Willie Mays, the Buildings on Sheffield, and What We Really Want

[Matthew Trueblood]

On Tuesday evening, the baseball world received the heartbreaking news that Willie Mays had passed away, at age 93. Few people live so long, and still feel taken from us too soon, but that's how it feels with Mays. That the news broke while his Giants were playing at one of the few active parks in which he himself played made the moment especially poignant, but confusedly so.

Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

When the news of Willie Mays's death began to spread and the broadcast teams covering the game between the Giants and Cubs at Wrigley Field realized they would need to relay the sad tidings on the air, both teams' booths made similar decisions. They alluded to the fact that, unlike most other extant parks throughout MLB, Mays played a great many games at Wrigley during his career. They paired that with shots of the field from a panoramic angle, to emphasize the juxtaposition of the news and the setting in which it was reaching so many people.

Quickly, though, the Giants broadcast switched gears a bit. The truck went to shots mostly of the beautiful, soft colors of the early Chicago evening, with rays of sunlight scattering through clouds. It was meant to make you hope Mays was up there, already, smiling warmly down on his team and his fans. It was also a way to avoid the dissonance and discomfort of any meditation on Mays's time at Wrigley Field, in light of the fact that he didn't really play at the version of the park that exists now.

While the Cubs are broadly lauded for preserving the essential character of the park through the massive renovation the Ricketts family undertook roughly a decade ago, much of that is wishful thinking-out-loud. It's not really the Ricketts family's fault, though. It's not anyone's. Wrigley has been updated in dozens of ways since the days of Mays. For most of his time playing there, no baskets overhung the outfield walls. There were no gaudy video boards, but there were also no lights on the roof. The brick walls behind home plate were further from the catcher's back and higher in Mays's time. The field itself was crowned, highest in shallow center, to optimize drainage.

It shouldn't make any of us angry or upset that Wrigley Field is massively different now than it was 60 years ago. Yet, it does--or at least, it makes us blush in embarrassment a bit. That's because, so much of the time, we busy ourselves with the self-delusion that it's fundamentally the same as it was then. When anyone there Tuesday night (or anyone watching on TV) tried to drink in the panorama of the park and imagine Mays restored to the pastures in center field, it couldn't help but feel fraudulent. So much lip service is paid to the historicity of the park that confronting even inevitable, necessary change induces a little bit of unease.

As if to underscore that state of affairs--to make the nostalgia even more visceral--a report Monday also indicated that three of the most familiar buildings along Sheffield Ave. (across from the right-field bleachers) will come down in the coming year or two, to be replaced by a new apartment building with (every report of it relayed this bit with truly baffling relish and salacity) pickleball courts on the premises.

As the above tweet hints, this news isn't popular. Included in the buildings slated to come down are the one with the semi-iconic Eamus Catuli sign on its upper floor, and the one that once housed the solidly iconic TORCO signage. Each building is over a century old. They're as integral to Wrigleyville, as some fans harbor it in the important arena of treasured memory, as Wrigley itself. This plan is akin to knocking out the wall where you kept the tick marks to measure your kids' growth over the years, to make way for a new solarium.

The thing is, what we all want is for time to stop. We don't want those buildings to be aging rapidly toward untenable status. We don't want Willie Mays to be dead; we barely tolerated him getting old at all. We want change, when change is needed, but we want it on our terms, and under tight control, and without the messiness and complications that always attend real-world change. We want to be 12 again, or 19. We want to be any age, really, but to know we'll wake up the next day and be exactly the same age--not a day older.

It can't be that way. The game paused for a short moment of silence in memory of Mays Tuesday night, but it wasn't delayed or postponed. Those buildings on Sheffield will come down, and if it hadn't been for this reason, it would be for another, three or four years later. The fuzz of grass that used to block the bottom quarter of the screen when WGN got a low-angle cross-field shot of the manager in either dugout is gone, because now, the field is level. And it's good that the field gets more level all the time. It's good that fans in the nosebleed seats can see things they had no hope of seeing previously, in high definition on huge video boards. It's good that Cubs baseball is still at 1060 W. Addison, and preserving that address meant compromising elsewhere.

If Willie Mays can be dead, three buildings that went up before his mother was born can come down. Time keeps going, and it's good that baseball (and baseball's neighborhoods) goes along for the ride. That doesn't invalidate your feelings, though. Willie Mays brought bountiful, wonderful change to Major League Baseball, and change has been a constant ever since.

It's up to all of us to live with the changes that cause us pangs and embrace the changes that give us hope, while keeping alive memories of the good things that are destined to be lost, be it to make room for necessary change or because of sheer entropy. Baseball is life, and life is finite. Only the things we pass on to each other and share deeply outlive us. In that way, though, Willie Mays and the TORCO building can both live forever.

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