My Chicago Baseball Experience

Recently I had the good fortune of spending a few days in the Chicago area with my brother and sister-in-law. Some weeks or possibly even months prior to my visit, my brother and I decided that a trip to see one of the local baseball teams was in order, considering we are a couple of raving sports lunatics and hot dog aficionados.

But whom should we see? The White Sox? No thanks—they were playing the Texas Rangers. BO-ring.

The Cubs? Ugh. Not only were they playing the Marlins (a match-up we'd already seen once before that involved the incident in which Preston Wilson was almost attacked by a seagull), but the way this season is going, I'm not sure I could sit next to an irrational Cubs fan without doing something that would get me kicked out of the stadium.

The Brewers? Nah—they were in St. Louis preparing to hand the Cardinals another blown save.

With all of the local major league teams unavailable or uninteresting, we turned our attention to the Schaumburg Flyers. The Flyers are part of the independent Northern League, a 6-team organization approximately on par with single or double-A minor league ball. Upon learning that the Flyers were facing off against their intrastate rivals, the Joliet Jackhammers, AND that it was $2.00 beer and soda night at the ballpark, we were off to Schaumburg in a Chicago minute. Which, for the record, actually lasts about 30 minutes, depending on the traffic and road construction.

Now, I'd never been to a non-major league professional baseball game before, so this was a new experience for me, and I soon picked up on some key differences in how these games operate. For example, the stadium is much smaller, so for as little as 10 dollars, you can sit close enough to the field to be hit by flying chunks of maple bat. For 15 bucks, they'll let you sit so close that you can be the 2^nd base umpire, since games in this league apparently only have three umpires to begin with. There are promotional gimmicks, races, and freebie giveaways going on all over the place and after literally every half-inning, so if you walk away from the game WITHOUT at least one free t-shirt, bag of nuts, or cactus-shaped pencil, you're just flat out unlucky. (To the surprise of nobody, my brother and I didn't get anything, and we were really bummed out about that dude right in front of us winning that Porsche made out of gold.) The food is maybe a buck cheaper than at a major league game, but is just as delicious. And lastly, whoever was in charge of sound at this game was a lot more creative than any sound dude at any major league game I've ever been to. The home team had a fairly strong selection of theme music, the between-innings songs were good, and even the AWAY team had theme music—the Jackhammers had the good fortune of walking to the plate to the tune of one of around 20 or so classic TV theme songs for shows such as MacGuyver, Full House, Beverly Hills, 90210, and Knight Rider. Except for Wally Backman, Jr., son of Jackhammers manager and former major leaguer Wally Backman—his theme song was the appropriate "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Well, all of those TV theme songs must have really set the Jackhammers off, because they went on to utterly embarrass the Flyers that night. Or maybe the Flyers just stink—they had only won 20 of 60 games at the time, after all. The Jackhammers hit five or six home runs and left Schaumburg that night with a convincing 12-4 victory in hand. Not favoring either team in particular (we didn't even know the name of the league at the time of the game), my brother and I came away from the game pleasantly entertained (although we were pretty mad about the Cardinals, whom we'd been scoreboard-watching all night and just noticed they'd blown a 3-2 lead in the ninth inning). And surprisingly, none of the Flyers fans were that bummed about their team getting creamed, either—they must have all collected enough free drink coozies over the course of the evening to make up for any potential disappointment.

I'm glad we went. It was a new and fun experience. Because even with all of the promotional stunts and giveaways, and even though the players weren't necessarily major league-caliber (yet), it was still baseball. I still got to go see a game with my brother and had a really good time. It kind of makes me want to go see a Capahas game (I've never been), and it also kind of has me interested in finding out more about all of these small, independent leagues smattered across the country.

Oh, and the parking was free. Go watch one of these games, if you ever have the opportunity.