CTA Tattler

Baseball is just about the most boring thing I can think of. No, wait - baseball fans acting stupid is just about the most boring thing I can think of.

I was on the Red Line yesterday and there were about six guys from the burbs who were chewing tobacco and drinking Bud Light from cans they had brought. They were also announcing all the bars that they had ever been to that they could see from the window of the train.

A couple weeks ago we had to endure plastered middle-aged women on the Red. They were being really profane, saying stupid things to the passengers, making the common idiotic remarks based on what they saw out the window:

- "It looks like the ghetto" (Buena Park)
- "ARGYLE! ARGYLE SWEATER!"
- "This must be his stop ... have a nice day sir!! What, aren't you going to say anything? Jeez, everybody's in such a bad mood on this train!"
- "Where do we get the Yellow Line?"

A few years back a friend said to me that I used to be more fun when I was drinking. I told him he used to be more fun when I was drinking, too.

Forgot one:

"Oooh look! A cemetary!"
"It's HUUUGE!"

Drunken, moronic Cubs fans are one of the most embarrassing things about living in Chicago. Particularly bad when the suburban and out-of-state "fans" get hammered and walk by my condo (near Wrigley) and show an absolute disregard for property. Trampling over anything & everything, littering, urinating in the alley, vandalizing, etc. They don't live in the neighborhood so they don't give a damn. Reality is, they could really care less about baseball, they simply want an excuse to sit in the sun and get plastered, under the guise of being a Cubs fan.

The people I feel the most sorry for are the real Cubs fans. The ones I know who grew up as Cubs fans won't go to Wrigley anymore. The Tribune has pretty much alienated this fan base. I hope they get a better owner soon.

Oh come on, Stan. You choose to live in Wrigleyville. If you don't like having drunk people in your neighborhood and for them to occasionally cause minor damage to your property then it was an utterly stupid decision for you to move there. It is like people who move a few blocks from an airport and then complain about the airplane noise. Jesus. If this is so annoying then you should have bought a condo in the 99% of the city that is more quiet than this.

MK - I understand your point. Living in the neighborhood does come with certain advantages and disadvantages. However, the overall fan behavior has gotten noticeably worse in the last few years. This is one of the major reasons I'm against more night games, since the foolishness seems to be higher then. Additionally, police presence pretty much stops at Clark St, so if you're west of that, you can forget about any law enforcement whatsoever. Is it too much to ask that people don't use the area as a public toilet or trash can?? Have we reached that point in society that common sense and manners go out in the window in the name of being a sports fan?

While I agree with your position that there's a price to pay for living in Wrigleyville, and that I & others made a voluntarily decision to do so, I don't believe that fans should be given a free pass for immature, drunken activity. I also am fully opposed to the idea that residents should put up with an unlimited amount of boorish and insolent behavior!

I hardly think that there's any significant difference between the drunken fans of today, and the drunken fans of any other era. The only thing different is preceptions.

It's all just a cycle. At the point that you moved in, you were more atuned to the positive aspects of the neighborhood, which at the time outweighed the annoyance factor of the drunken Cubs fans. As the years have gone by, your patience has been tried over and over again, and now you're weighing the positives and negatives differently.

I'm sure that when you moved in you had some neighbors who you thought were overly concerned about the problems that you didn't see as being so bad. Well, now you're one of them. And perhaps in the near future you might join the ranks of those who got tired of fighting. You'll give up, and someone else who doesn't think things are so bad will take your place. And in a few years, they'll complain how things got worse from when they moved in, and the cycle will continue.

Your rant is a timeless one. It could have been written by anyone, at any point in history. It almost certainly is something that someone living in Wrigleyville wrote the very year you moved in thinking things weren't all that bad.

So you're at that crossroads. Will you get stuck in being one of those people who perpetually complain, but never move? Will you become one of those who finally gives up and moves away? Or will you become one of the rare ones who becomes pragmatic, and realizes that it really isn't any different than when you decided the good points of the neighborhood out-weighed the bad points?

It's just the circle of life. Or in this case, the circle of drunkeness.

I love how there is no traffic policing along Addison around Southport; all the traffic control people are on the sidestreets directing all of no traffic around residential stop sign interestions.

Your rant is a timeless one. It could have been written by anyone, at any point in history. It almost certainly is something that someone living in Wrigleyville wrote the very year you moved in thinking things weren't all that bad.

How soon they forget the 70s, when the Cubs flat out sucked and you hardly found ANY fans, drunken or otherwise. Sure there were always people imbibing at Wrigley Field to the point of stumblebumbedness. But I have concur that it has gotten worse as the Cubs have increased in popularity (superstation, etc.), the bleachers became hottie-and-hunk-hookup-heaven, night games became the norm and the number of bars doubled, nay, tripled since the 70s. As a kid who went to a lot of games back then, I can't say for sure there were the same numbers of intoxicated yahoos as there are today, but I didn't notice them if they were there.

Dude, you are right. The Cubs experienced a resurgence in 1998, and have been setting attendance records ever since. Last week they hit 2 million fans in the fastest time ever. Not only that, but the entire Wrigley scene is "the place to be" during game day. Obviously bigger crowds lead to more problems.

Well, I'm a White Sox girl. Everybody knows that if you want to see drunk, fake-boobed/fake blonde Trixies and drunk Chads, you go to Wrigley Field. If you want real baseball with real fans, you go to Comiskey Park.

Spoken like a true White Sox fan Robin. If we are going with stereotypes I can say "If you want to see drunk rednecks beating up base coachs, go to US Cellular!"

But I don't go along with stereotypes because there are people getting drunk and not paying attention at both ballparks. There are more at Wrigley because there are more people at Wrigley period. I worked at the ballpark for 5 years and now have a season ticket in the bleachers. I have seen a lot more of Cubs fans than most and the stereotype holds true for a minority of people at the ballpark.

When I worked at the ballpark, I also had to patrol the neighborhood after the game to make sure people weren't peeing in people's yards. The same people that moved in because the neighborhood is so great but feel that they can dictate what the Cubs do. If it were not for the Cubs, the neighborhood would not be what it is today. I chose not to live next to the ballpark as I did not want to deal with the parking or the couple thousand (out of over 40,000) drunk fans that need to urinate in the alleys.

Perfectly simple, did you move into your place before 1914? You can complain about the Cubs and everything that goes on.

Did you move there between 1914 and 1988? You can complain about night games.

Did you move in after 1988? Ballpark was there, Cubs were popular, and night games were around. It was your choice. Quit whining.

baseball sucks anyways...