Wrigley Field - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

Wrigley Field had a brief cameo in the movie The Blues Brothers (1980), starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as Jake and Elwood Blues. Elwood listed 1060 W. Addison as his fake home address on his Illinois driver's license, tricking the police and later the Nazis listening on police radio into heading for Wrigley Field. The Natural (1984), starring Robert Redford, had a scene set at Wrigley but was actually filmed at All-High Stadium in Buffalo, New York. All other baseball action scenes in that movie were shot in Buffalo, at the since-demolished War Memorial Stadium.

During Cubs games, fans will often stand outside the park on Waveland Avenue, waiting for home run balls hit over the wall and out of the park. However, as a tradition, Cubs fans inside and sometimes even outside the park will promptly throw any home run ball hit by an opposing player back onto the field of play, a ritual depicted in the 1977 stage play, Bleacher Bums, and in the 1993 film, Rookie of the Year.

The ballpark was featured in a scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where the outside marquee read "Save Ferris". Many scenes from Rookie of the Year were filmed at Wrigley Field. The director, John Hughes, originally wanted to film at Comiskey Park (he was a White Sox fan) but the team was out of town during filming. Later, the film The Break-Up would use Wrigley Field as the setting for its opening scene. An early 1990s film about Babe Ruth had the obligatory scene in Wrigley Field about the "called shot" (the ballpark also doubled as Yankee Stadium for the film). A scoreboard similar to the one existing in 1932 was used, atop an ivy wall (though that did not exist until later in the decade).

The ballpark was used for the establishing tryouts scene in A League of Their Own (1992). This film was a Hollywood account of the 1940s women's baseball league which Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley championed during World War II. Garry Marshall (older brother of the film's director Penny Marshall) has a cameo as "Walter Harvey," Wrigley's fictional alter ego. The sign behind the scoreboard was temporarily redone to read "Harvey Field", and filming was split between Wrigley and Cantigny Park near Wheaton, IL.

Many television series have made featured scenes set in Wrigley Field, including ER, Crime Story, Chicago Hope, Prison Break, Perfect Strangers, and My Boys. Also, the animated comedy, Family Guy featured a scene at Wrigley Field, which parodied the Steve Bartman incident. In an episode of The Simpsons titled "He Loves to Fly and He D'ohs", upon arriving in Chicago, Homer walks past a number of famous Chicago landmarks, including Wrigley Field, followed by a generic looking stadium bearing the name "Wherever the White Sox play." In 2007, the band Nine Inch Nails created a promotional audio skit, which involved Wrigley Field being the target of disgruntled war veteran's terrorist attack.

The late-1970s comedy stage play, Bleacher Bums, was set in the right field bleachers at Wrigley. The video of the play was also set on a stage, with bleachers suggesting Wrigley's layout, rather than in the actual ballpark's bleachers. The tradition of throwing opposition home run balls back was explained by Dennis Franz's character: "If someone hands you some garbage, you have to throw it back at them!"

The stadium was also featured on the popular Travel Channel television show, Great Hotels, starring Samantha Brown. She attended a game during a visit to Chicago.

Chicago folk singer Steve Goodman featured Wrigley Field as the setting for his popular Cubs lament "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request," extolling both the trials of the Cubs and the place Wrigley Field holds in Cub fans' hearts. After his untimely death from leukemia, Goodman's ashes were in fact scattered at Wrigley Field as described in the lyrics.

The Statler Brothers' 1981 song "Don't Wait On Me" referred to a then-implausible situation: "When the lights go on at Wrigley Field." However, after lights were installed, the line was changed to "When they put a dome on Wrigley Field" for their 1989 Live-Sold Out album.

A few brief shots of Wrigley Field appear in the 1949 movie It Happens Every Spring. It is also seen on the History Channel's show Life After People.

The stadium made a brief appearance in the open for the first episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, with Conan rushing through the turnstiles while running from New York (where his previous show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, was taped) to Los Angeles (where his new show was taped, until his role as host ended on January 22, 2010) and then running onto the field while being chased by Cubs security. The route O'Brien takes is somewhat misleading, as he is shown running south on Michigan Avenue past the Tribune Tower before arriving at Wrigley Field, which is well north of the Tribune Tower.

In the movie Category 6: Day of Destruction, a terrorist turns off all the electricity at the stadium for a few minutes to demonstrate how hackers could penetrate city electrical systems.

An overgrown Wrigley Field is shown in the new television series Revolution (2012)