out at the ballgame

7.12.03

Wrigley Field is home to much more than the affable, bat-wielding losers who've been stinking up the joint since 1916. As any Wrigleyphile will tell you, 1060 W. Addison St. houses an entire tradition. To visit the Friendly Confines is to hear the soft percussion of the El as it rumbles into the station, to feel the Cubs-blue cotton candy dissolving on your tongue, to mutter under your breath that there's always next season. If the ballpark ever adopts a motto, I suggest it borrow the name of its signature beverage, Old Style. For Wrigley is old style through and through, from the organist chirping away in the rafters to the big green scoreboard still changed by hand after every run. This year your scorecard will read 2003, but at most games it could be 1983 or '63 or '43, and if you squinted like a pitcher with the sun in his eyes, it'd be tough to tell the difference.

Today, though, is not one of those days. If the two men on the mezzanine didn't tip you off — they were dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz — you would have noticed the dozens of same-sex couples holding hands all around you. For me the day's defining moment came when a woman stood up to cheer. "Let's talk about the hair, honey," said a man sitting a few rows behind me. Another man chimed in: "It's called conditioner." The woman turned around, perplexed. At your typical Cubs game, a fan would not remark upon your hair unless he'd spilled beer on it. But this was no typical game, and the hecklers' verdict came swiftly and without remorse. "Go back to Schaumburg," they said.

Welcome to the third annual Out at the Ballgame, billed rather breathlessly as the nation's largest one-day gay sporting event. (Take that, Out at the Bowling Alley!) Organized by the Chicago Free Press, Out at the Ballgame strikes me as a rather unlikely concept for a pride event. Not that gay men don't enjoy the occasional spectator sport, but honestly, couldn't we just skip ahead to the post-game group shower? Besides, given the choice of waking up at 10 a.m. on a Saturday or sleeping off the punishing after-effects of an endless Friday night in Boys Town, most of my friends would opt for the latter.

Or so I thought.

• • •

When we all have gathered beside the Harry Caray statue at the foot of the ballpark, our party numbers a dozen. Precisely one of us is straight. The rest have come from all over the North Side for a rare chance to hijack the national pastime from its wholesome, sexless origins. While the Cubbies score runs, we plan to score phone numbers. If straight people confront us, we are prepared to make out. Above all we are there to claim baseball as our own, even if we don't particularly like baseball, even if we have never previously attended a game. To stage a pride event at Wrigley is to plant a rainbow flag in that undiscovered country called machismo and claim it for the queens. We are explorers in a brave new world, one where the natives wear tight pants and constantly adjust themselves.

But what had sounded revolutionary in my head in practice turns out to be rather pedestrian. If straight people are shocked — shocked! — to see thousands of gay boys in ringer tees beside lesbians in jerseys, they aren't showing it. And since it's no fun to rebel if your oppressor won't actually, you know, oppress you, we are reduced to watching the game. The good news is that the Cubs are in top form, going up 7-1 after a six-run fourth inning that sees them hit three doubles and a triple. The bad news is that we have no idea what that means.

Most of the time, though, we wonder why the game isn't catering to our every whim. So when the Braves gather on the mound to remove their rookie pitcher, "Hapless" Horacio Ramirez, it's only natural that a friend asks me whether they are about to start an orgy. On a personal note, I find myself wondering why "Trading Spaces" isn't playing on the Jumbotron. And dancing — shouldn't there be dancing? But even these slights aren't enough to provoke a demonstration. I toss around for a rousing gay pride chant, but nothing sticks. We're here, we're queer, and we're taking part in an officially sanctioned event!

Denied our customary victimhood, we console ourselves with puns and innuendo. The pitchers and the catchers. The he sucks and they blows. Three strikes and you're out and take me out and he's out. The boy in front of me turns to offer a handful of roasted legumes. "Anybody want some nuts from my sack?" he asks. Subtle, this one. The absurdity climaxes during the seventh-inning stretch, when I root, root, root for the home-osexuals. If they don't win it's a shame!

• • •

The game is nearly over, and so far the Jumbotron has made no acknowledgement of our presence. Then, finally, it lists the day's sponsors, including a series of bars on North Halsted Street. Big cheers all around for Spin, Roscoe's, Gentry et al. Later a pair of men in Cubs jerseys appear at the top of the aisle where we're sitting, along the first base line, and I see that everyone has paused for that rarest of reasons: the rainbow delay. The men are brandishing a giant striped flag, and as they run down the aisle at a dangerous speed, we cheer at the top of our lungs.

The night before, my friend Victor and I had gone dancing on Halsted Street. We ended up at Hydrate, a club that opened in a space until recently occupied by a charming family establishment known as Manhole. The crowds at Hydrate and Wrigley looked roughly the same, believe it or not; the difference was the atmosphere. Out at the Ballgame is an event built out of words and ideas. At Hydrate the emphasis is not on ideology but instinct — the men there simply do what comes naturally. Getting down, hooking up. No one waves a flag.

In the end, both events — the public and the private — are necessary. But there's no doubt which one I prefer. I think of two men dancing near us that night, their eyes pregnant with longing for one another. Heads in thrall to the rhythm, lips circling ever closer. At last, they fall into each other like shadows. One's hands circumnavigate the hips of the other, then plunge below his waistline. I grin and look away.

Victor and I grab drinks and press wordlessly into the crowd. The battle we will take part in the next day is not yet a glimmer in our eyes. A hundred boys to our left and our right, and we dance like there's nobody watching.

---