Outside Wrigley Field, clusters of people milled and headed to bars and gates. Standing beside his display of Cubs ball caps, a vender engaged my buddy from college days walking beside me. "You ready to upgrade from that Cardinals cap?" he said jovially. The starting pitchers were 0-7 for the Redbirds and 10-6 for the Cubs, but baseball being what it is, the Cubs ace spent a hundred pitches falling steadily behind in the count and in the R and H column, and got to the showers early, and the Cardinals went home happy, high-fiving each other across the infield less than three hours after the game started. The new timing rules kept things peppy along the way, and a few players, infielders mainly, dove and caught and threw in inspiring fashion. One Cardinal ground ball landed in the pocket of a Cubs glove and just fell out -- squeeze the ball, Dad used to say. Once, the Cardinal second baseman caught a grounder but fell and rolled over and back up to his knees in time to throw the runner out at first. He also lost sight of the ball twice on high flies which landed to his left both times. On the second of these, a runner had been on first and he managed pick up the ball in time to throw this player out at second. More fans wore blue in the stands but red shirts and caps were abundant from the nearby rival city. All evening a fine breeze came through the openings of the stadium structure and cooled us sitting there in section 215 on its way to the infield. I had a wheat beer called Gumball and a good number of peanuts from the shell, and we walked all the way back to our Lincoln Park hotel via lively Clark Street. When my friend stopped for a hot dog halfway there, the person who sold it to him at the dog shop said, "Now where's my tip!" near the end of their transaction. And, oh yeah, there was a home run that landed four rows beyond the 368 sign cloaked in Ivy out there in left-center field, and the 0-7 Cardinal starter moved his record up to 1-7 for the season.
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