A wonderful thing happened at 5 p.m. Tuesday when the bleacher gates were opened at Wrigley Field.
Real baseball fans began streaming into the bleachers 2 hours 55 minutes before the first pitch of the rain-delayed 61st All-Star Game.
These were not the limo-driven, elegantly dressed friends of business associates who arrived later at the front door. These were die-hard, knowledgeable baseball fans: folks like Pete Johnson, Gary Stromquist, Jim May, Karen Rosenquist, Ken Foxx, Joe Bosch and 88-year-young Carmela Hartigan.
Most of them secured their reserved bleacher seats by entering the Cubs`
ticket lottery. Foxx bought his ticket from a scalper. Hartigan, who says she hasn`t missed an inning all season at Wrigley, was shut out in the lottery. But a big-hearted sister bleacher regular gave her a ticket.
Some of the early arrivals brought baseball gloves and set up posts in left and right field to catch batting-practice home runs hit by the game`s greatest sluggers.
They all brought a genuine love for the game, and even the rain that started falling about an hour before the first pitch could not lessen their enthusiasm for being at a special game.
Stromquist, a 32-year-old shipping and receiving clerk, assumed his position in the left-field seats, pounded his fist into his glove and explained how he intended to catch himself an All-Star souvenir.
”We call this `ball-hawking,` ” Stromquist said, as Andre Dawson stepped to the plate almost 400 feet away. ”We learn to play the hitters just like outfielders. Dawson hits a lot to the `L` in the wire fence behind us. That`s why I`m playing him here.”
”Ball-hawking” can be painful, because the bleacher fielders, when they dive for catches, do not land on soft turf.
”We get so we can judge flies almost like outfielders,” Stromquist said, ”but these wooden benches are unforgiving. They can cut you.”
Johnson wore a Nebraska Cornhuskers cap, a Rick Reuschel No. 48 Cubs jersey and what he called his ”Venture special” low-cost fielder`s glove.
”I go to 50 or 60 games a year,” he said. ”Nobody`s a bigger Cubs fan.”
The 25-year-old May good-naturedly kidded Padres star Tony Gwynn, who was shagging flies in front of the bleacherites in left.
”I`m a Cubs fan and I wish we`d trade for Gwynn,” said May, who saw several Padre games when he was in the Navy and stationed in San Diego. ”I sent five postcards into the lottery. Used five different names and hit on two of my sisters` names.
”I`m an absolute National League fan. The best thing that could happen was for Andre Dawson to hit two home runs and Jose Canseco strike out.”
Rosenquist said she submitted just one postcard to the lottery.
”I jumped up and down and yelled when I went to the mailbox and found I had a ticket,” she said. ”A neighbor walking his dog thought I was crazy until I told him, `I have an All-Star ticket.` He`s a Cubs fan, too.”
Rosenquist estimated she attended 30 Cubs games last year and hoped to increase that total to 40 this season. She and her group usually sit in the extreme left-field corner.
”I`m a National League fan,” she said, ”so I`ll cheer for Kevin Mitchell and the others. But I won`t cheer for Darryl Strawberry. I refuse to cheer him, even if he`s sober now.
”The perfect game for me would be one home run apiece by Dawson, Sandberg and Shawon Dunston, and the National League winning 3-0.”
Foxx, a 33-year-old engineer, said he flew from his job in South Africa to Wrigley Field when the Cubs made the playoffs in 1984.
”I didn`t have a ticket,” Foxx recalled. ”So I stood on a corner with a $100 bill. I got a ticket.
”I got this ticket from a scalper. It cost a lot.”
Foxx called himself the ultimate Cubs fan. ”I have two Dalmatians,” he said. ”One`s named Cubby; the other is Wrigley.”
Bosch requested to make a minority report. He`s a White Sox fan, and he was still ecstatic that former Sox slugger Dick Allen had hit a three-run home run and had five RBIs in the 10-0 American League victory in Monday`s Old-Timers Game.
”I`m a 110 percent White Sox fan, and I don`t believe you can be both a Cubs and Sox fan in this town,” he said.
