A Night at Wrigley: Dreams Entangled in the Ivy

Empty beer cans and peanut shells littered the concrete slabs along the lower level, cups sat crushed in at the sides — barely recognizable from what they once were — and in some places your shoe clung a little longer than you wanted it to. The grounds crew carefully ushered rakes over the unsettled dirt, coaxing the tiny rocks back into place. Only the faint echo of the crowd remained in the park as the evening settled into the empty seats.

“It feels like a place you shouldn’t be, somewhere you’ve snuck into too late,” Noah Gerkey said, a student radio commentator for various Indiana University athletics. “You shouldn’t be here, but somehow you are. ” While footsteps pattered outside the walls of Wrigley Field, creating a sea of pinstripe jerseys and hollering chants, a reef of crimson and purple slowly began to filter into the Friendly Confines.

In the sixth edition of the ’Cats Classic, Northwestern Baseball faced Indiana on the first of May. It was a bitterly cold night — one you could feel in the back of your throat when taking a breath and lingered between your bones, yet fans still drifted beneath the glowing Marquee and through the green gates. Once inside, the ballpark opened around them.

For a program that averages 300 fans a game, the 2,451 headcount felt enormous. But as you craned your head across the trio of seating areas, the 41,649-seat capacity swallowed the illusion whole. Tucked away in empty stretches of green seats were fans of all ages, bundled in layers and adorned in hats, some huddling together to evade the cold.