the park used to be called Weeghman Park, named after the owner who bought the team in 1913 and moved them to clark and addison after the cubs played for 23 years at West Side Grounds. in 1920 the Wrigley chewing gum family bought the team and renamed the field Cubs Park.

in 1932 both Weeghman and cubs owner William Wrigley passed away. the park had been named Wrigley Field since ’27 and the Cubs were a very competitive team in those days.

the only problem was that Babe Ruth was also playing in 1932 for the new york yankees. in ’31 he hit a cool .373 with 46 homers, and in ’32 he slipped a little, averaging only .341 with 41 homers and 120 ribbies. it would be his last monster season. in ’33 he would barely hit .300, in ’34 he dropped to .288 and in ’35 he would be booted off the bombers unceremoniously after completely changing the face of baseball.

but despite all the records as a hitter, and all the amazing stats as a pitcher (23 wins in 1916 and 24 wins in 1917), the most impressive feat of all has to be his called home run in the fifth inning of the third game of the 1932 world series against the chicago cubs at wrigley field off Charlie Root.

wrigley field wasnt the generous hitters park that you’d think back then. in ’32, their best slugger Johnny Moore only belted 13 homers which led the team. Root had only given up 10 homers the entire season.

a career 200 game winner, Root was wearing #12 on his back for one of the first times in his career. the Cubs in ’32 were the last team to adopt numbers on their uniforms. some would say it was because of the influence of newly hired Bill Veeck who would eventually put ivy on the outfield walls.

in the first inning of the game 33 year old #12 found himself with two men on and big fat #3 up. #3 knocked one over waveland for a three run dinger..

in the fifth inning with the score tied at 4, the fans booed ruth so hard that even the cubs bench joined in and witnesses say that the ruckus made it hard for the bambino to be heard as he shouted to the home team’s bench at the friendly confines.

some say he was informing the cubs that he was about to do something that barry bonds should do if he finally wants us to respect him.

some say babe ruth took two called strikes and then told the cubs that he was going to hit a home run to deep center field right there in the third game of the world series.

on the very next pitch babe ruth hit a homer in extremely deep center field right there in the third game of the world series.

some say Ruth hit the scoreboard in centerfield where he had just pointed, but it’s not true, Veeck wouldnt create the famous scoreboard until five years later, in 1937.

but it is true that cubs fans spit on ruth and his wife the night before his famous called shot as they entered their hotel. which should be a lesson to all of us.

don’t mess with a show off in front of his true love right before he has a good chance to show off.

too bad barry bonds isnt a show off when it matters.

too bad barry bonds doesnt have any respect for baseball history and what went down 70 years ago.

too bad barry bonds doesnt have what it takes to point to those ridiculous exploding mountains of turd in left center of Edison Field in anaheim.

too bad barry bonds would probably get anxious and pull it foul.

Root, nicknamed Chinski because he liked to throw at batters’ heads, said that the Babe never pointed to center or he would have thrown the next pitch at Ruth’s head. ruth said that root had turned around while he called the shot and never saw the dis in the making.

i dreamed of finer places, the kinds i saw on television, where everyone had a front yard and a garage and a pretty white woman who’d have milk and snacks waiting for them after school.

little did i know that you all were deep frying twinkies at the fair, studying macroeconomics in learning labs, and teaching the kids about the power of individualism in the catholic schools. now i know how the west was won. finally ive seen the light.

ah, but i chide, for i didnt grow up in the projects in the south side but i was raised in a townhouse in the suburbs just like you. i let a strange man help me with my pinewood derby race car, i had my nanny make my science fair project, i clipped the coupon for a big wheel from the back of a cap’n crunch box and handed it to my mother and in four to six weeks it was mine and i could park it next to the stoop of any house in my neighborhood and never fear that it would get stolen.

the only place i had to lock my bike was at school, and thats because they made us do it there. they taught us that people stole. even though no one stole shit in my town.

back then it was much harder to be a theif. the kids played outside and knew each other. the parents didnt all work. the cops werent anything to be afraid of. and in the wintertime in certain cul de sacs the rain would come and then the cold and little ice ponds would appear overnight.

over by the big hill they even formed a little Hot House with an electric stove so the kids wouldnt get frostbitten so easilly and so the teenagers could find a warm place to practice their french kissing. i once got kissed in the hot house by a girl named dianne, and ten minutes later by her little sister heather. i ran home not knowing what had happened to me.

dont worry love, my nanny said, you’ve simply entered manhood. your life is ruined now.

ding dong?

those girls didnt like me. hardly any of them did. they just decided that they wanted to kiss boys that afternoon and there i was in the wrong place at the wrong time. just like in 98 when i joined the dot com. just like when i was nine and turned on the tv and saw the cubs.

parents cant protect you from everything, nor should they.

hot houses, hot boxes, hot blondes, theyre all tootsie pops of fun with a chewy center of cyanide and if it doesnt kill you it just makes you addicted for more.

a wonderful girl wrote me today with a serious question of what to do when at a bar and the boys smile but none of them come over and my answer is control your own destiny just like those sisters did. of course i liked them both but i was more interested in my tobaggon than i was in what i thought was an impossiblity of the two hottest and smartest sisters in school wanting to share some spit with me in my snowmobile suit.

get up like they do on tv and walk over to the shy boy in the corner and ask him if he has a light.

now this wont work in california where you cant smoke in bars, but i bet ya he’ll pull out a lighter anyway. and if he doesnt ask him if he’ll watch your table for you and when you return thank him with a shot of something.

i would fucking die if a hottie bought me a drink.

i think a gentlemen would have to be inclined to buy her one right back.

jello shot, what was your name again? ah yes, jello shot, victoria?

two jello shots, please.

molli!!!!

who would celebrate for the 49ers and the Giants. Lord knows they were the only ones who wore the hats and jerseys on a regular basis, and bought the flags and ponchos.

The Deadheads had Steal Your Face tshirts with the Giants logos, i liked those.

The old ladies had the satin jackets and big buttons from the olden days. The geeks had the Croix De Candlestick pins in their hats.

But it was the Mexicans who would show up at Mission and 24th right by my favorite taqueria, El Farolita, and cheer to the traffic and wave and raise their fist. Those are your Giants fans, frisco, those are the ones who’ll be watching the series in bars and in tiny apartments after work. Those will be the ones who will be depressed when the Angels sweep em. Those are the ones who i saw when i worked at the Stick. not you.

this whole idea of building new ballparks that look like old ballparks isn’t to attract the middle class blue collar worker who buys their kids Giants bibs or Giants baby caps, it’s to get the people in San Jose to drive up the 101 and load up on garlic fries, ten dollar chicken burritos, and plastic cups of chablis.

there was nothing wrong with candlestick in 97 when the Giants were in first place for most of the season, but there were only two sell outs that year. opening day and one day in september when the dodgers were in town and the gyros were about to clinch it.

rarely were the yuppies represented in the stands because it just wasnt hip to find yourself at the stick. there were no velvet ropes. there were no ethernet jacks for your palm pilot. there was no buzz on the streets.

but there was buzz on the streets. in the mission there was plenty of buzz. same buzz as always. it took a while to hit noe valley and the marina but they’re always a little behind the times anyway unless its super new and kitschy and overpriced, like the new ball park that looks like an old one. one where the giants fans will get their hearts broken in in a few weeks.

the new ballpark is just as windy and cold and soon to be miserable as the stick, but its new and its pretty and it looks great on tv. just like little tears. and expensive jewels.

candlestick is still orange and green and brown and without much character unless you forget about the fact that ballparks are only backdrops. as gorgeous and heavenly as wrigley field is, it will be known, for me, as the place that Babe Ruth called his home run blast. and candlestick is where montana made all those memories and where steve young ran for my favorite touchdown of all. none of those guys cared about the wind or the fact that the wealthy couldn’t be pampered in luxury boxes.

let the dogs leap from the yachts in mccovey cove and scrounge the Old Navy splash hits deposited by the likes of anderson, glaus, salmon and kennedy. the angels have tried to turn their park into disneyland too, but the fans always have the last laugh and the fans know they’re in orange county so they all dress alike and they’re all white and they bang their plastic bangers and they buy their monkeys and crack open fortune cookies from panda express that say you will always have this moment so dig it.

these are two teams that i don’t like very much and two ball parks that can burn for all i care, but i do love the fans and these two teams have fans that have waited a while for this, but the best fans this october, im surprised to say, are those in anaheim, and im happy their team will win.

sorry, mission street mexicans, propagators of soul in a city at a crossroads. wave your flag as high in defeat as you would in victory, for you will lose, and the yuppies will have already switched to their niners colors before the first cork is popped in the anaheim locker room.

and it doesn’t bother me much, if at all. you’d think it would but it doesn’t. your heart can take you places that a car could never.

if a pretty girl wants to go somewhere either she’ll drive or close her eyes and go with me somewhere.

one particular girl isn’t happy about driving an hour to see me any more and when she closes her eyes thinks of someone else.

its sorta like the traffic, how can you argue with it, its part of living. it’s like raising your fist at gravity. everything changes baby that’s a fact. and maybe everything that dies some day comes back. put your make up on, fix your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight in atwater village.

i fell asleep last night after cold pizza and beer watching monday night football. there was a little tap at the door. no one taps at my door. i don’t even have a peep hole. good thing im not afraid to die.

opened the door and there she was. anna.

her hair seemed a little darker. she had a little french braid tucked behind her ear. glitter that she’d powder puffed on her neck and cheeks and arms. the cutest little sleeveless shirt that she found at a thrift store. shes not into bargains, but she knows that i like her that way. she had a cute little package with a bow around it. a real copy of Dreamweaver 4.

oh anna.

we got a fire started in the hearth. fall had come bringing guests: wind, leaves, frost.

she curled up in my lazy boy and wanted me to squish in there with her, ended up in my lap and we talked about fine art and the sound certain words make like ricochet.

the sake was warming on the stove as the christmas lights twinkled and the mechanics next door slammed the chain link fence closed after a long long night.

my life isn’t perfect she told me and it’s not what i want right now, but im glad you’re here with me, right now.

and i knew what she meant.

and we went to bed without getting naked, but like sexy friends, the kind you read about.

okay i got naked in the morning, but im a perv.

if theres one person who deserves the most valuable player award this year it’s not barry bonds who hit .370, smacked 46 home runs, got on base 58% of the time, drove in over 100 rbis, walked nearly 200 times, and only struck out 47 times.

no, the mvp for the national league was the coach dusty baker, for having to put up with barry bonds, and for making it to the world series despite a remarkably underwhelming pitching staff, very little bench depth, and his best player getting walked half the time he stepped up to the plate.

dusty is a class act who should have been tommy lasorda’s heir to the dodgers, but life isnt always fair and how are you going to fire tommy lasorda? fucker bleeds blue.

i say he’s a magician. who’s on this team other than bonds and kent? rich aurillia. but thats it. ortiz is good, but not that great. nen is a good closer, but how are you going to get a lead when bonds is getting walked? benito santiago? no, it’s dusty.

only twice in the last ten years have the giants failed to place first or second. say what you want, it’s not cause of barry bonds. it’s cause dusty is a genius.

cuban fat man livan hernandez lost 16 games. he also threw three shutouts. how are you supposed to manage when you don’t know which pitcher is going to show up?

dusty still hasn’t figured out how to lower the cost of living in frisco, but he’s doing pretty well with the baseball team.

too bad he’s got to take his rickety little dream machine into the buzzsaw of goofy magic called the anaheim angels, who very well may sweep the giants if they don’t watch it.

but thats what i do when im nervous, or happy, or i dont know what else to do: i joke.

and i understand that people are a little on edge out there by dc, where i was born, where i had some good times as a little kid, and ive seen people crouched over trying not to get sniped while pumping their gas or watering their lawns, or by just going on with their lives.

but to blame entertainment, or the media, or tv or the movies is really crazy. cain slew able. how many tvs did they have at adam and eve’s house? i dont even think they had cable and cain murdered his brother in cold blood.

doesnt anyone read the Good Book any more?

one of the purposes of that story is to teach us that humans have had evil and murderous tendencies long before “The Sopranos” got on HBO or N.W.A busted with “Straight Outta Compton.” if anything, that story teaches us that we dont even need one ounce of outside stimuli. all we need to be is alive.

i seriously doubt that the dc sniper has a den full of Jon Claude Van Damme movies, or is a huge fan of Peckinpah, or can’t wait for the next John Woo film. i bet he’s just an asshole with a rifle.

those are the worst kinds, of course, but they’re out there, and sometimes they cross that line and cause a little mahem.

i understand where the person who put that sign next to those flowers is coming from, but it’s not the answer.

i love Reservoir Dogs so much and if Quentin ever came to me and asked me to help him make his next movies more violent and funny and sordid and dark, i would drop everything and help because there are so few Good movies like Quentin’s first three (i count True Romance even if he doesnt.) but that doesnt mean that you’ll ever see me with a gun. not even as a joke.

the answer for preventing the snipers of the world is communication.

i think it was schleshinger who said that new york was the lonliest place in the world because of all the people.

maybe it wasnt, but it’s so true. the smaller the town, the more people know each other. the bigger, the easier it is to just ignore people.

im not saying a hug would stop people from shooting each other, but a hug and someone to hang out with probably would.

maybe the government should couple up everyone with a BuddyBuddy.

if you get pulled over, the cop asks you, “where’s your buddy?” and the cop calls him up and tells him that he’s got a speeding ticket too.

ive got a great friend who used to joke about killing herself and i said, if you do, then i have to kill myself too. and it stopped her from being able to use that as an excuse.

of course it only works if you have a buddy who you like.

ive gotta catch a bus now. i’ll fix the rest of the world after dinner.

at first i would be upset whenever the comments were down, because it’s nice to get feedback from the people you’re writing to, especially if it’s positive.

this one girl wrote and said she loved my blog and misses my web site and i told her that once the carpal chills i can get back to the site. and she asked if i would like to come to her house one day, she says she has this really soft white furry rug and we can get high and lay on it and listen to old school madonna and led zep and i said just lay there and she wrote back and said we don’t have to just lay there. i told her that sometimes it’s nice just to lay there.

she said we can just lay there.

then she didn’t write until just now and she said that when she was in high school she and her friends would ditch sometimes and take off their shoes and walk around the city of angels barefooted which is safer than you’d think since no one really walks in la and i wrote back and i said i walk in la and she wrote back and said she knew and that’s why she was writing because she would want to walk with me on the streets of la and find water fountains and stick her little toes in there and i said my feet are quite sensitive but it all sounds very nice.

then this dude wrote me and said he had a very nice apartment with a big overstuffed chair and would i like to have some beers and listen to danzig with him and i said i would like to have beers i would like to hear danzig, but i think i would rather do that with the barefooted girl who just wrote me. he told me he wasn’t gay. i said it has nothing to do with that. he said sure it does. then he stopped writing,

then this other girl wrote me and said that she doesn’t have any money to give me a birthday present from my wishlist and she doesn’t have any money to pay pal my ass and she doesn’t have a digital camera or she’d send me a topless picture of herself so all she can send me is an ecard and i wrote her back saying that that is perfect. i said i don’t want any nudie digital pictures of anyone. but i told her to get back on the streets and get me my money! then she stopped writing abruptly and i didn’t get an ecard yet from her, but it’s early.

when i got back from the supply room there was another email from another reader of the busblog and she wanted to know if i had a girlfriend. i said no. she asked if i wanted a girlfriend. i said yes, please. she said, what’s up with ashley? i said shes still a lot younger than me and she still hasn’t dated any guys her age. she then said maybe you two are meant for each other. i said, no i don’t think we’re meant for each other. i said i cant imagine a vegetarian wanting eggs and bacon for breakfast and i love making breakfast on a nice sunday morning in my sombrero and kimono with a screwdriver waiting for me on the counter, and ashley isn’t really that type of girl. and im so not the right guy for her. its almost a little bit sad.

she then called me a womanizer and i wrote back and said that if i was a womanizer i would have a lot more stories to tell all of you. but right away the email bounced back and it made me wonder how she could cancel her email account that quickly.

but i guess anythings possible these days.

who knew madonna would end up such a terrific and responsible English mum?

good afternoon, tony balogna.

where are you going all dressed up like that, sharped dressed man?

oh, well, i just read sk smith’s live journal and any gal who has not one but two sporks is definitely my kinda woman.

whoa, pallie, hold your horses. shes got a man.

what’s her man gotta do with me?

come on, spork man, sara and dan have been sweet on each other since last century, bro.

then why is she putting out personal ads saying that she likes doing light housekeeping?

dude, i don’t know either. i think it’s fiction.

is that what dan was trying to say in that comment?

not sure, partner. i sorta got lost in those big words he throws around, but i think if it were over between those two she woulda gone through that bucket of chum in a heartbeat.

but im all dressed up!

and looking sharp too. but don’t get bummed out. theres lots of women out there who are dying to get a knock at the door from a man in a top hat carrying a six foot spork.

think so?

normally i would say that you look ridiculous, but for some reason this look works for you.

gee, thanks, tony.

let me send you over to moxie’s pad. now theres a girl who could use a little sporking.

what are you trying to say?

i’m saying she likes em well-dressed and rich, and just say that you’re jewish and you’ll be halfway home.

jewish? you cant spell spork without pork.

don’t spell it, then.

hmmm, im not so sure about this.

whattya got to lose?

my dignity.

hang on to your dignity then, tuxedo man with huge plastic utensil.

shut up

nice monocle too.

came with the hat. nice movie review.

you’re too kind.

seriously, no one writes movie reviews like you.

i know, they get caught up talking about the movie. who wants that?

not me, thats for sure.

people are telling me the beck record is good.

those people are crazy.

meesh liked “the secretary.”

does the suprise you?

i want to finish my book tonight.

how much of it do you have to go?

a lot.

that sucks.

yeah.

how long are we gonna talk to each other like this?

till you tell me where you got your huge ass spork.

that’s easy, from ebay. they have the little ones right now, but you can find big ones there too.

k thanks!

byeeeee.