Like - The Ivy At Wrigley Field

Baseball is back baby! So far, I have watched six or seven Dodgers games which is pretty good considering they’ve only played eleven so far (my viewing average will drop below 400 soon I’m sure). This weekend, they’re playing the Chicago Cubs, which means they’re playing at one of the oldest and most iconic parks in MLB: Wrigley Field. Unfortunately, at this point in the year, Wrigley is a bit of an eyesore because the hallmark of the park, its legendary ivy wall, is a bunch of brown roots and stems. But that’ll change as we enter full spring and drift into summer. The ivy will return and when it does it’ll be beautiful—and not just because it’s green. There’s a deeper beauty to the ivy in Wrigley because in baseball, unlike every other professional field-based sport, there aren’t strict regulations on how the (out)field is designed. There has been some standardization of late with things like ultra-deep center fields going away but how the walls are shaped and angled and what materials they’re made out of is up to the park’s designer. Brick and ivy is a bold choice for a sport that routinely involves people running full speed into a wall to try and rob a home run. That doesn’t happen much at Wrigley. The game is played differently, including balls getting lost in the ivy. In that way, the ivy is a massive confusing pain in the ass that could be redesigned for entirely rational reasons. But rationality has a great flattening effect and losing the ivy would be a cultural loss too great.