Chicago Side: Old Style Fan Bids Can Adieu

1 can of beer on the ivy-covered wall,  1 can of beer.
Take one down, pass it around…no cans of beer left on the ivy-covered wall…

For the Cubs least, there will be a distraction. The season will mark the 100th Anniversary of Wrigley Field, originally Weeghman Park of the Federal League’s Chicago Whales. The Cubs are going to lose a lot of games, so it’s good to pay attention to the ballpark, which probably isn’t to blame. It’s not clear when the Jumbotron is going to land, given the lawyering still going on, but that should provide another welcome distraction. Anything to avoid watching the actual baseball.

Which leads us back at one of the sadder events of the 2014 Cubs season: the last Old Style at Wrigley Field. As I understand it, the Cubs have signed an exclusive deal of some kind with Budweiser, and there will be no more Old Style vendors with their blue plastic trays wandering the stands, no more Old Style taps (all of which seemed to be right next to various men’s rooms. . . ).

On Closing Day back in September, I over-tipped one of the vendors in the first inning.  “Come back with your last tray,” I told him and he agreed.  In the 7th he was back, and, looking around for security, he told me I could keep the can.

I know with dead certainty that this was not the last Old Style sold at Wrigley.  Other vendors were out there, and doubtless the last Old Styles were drained long after the game’s end, in the counting room where they shrink-wrap pallets of cash for loading with forklifts into armored cars.  But it was my last Old Style at Wrigley . . . not good beer, but our beer.