Ashes to Ashes
We’ve seen Cub ownership try to squeeze every little ounce of revenue from us whenever they can, but due to a tight schedule they’ve missed the big one. Now that the Wrigley field playing surface is being reconstructed by the Sodfather, Roger Bossard, they are moving all that historic dirt out and not selling it. The Sun-Times site even has a video (if you can stand waiting through the commercials) through the knothole gate in right field, Wrigleyville resident Ken Vangeloff said it looked like the Tribune was having a demolition derby or tractor pull, but the fan’s just didn’t show up. I could see them selling Urn’s of infield dirt… with a locker room/uniform number and card you can label:
#14 -- Uncle Fester
So my poor Uncle Fester’s ashes are getting a free ride in a dump truck outta his native Cook County. The Cubs are not selling it to fans. Per Shamus Toomey’s interview of Cubs VP, Mark McGuire in the Sun-Times:“We have been accused of selling everything all of the time,” McGuire said. “But in this project, we didn’t want to do anything to impede” the tight schedule.So far the biggest tangible discovery is that they’ve uncovered the Chicago Bears old goalpost’s (buried for over 40 years). But what of the spirit folk? Secretly, for decades, families have sprinkled loved ones ashes onto the field…getting comfort knowing their family member is spending eternity in their favorite shrine. It now appears the Wrigley dirt is being trucked to two sites in Dupage County.
When asked about the ashes on Friday, Cubs’ Executive Vice President Mark McGuire gestured at the trucks and the open right field gate and said: “They’re leaving through that (Pearly?) gate.”Steve Goodman has fooled them. Per his lyrics from “A Dying Fan’s Last Request”, the everlasting Cub fan is actually residing on Waveland Avenue:
Build a big fire on home plate out of your Louisville Sluggers baseball bats, And toss my coffin in Let my ashes blow in a beautiful snow From the prevailing 30 mile an hour southwest wind When my last remains go flying over the left-field wall Will bid the bleacher bums adieu And I will come to my final resting place, out on Waveland AvenueSo now when I go to visit old Uncle Fester’s ashes in Dupage County, should I wonder how long it will be before they build the new Wrigley Field around him?
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