wrigley field 100 year anniversary

I lived here!

I grew up living 3 apartments down from wrigley in the 70's-80's.
back when it was little house in the barrio and we were practically the only Caucasians for miles who were crazy enough to live there.
that "c" shaped building with the arrow is where i grew up in a 3rd floor balcony apartment.

the apartment with the check mark is the one we young neighborhood punks used to climb up, to watch games from the roof. we had a perfect view over the left field bleachers.

the old manual score board

I once got knocked off my bike by a pop fly over the left field wall by Bobby Bonilla (I don't actually know for sure but it was a good enough story to get an autograph!)

that was back in the day, when the score board was still run by dan,dan the number man who changed all the scores by hand, on big wood boards. he'd let a few of us punks up to help him the day before  or the day after to make sure everything was organized for the next game.

he paid $2 + a coke and a hotdog and if you showed him your report card with good grades, he'd let you stay and watch the game from the board!






and being punk kids we would park cars in the unaffiliated lots at the end of the block before the "Official" parkers got there to and charged $5 to park 'em. we'd get 4-5 cars before we got run off the lot by the older kids.

that would give us enough readys to run to Yum-Yum Doughnuts (X marks that spot) and get a burger and fries, for each of us and $ left over to get candy later.

we'd go "car surfing" to get there so if any of you all parked behind wrigly on clark between wellington the Yum-yum ( because boy did they pack 'em in!) and came back to dents and scratches on your car, sorry ;) !
 oh! and if you were ever in the hood at night to see the bleachers lit you would know them as the ICAGO UBS cause no one ever fixed those lights in the 70's!