decorations in anticipation of the neighborhood’s biggest day of the year. The line at the Starbucks across from Wrigley Field was growing, and the usual crowd of tourists stopped by the corner of Clark and Addison Streets to grab a selfie in front of the Wrigley Field marquee.
The sounds of jackhammers working on the ballpark concourse could be heard from a block away, and the sidewalk bordering Addison was closed and fenced in all the way down to Sheffield Avenue, with construction slated to begin soon on a two-story sportsbook on the southeast corner of Wrigley.
Though the Cubs’ April 7 home opener against the Milwaukee Brewers has yet to be canceled by the owners’ lockout — MLB apparently will cancel the games in piecemeal as the stalemate over the collective bargaining agreement goes on — the ticket windows outside the main entrance remained closed.
A fan walked up to gaze at the schedules posted on the ticket-office wall, perhaps dreaming of a summer day she will spend in the bleachers. But she quickly turned away after discovering the old schedules from the 2021 season, the one that ended more than five months ago with questions about the Cubs’ willingness to spend in an offseason heading toward a lockout, were still on display.
Meanwhile, on the official Cubs website, a link to spring training tickets at Sloan Park in Mesa, Ariz., revealed spring games through March 17 have been canceled. “Despite its best efforts, Major League Baseball has not yet been able to reach a new collective bargaining agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association,” the statement explained, adding: “Rest assured, MLB is working diligently to reach a new agreement with the MLBPA as soon as possible without any further disruption to the Spring Training schedule.”
That all depends on your definition of “working diligently.”
The talks between MLB and the players union broke off Tuesday after the extended MLB-imposed deadline, with the sides scheduled to resume negotiations Sunday. One week of the season is gone, but most assume the earliest return would be in May, and that’s only if one side makes major concessions in its proposals.
Every day the sides fail to even talk, skeptical fans only can wonder whether they even matter in the conversation. (Spoiler alert: They don’t, or else the owners wouldn’t have waited so long to talk after the lockout began, virtually ensuring a delay to the season).
But the neighborhood carries on, as always.
There is more to life than baseball, even in Chicago, where many believe baseball is life. And when you live in a city in which every spring day is sacred, chances are you will find something else to occupy your mind while the owners and players union play chicken.
That doesn’t mean we’ll completely forget about baseball all spring. It’s too late for those of us whose brains are wired to think about the game once the windows are finally thrown open and the radiator valves are closed shut.
We can, however, put the sport on the backburner, giving it our undivided attention only on occasion and ignoring it the rest of the day, like Wordle.
The hopes of the Cubs’ 2022 season were still on display Saturday, written on a message board above the entrance to Bernie’s, the old-school hangout on the corner of Clark Street and Waveland Avenue: “Cant Wait For Stro Show. Go Cubs.”
The words have been up there for months, since shortly after the Cubs signed free-agent pitcher Marcus Stroman to a three-year, $71 million deal the day before the owners’ lockout. The “Stro Show” has since been delayed, or at least transferred to Stroman’s Twitter account, on which he frequently lambasts Commissioner Rod Manfred and calls for his dismissal.
Teammate Jason Heyward also hasn’t been reticent to criticize Manfred and the owners, writing on an Instagram post that MLB got exactly what it wanted by failing to bargain and then canceling early-season games: “Bottom line… they know the amount of games we need to play in order for them to profit…. They view the first month of the season as debt… season delayed = they meet their goals,” Heyward wrote.
Stroman and Heyward jerseys are still on sale in the Cubs store at Gallagher Way, even as they bite the hand that feeds them. The comfort level they have in speaking out is in stark contrast to the owners, who’ve maintained their silence throughout the process as their bargaining team works “diligently” to come to an agreement.
MLB also has put a muzzle on its general managers and managers, many of whom are in their respective camps where minor-leaguers are working out. Do David Ross and Tony La Russa have any opinions on the upcoming season? We may never know.
Meanwhile, teams have been accommodating media requests to talk to prospects and non-prospects alike in MLB’s version of a Potemkin spring training. Cubs camp has been open to the media for two weeks, and White Sox camp will be accessible this week.
It looks like baseball and sounds like baseball, but it’s really just a mirage without the major leagues on hand.
The longer this thing lasts, the less we will care about the game.
C’mon spring. Baseball might not be ready, but we sure are.
