What could be better than a Cubs game in April at Wrigley Field. You need two fists just to hold the hot dogs and beers.
You like the outdoors? There’s nothing like the view that hits you when you enter Wrigley. The green infield and outfield. The vines. The sky. The charge in the air.
Wait, isn’t this supposed to be about birds?
Well, sometimes you get Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays. But sometimes, you settle for Houston Astros. Which isn’t bad when they lose.
So there you are: a two-fisted bird watcher at Wrigley, enjoying the sun, the wild crowd, John Cusack singing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” during the seventh inning stretch. This is so corny it’s cool.
While you’re watching the game, and eating nachos, and while Mike Fontenot is getting walked because he’s dangerous, and while big Derrek Lee (D. Lee as he’s called around here), is coming up, while all this is going on…you see a gull over the field.
Hmmm. What kind? Wait, no. Who cares.
You care what kind of pitch Lee’s going to get. You care about not spilling nachos when everybody stands. You don’t care about no stinkin’ gull.
But you gotta wonder: the gull’s wings are unusually wide. And skinny. Like those of an Albatross. You think, hey, Albatross. Not a bad symbol for this place. The Cubs have a curse because they haven’t won a world series in like a hundred years. So Albatross might fit. It’s a curse bird, right out of the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a two-fisted poem.
Enough. Albatrosses aren’t in Chicago. If they are, notify Illinois Birders’ Forum right away. And poems aren’t mentioned at Cubs games. Let’s move on.
But then you remember that the Albatross is known as the “Gooney Bird,” a great name. And appropriate at the moment, because there are gooney birds behind you, rooting for the Astros.
Suddenly……none of this matters!
The musings about the gull, the albatross, the gooney guys behind you, the nachos that will fall, none of it, because Lee connects on a low & outside slider with a sound that means homer. The ball goes out of the park, onto Waveland Avenue. A Wrigley moment, a game winner, a 3-run blast. And that’s all that matters.
But as you shuffle out of Wrigley after the game while 40,000 people are singing “Go Cubs Go,” you think: It was a Herring Gull. Could’ve been a Ring-billed Gull. But no, too big, it was a Herring Gull.
And you figure that just thinking this thought at this moment makes you kind of a gooney bird yourself. But who cares. Cubs win!
We’re going to the game tomorrow. I’ll keep an eye out for your albatross!
If this had been at White Sox Park, you would’ve needed a bird with a southern habitat.