Wrigley Field is a baseball stadium in Chicago, Illinois that has served as the home ballpark of the Chicago Cubs since 1916. It was built in 1914 for the Chicago Federal League baseball team, the Chicago Whales. It was also the home of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League from 1921-1970.

The ballpark was originally named Weeghman Park for the Whales' club owner, Charles Weeghman, who obtained a 99-year lease on the property from the city. The field became the home of the Cubs following the 1915 season when the Federal League was disbanded. Weeghman had gained part ownership of the Cubs, and moved the club to his new north side facility, abandoning legendary (and wooden) West Side Park.

Chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr. was part of that group of investors, led by Weeghman, which purchased the team. Wrigley gained full ownership in 1919 after Weeghman suffered financial setbacks and had to sell his shares. The field was then called Cubs Park from 1920 to 1925 before it was expanded and named after Wrigley in 1926; "Cubs Park" is still sometimes used as an alternate name. It is one of two parks that was named for William Wrigley; there was a Wrigley Field in Los Angeles that was home to the Los Angeles Angels, a Pacific Coast League team which Wrigley also owned.

Located in the residential neighborhood of Lakeview, Wrigley Field sits on an asymmetric block bounded by Clark and Addison Streets and Waveland and Sheffield Avenues. The area of close proximity to the ballpark containing bars, restaurants and other establishments is typically referred to as Wrigleyville. The ballpark's mailing address is 1060 W. Addison Street. During Cubs games, Cub fans will stand on Waveland Avenue, waiting for home runs literally hit out of the park. (However, as a tradition, Cub fans -- whether inside or outside the park -- will promptly return any home run ball hit by an opposing player by throwing it back onto the field of play, a ritual depicted in the 1993 film Rookie of the Year.)

Wrigley Field is nicknamed The Friendly Confines, a phrase popularized by "Mr. Cub", Hall of Famer Ernie Banks. In 2006, its capacity will be 41,118 making Wrigley Field the fourth-smallest ballpark being used in 2006. It is the second oldest active major league ballpark (behind Fenway Park), and the only remaining Federal League park. Wrigley Field had an original seating capacity of 14,000 and cost $250,000 to build.

Wrigley Field is known for the Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) planted against the outfield wall in 1937 by Bill Veeck, whose father had been team president until his 1933 death. If the ball is hit into and lost in the ivy, then it is ruled a ground-rule double, provided that the defensive outfielder raises his hands to signify that the ball has been lost in the ivy; if the player attempts to search for the ball, the play is considered live, and no ground-rule double is ruled. Wrigley is also known for the manual scoreboard Veeck also erected. No batted ball has ever hit the scoreboard; indeed, very few home runs have even landed in the "upper deck" of the center field bleachers. Sam Snead did manage to hit the big board with a golf ball teed off from home plate.

For some time prior to 1937, though not initially, the Wrigley outfield was rather more spacious. The early history is explained well in A Day at the Park, by William Hartel, 1994. There were other buildings on the west side of the property in 1914, and this compelled the designers to squeeze the structure between those buildings, resulting in the ballpark having a short right field, some 298 feet to the outer wall. The only bleachers were in the left and center field areas. The stands were single-decked, and also narrower than they are now, with the box seat railing being some 7 or 8 feet above ground. This was the park's configuration for its first 9 seasons.

During the off-season between 1922 and 1923, with the extraneous buildings cleared off, engineers took the unusual move of slicing the single-deck grandstand in two places, and rolling those stands 60 feet to the west. The gap was filled in with more seating, resulting in the noticeable "dog leg" in the stands on the first base side, barely visible at the lower right of the "friendly confines" photo accompanying this article. The diamond and the foul lines were rotated 3 degrees counterclockwise, providing room for additional rows of box seats all around foul ground, but resulting in a shallower left field. The bleachers were removed from that area and re-installed across right field. It was then about 360 feet to the outer right field wall, but an inner fence was constructed to cut the distance to 321.

During the mid-1920s, the ballpark was upper-decked in two stages, the third-base (shady) side first, and then the first-base (sunny) side. But the bleachers were set. By the early 1930s, distance markers were posted: left field line, 364 feet; left-center against the outer wall, 372; left center, corner of bleachers, 364; deep center field, 440; right center, 354; right field line, 321.

In 1937, the Cubs announced plans to rebuild the bleachers in concrete instead of wood, to be fronted by brick that would soon be covered in ivy, and to build a new scoreboard. To make the outfield look more symmetrical and graceful, the plans called for extending the left field bleachers to a point closer to the corner. The gentle curves between the ends of the left and right field bleachers would become popularly known as the "wells". That summer, the Chicago Tribune ran a series of articles about major league ballparks, and the writer sharply criticized the Cubs for a remodeling that he suspected would result in too many "cheap" home runs. The writer later retracted when he saw that the final plan was somewhat more spacious than originally announced.

Be that as it may, construction went on behind a temporary fence during the summer, and the finished product was unveiled in time for the last month of the season. Bill Veeck's famous ivy was planted not long after, but it would be another year before it fully took hold. According to his own autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck, he planted Bittersweet, which would grow quickly, and also the more famous Boston ivy, which would eventually take over. Another part of the arboretum was to be a series of Chinese elms on the large "stairsteps" up to the scoreboard, as well as one apiece in the little triangle at the top of each "well". According to Veeck's biography, that plan did not fare so well as the winds kept blowing the leaves off. Management finally gave up "after about twenty tries," so the trees are long gone, leaving just the large bare steps and (until 2006) the little flat trianglular supports at the tops of the "wells". According to Veeck, the trees themselves were inexpensive, but the special construction for them in the bleachers cost about $200,000.

Another mistake was constructing bleachers in straightaway center field: The batters could easily lose sight of the ball in the white shirts worn by spectators on sunny days, because the wall was not high enough to provide a full batter's background by itself. Various methods were tried to get around this. At one time a flat canopy was extended over the area, to try to put the spectators in shadow, but that was ineffective. For awhile in the mid-1960s, a screen was attached to the top of the wall and the ivy twined its way up. Batters and bleacher fans disliked it, and it was removed after a couple of seasons. Later, for a number of years, a green tarp covered those seats.

After generally being closed to spectators sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, the last time those three problem sections were used for baseball was during the 1962 All-Star game. The seats continued to be used for other events such as football and soccer, during the years when the Chicago Bears and the Chicago Sting played their games here.

By the 1990s, the area was occupied by juniper plants, which nicely complemented the ivy. Also, the layout was tweaked a bit, to open up a few seats on either side of the straight center field area while still providing a rectangular background from the perspective of the batter.

After the 2005 season, the plants were temporarily removed during reconstruction (see below). Over the following winter, a lounge was constructed in the upper part of this area and new rows of juniper bushes were placed in the lower part.

By the end of 1937, the dimensions were set: 355 feet to the left field corner, a few feet behind where the corner wall tangents the foul pole; 368 to fairly deep left-center; 400 to the deepest part of center; 368 to right center; and 353 to the right field foul pole. There are other intriguing distances that have never been posted. In the original Encyclopedia of Baseball, by Hy Turkin and S.C. Thompson, 1951, measurements of 357 feet to the left field "well" and 363 to the right field "well" were revealed. That would put the closest point of the left end of the bleachers no more than about 350 feet from home plate, a fact many pitchers have cursed over the years. Left-center in general is shallow. Straightaway center is probably about 390. Deep center and the right field area in general are better balanced. But the shallowness of the left-center power alley, really too cozy for major league standards, and the resultant increase in home runs in the decades since 1937, suggest that the Chicago Tribune's original skeptical assessment was correct.

[Source: Wikipedia]

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