Bill Sommerfeld stood with his son at the corner of Sheffield and Addison one hour before NLDS Game Three, waiting to meet the rest of his party and head into Wrigley Field. Sommerfeld wore a Cubs long-sleeve t-shirt and his son a pinstriped jersey, as thousands of blue-clad bodies darted around them. A man in a Bryan LaHair jersey passed by. So did a confused-looking fellow in a number 41 Mets jersey.
Since Sommerfeld seemed to be the only animate being in the vicinity not rushing somewhere or other, I stopped to ask him a question. With the Cubs trailing the Mets 2-0 in the NLCS, did the beloved North-Siders have any hope?
“Gotta play tonight,” he said. “I’ll let you know after tonight.”
We chatted about the Cubs’ chances briefly, then the conversation lulled. After a few seconds of contemplative silence, he jumped slightly forward and pumped his fist. “Now you’ve got me fired up!”
Tuesday marked the first NLCS game at Wrigley Field since 2003 and, lacking a ticket or anywhere near the means to procure one, I opted for the next best thing: experiencing the Cubs and Mets’ Game Three from just outside the stadium.
But before the game could start, I had some religious obligations to attend to. About 45 minutes before first pitch, I walked by a table decorated by Cubs logos and manned by two Hasidic Jews. One of them—Rabbi Dovid Kotlarsky—asked if I would like to put on tefillin… for the good of the Cubs or something. I agreed, two percent out of a desire to connect with my spirituality and 98 percent because it seemed like some sort of good omen.
As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one looking to Judaism for positive voodoo. As I finished my prayer, I heard a man approach the table with his six-year-old son and tell the rabbi, “I’m back. It was good luck.” After the man had completed the sacred ritual, I pulled him aside. His name was Todd Price, and as it turned out he was not a particularly observant Jew. He had, however, been roped into applying tefillin during the NLDS and, since the Cubs won both games at Wrigley in that series, was now back for more. Down 2-0 in the series, the home team needed all the luck it could get.
I watched most of the game from Mullen’s on Clark, a sports bar about a block from the stadium. By the third inning, space was standing room only, with all 12 of the bar’s televisions set to the Cubs. The crowd was jovial, but notably anxious. When Daniel Murphy homered (for the fifth straight game) in the third inning, giving the Mets a 2-1 lead, one rambunctious patron summed up the feelings of Cubs fans everywhere: “Are you f—— kidding me?”
Jorge Soler’s blast in the fourth inning re-energized the room. As Soler circled the bases, a guy in an Ernie Banks jersey hurriedly placed down two cups of beer so he could distribute high fives to strangers (myself included), then cheerfully reclaimed his drinks and rejoined his friends hitting on the bartender.
In the fifth inning, a heavy-set man in a gray shirt walked in and announced himself a New Yorker. Almost immediately, Murphy grounded into an inning-ending double-play, bringing a round of jeers and thumbs-down gestures upon the lone Mets supporter.
But the gray-shirted Mets fan got the last laugh. When Michael Conforto swung and missed at strike three with two outs and a runner on third in the sixth, the bar cheered. When the ball scooted past Miguel Montero to the backstop, allowing the go-ahead run to score, it fell silent, save for one voice. “There we go! 3-2,” the lone New York partisan bellowed.
With one out in the top of the seventh, I left Mullen’s to stand outside the stadium for the seventh-inning stretch. The Wrigleyville streets were quiet, occupied principally by packs of police officers preparing for who-knows-what postgame shenanigans. During my brief walk to the field, the Mets scored two more runs, and by the time I arrived at Gate F, fans had begun to trickle out of Wrigley.
Right about then, as if Cubs fandom was a bad romantic comedy, it started to rain.
I took in a slightly deflated rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” from just outside Wrigley’s walls, then left in search of a new spot to watch the final few innings. After being turned away from three bars because I was wearing a backpack (“CPD said so.”) I decided to simply walk along Clark Street and absorb the atmosphere. Through every window, Cubs fans stared at TVs, an impressive mass of blue, red, and white inside every single establishment. Outside, the sidewalks filled with North Siders at various levels of dejection. I walked past a young man explaining to his friends why a loss in Game Three would be so devastating, past a woman assuring a stranger the game wasn’t yet over, past a man telling his buddy, “Next year this is going to be something we start getting used to.”
By the time I looped back to Wrigley, the exterior scoreboard read TOP 9TH. A woman just outside the stadium looked up, noted the inning and remarked, “No thanks. I don’t want to watch the rest of the game.” A man with his hat turned inside out in classic “rally cap” fashion lingered by the gate as if debating whether to leave, before finally passing through the exit.
Naturally, it was now raining harder.
I watched the final half inning through the window of Sluggers World Class Sports Bar, between two Cubs fans, a 60-something man to my right, a 10-year old boy to my left. Both fans exhorted their favorite teams through a futile ninth inning, then shot empty gazes through the glass as Soler struck out to end the game.
On the train home, some fans coming from the game struck up conversation about the Cubs’ NLCS fate, attempting optimism in the face of a 3-0 series deficit. “We’ve got them where we want them,” a woman said. Her companion invoked the 2004 Red Sox. The group talked about not giving up until the final out of the season. “It’s fine guys,” one conversant said. “We’ll get them tomorrow.”
She didn’t sound convinced.
Lead photo courtesy of Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports