X.L. and Greazy do the Midwest: Part One

XL and I made our way up to the North Side of Chicago today to see 134 minutes of baseball action. It was a life long dream for both of us to make a pilgramige to the third of the grand old ladies of baseball, having conquored Yankee Stadium and Fenway already. We walked all through Wrigleyville and picked up some "outside nuts" to take into the game with us. What we didn't do was buy one of the funny shirts that are for sale out on Waveland Ave, most notably the "Green Gay Fudge Packers" shirt, which was about $5 too much to buy.

The Wrigley experience is an interesting one, since there are so many people like XL and I who just want to see the great old stadium. Many of the fans seem to be from out of town, and the people from Chicagoland sometimes sound like they are more interested in drinking as much as possible while ocasionally calling out the name of one of the Cubs players and then Wooing. Then again, we were sitting in the right field bleachers, so who knows what the fans will be like tomorrow when we sit in the stadium portion.

Upon entering we saw a vender selling PBR, and we couldn't pass up on that so we picked up a couple. After downing the beers and munching on our imported nuts, we had a few dogs and a brat, covered in onions, tomatoes, mustard and some crazy bright green relish. I can't complain about the eats, or the view either. Sitting in the Wrigly bleachers is quite simply, amazing. We got to see Carlos Zambrano pitch his way to a win by going 7 innings. We also got to see a fair amount of dingers, one of which was hit by Big Z, deep into center. One of the homers, hit by the Red's Jay Bruce, went right over our heads but XL couldn't come with, so someone else got to throw it back.

In the end the Kerry Wood closed it out and the Cubs won 3-2 in a quintesential national league win: 2 hours, 16 minutes. We had a blast of a time, and now know what the Wrigley bleachers are all about from first hand experiance, not just from Ferris Bueller's Day off.