25 Years Ago, The Lights Went On At Wrigley Field

By Chuck Sudo in News on Aug 9, 2013 6:20PM

Aug. 8 marked a major occasion in Chicago Cubs history. That was the day the Chicago Cubs were supposed to play their first night game at Wrigley Field. The game against the Philadelphia Phillies wound up not being an official contest as it was rained out, but the images broadcast across the country of the Friendly Confines under lights were no less mesmerizing and showed Wrigley Field was a beautiful field to play a baseball game, regardless of the time of day. (The following night’s game, a 6-4 win against the New York Mets, is officially recognized as the first night game at Wrigley Field.)
The first time the lights went on at Wrigley marked the end of an era in Major League Baseball. Up until that day, the Cubs’ home games were only played in the daytime but the team eventually installed lights after MLB threatened to have the ballclub play potential playoff games elsewhere if they made the postseason. The debate over night games at Wrigley also paralleled the recent argument over the Cubs’ plans to renovate the ballpark, as Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander noted.

Indeed, I remember one day in the weeks preceding the big non-game taking a tour with former team president Don Grenesko — a guy I had once waited tables with at a restaurant in Evanston — and seeing not only plans for lights at Wrigley but also places where Grenesko had said the trappings for the lights had been stored. The plans were from the 1940s, but World War II had interfered, and the copper wires and such had been given up for the defense effort. It only took 43 years to get the lighting plan back on track.

Hilarious, huh?

In my view, it is directly ¬analogous to tormented plans today that the Ricketts family claims it needs to bring the Cubs back into the major leagues, as we know them.

The massive Jumbotron, the hotel, the walkway, the signage — it’s the lights issue of 25 years ago made modern.

The night Wrigley Field turned on the lights marked another step in marketing the Cubs to a national fan base that started with hiring Harry Caray eight years prior and WGN TV’s ascendance as a cable television powerhouse. Tribune Co., which owned both the Cubs and WGN, knew it and decked out station employees in tuxedos in the bleachers and at Caray’s eponymous downtown restaurant. The club’s biggest fan, Bill Murray, also made an appearance in the broadcast booth with Caray.

Wrigley Field's first night game proved to be so popular the city set up a large screen in Grant Park so people who didn't have tickets could watch the game. Those folks must have been cheesed when the rain arrived in sheets by the fourth inning and the game was called. Cubs pitcher Rick Sutcliffe, who started that night, described the atmosphere in the ballpark warming up.

Like the White Sox' "Disco Demolition" promotion a decade earlier, more people nowadays claim to have been at Wrigley Field for the first night game than actually attended.