Wrigley's Abominable Base Ball Stadium

This Day in History Flashback
Editor's Notation: October 27th, 1927

Sweet sassy molassy! Baseball's darkest day has finally reared its ugly head. As if the city of Chicago hasn't already suffered enough from the blows dealt by Shoeless Joe, Buck Weaver and the six others-now we have to deal with this! If you haven't heard, Cubs' Park, home to our beloved Cubs, has recently changed its moniker to Wrigley field in the image of William Wrigley Jr., owner of the team and the president of the sugarised chewing-goo manufacturer of the same name.

Before we let this change occur and continue our lives or reckless phonograph listening we should look deep within our souls and ask ourselves: Is this the legacy we want to leave our children? Fifty years from now when every home will have three Chinamen workers and our children will traipse about the globe in large dirigibles ordering champagne from cloud cities, do we want them to go to a baseball game at Joe Waterson's Snake Oil Emporium Baseball Field? Sure it might cure my rickets and liver spots, but it isn't the name for a baseball stadium is it? It'd be like naming an ailment Tyrus Cobb Arthritis, Lou Gehrig's Disease, or "Sassy" Grisom Aids.

Where is Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis taking our beloved pass time? I say he should spend less time in the speakeasies lollygagging with flappers doing the Charleston and focus more on baseball! These sponsorships, along with this "radio broadcasting" may well destroy baseball forever. Does he take us for rubes? Has he fallen completely off the trolley? Perhaps next he shall put an end to peanut vending or, worse yet, allow for new teams in other cities, perhaps even in other nations. Can you imagine a "Toronto Nine?" Our boys would take arms and storm the border the day the Queen's song played before a pitched ball, by jingo!

I remember back in Ought-One, when Julian Anderson and I were discussing the sexual habits of our greatest bachelor President, James Buchanan-this was right before the terrible death of our nation's greatest President, William McKinley, if I recall correctly. During our discussion, I had mentioned the docility of the German people and how they would soon join forces with the Polish and the Danes in pioneering a cure for dysentery when I had acquired an odd feeling in my joints. Lo-and-behold a few years later we were in the Great War. I am getting the same hankering in my trick knee about these baseball stadiums.

I am just as certain that this trend of company named sport venues will continue as I am certain the next great war will feature fantastic battles between flying machines and spectacular duels to the death of human-controlled hydraulically-powered android spider monkeys.

I weep for the future. The economic boom of the 1920s has no end in sight-the stock market will soar and soar! The Dow Jones might even shatter the 1000 mark in ten or twenty years. There is no doubt in my mind this bull market will carry us into the 1960s. This rush along with the inevitable silver standard is what's going to bankroll our moon colonization effort and horseless carriage revolution.

But if the names of the stadiums are changing to lifeless corporations, what's next for our beloved game? Soon baseball players will demand outrageous sums of money to play--$1000, $1200, maybe even $1500 a season. It might get so bad they might have to put in some Negroes or Italians! This would be the greatest farce since allowing our women to vote! Perhaps someday they, too, shall demand a league of their own. And what then? The horror!

We should ask ourselves if we want our children and our children's children to see our Cubs win their numerous future World Series'-I am predicting at least 8 national championships in the next twenty years-in a place known as Wrigley Field, Sears' Diamond, or perhaps in some large metallic bubble dubbed only as the Chromedome? The whole idea is so preposterous that I shall leave you discombobulated.

Good night, and God bless.