Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Postcard tour: Wonderful Wrigley


We're resuming the postcard tour, but not leaving Chicago -- which I swear is just a coincidence, as we're operating alphabetically.

Being a Windy City icon, there are plenty of opportunities to send loved ones an image of the bricks and ivy, though postcard styles certainly have changed over the years.

Given the park's age, I'm sure there are some classic Wrigley linen postcards out there, I just haven't come across them. My collection starts with the epic ballpark road trip Rich and I took in 1988, and the blue-bordered cards we picked up then remain among my favorites.


Note that one of them is from the era before Wrigley had lights.

We did have some neat adventures at the park over the years. In the 1990s I was a leader of the church's high school youth group, and a friend in the congregation through it would be good for the kids to see the Lutheran world headquarters in Chicago. And, of course, we thought the kids should see a game at Wrigley, too. Properly training teenagers to appreciate a good ballpark should be a requirement for such positions.



Adventures continued through our most recent visit. Late in the game, we had a chance to meet Tom Ricketts, the Cubs new owner. He was walking around the upper deck, just meeting fans and posing for photos.

Ricketts seems to be a smart man. I was wearing my Cubs jersey, so he assumed I was a fan. He didn't jump st my suggestion that the Cubs try to acquire Jason Bay from the Mets.

More recent cards seem to be moving away from using classic ballpark photos and relying more on graphics.





While the ballpark isn't the complete focus of this card, the 3-D effect makes it kind of fun.
Next we'll head to the South Side for the strange tale of two ballparks.

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