A Field Guide to Baseball

Take me out to the ball game

Field Guide Vol. 257

The World Series begins this week and while that contest may not be as global as its name suggests, over the last 100 years "America’s pastime" has become popular in communities on every continent except Antartica. We’re devoting this week’s Field Guide to baseball worldwide; travel with us to Korea, New Orleans and the Caribbean—plus SG contributor (and NPR host) Scott Simon on the significance of Wrigley Field.

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Did you know?

Periodico 26 Las Tunas, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Baseball got its start in the Caribbean in the 1860s, around the same time it gained popularity in the US. While October marks the end for Major League Baseball in the US, in the Caribbean, the season is just beginning. From October to January, professional teams throughout the region compete to be the Caribbean Champions.

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Wrigley Field sign. 2016. Photograph by Andrew Soundarajan/Alamy.

Scatter My Ashes at Wrigley Field

By Scott Simon

A lot of Chicago Cubs fans express a desire for our ashes to be sprinkled within the confines of Wrigley Field. This ambition may baffle other sports fans from other cities. But Chicagoans believe we can vote in the hereafter, too. And unlike fans of ball clubs in parks with fleeting life spans, pasted with short-lived corporate labels, such as Comerica Park, Citi Field and LoanDepot Park, Cubs fans can be fairly confident their North Side vintage ballpark, opened in 1914, will endure.

The club has bad years and good years. But Wrigley Field, with its ivy-clad brick outfield walls, close confines, hand-operated scoreboard, congenial bleachers, beer vendors and Chicago red hots and nachos at your seat, is the draw.

The Cubs adamantly refuse all requests from families to scatter the ashes of loved ones. Believe me, I’ve asked. They say if they let families sprinkle the cinders of their departed loved ones in Wrigley, players would soon be ankle-deep in ashes. Green streaks on your uniform from infield grass or brown smudges from base paths are badges of honor. But gray smears from human embers? Not even millionaire ballplayers get paid enough for that.

But some human impulses run so deep they evade regulation. I’ve heard accounts over the years from people who say they have plopped the ashes of loved ones into baggies, muttered a prayer during the seventh inning stretch and shaken out cinders under a seat. Or, Lord forbid, in a restroom.