Today was the big day for a live, on-air interview with Ron Santo and Pat Hughes during the Chicago Cubs game.

The game started at 3:05 PM. At the suggestion of Lori Stinnett, our Bayer HealthCare contact in the Chicago area, we decided to meet at the Harry Caray statue outside of Wrigley Field at 1 PM. From there, we would find a place for lunch. Being two hours before game time, we thought we would beat the rush. Maybe we did, but it still seemed like a good portion of the 41,000 people that showed up for the game today were already there. Lori found us a restaurant for us that was only a block away, no waiting, excellent food, AND excellent air-conditioning. I don’t know how she managed to do that, but we all owe her one because it was getting very warm outside. Highs were expected to be in the mid-90’s by game time.

Getting to Wrigley Field was an interesting experience too. Pat and I are staying in Geneva, Illinois, which turns out is a 2 mile drive by car to the train station, then a one hour ride on the Metra train to Ogilvie Transportation Center, then a 7-block walk to the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) Red Line station, then a four mile or so ride on the Red Line to the Addision station. We left our hotel at about 10 AM and we were taking pictures of ourselves in front of Harry Caray’s statue just before 1 PM. Having grown up in the Chicago area, Pat was somewhat familiar with how the various transit systems work, so that made the trip smoother and probably kept us from boarding any trains heading the wrong direction.

During the second inning, Wendy Listick, a publicity manager with WGN radio, stopped by the seats to escort us up to the WGN Radio broadcast booth. It’s funny how I can bicycle for hours in this kind of heat and not feel too uncomfortable, but a few flights of stairs at Wrigley Field in the same kind of weather and I think I’m going to melt. The small broadcast booth can accommodate up to four visitors, so Pat and Lori and Seana Skwara (also from Bayer HealthCare’s Diabetes Care Division) came with me.

My interview with Ron and Pat was during the third inning, so we had a few minutes to wait until then. During our wait, we took a few pictures of the field, gathered our thoughts, and got nervous. I was pretty nervous going in, but Ron and Pat have a talent for making you feel at ease. What they don’t have is air conditioning. It was SO warm in the broadcast booth! I don’t know why they don’t have it. Fortunately, I had a fan blowing on me, but Pat and Seona and Lori didn’t have the fan and they said afterward that it was getting pretty uncomfortable for the ten minutes or so that we were there. It was funny that they were standing right next to me and they said they couldn’t hear the conversation going on between me and Ron and Pat (I had headphones so I could hear them clearly).

I would have loved to get an autograph from both of them, but I was asked not to ask for an autograph and also no photos allowed, so the best we were able to do was take a photo of the Wrigley Field organ player.

After the interview, we went back to our seats. Because they hadn’t heard the conversation, Pat and Lori and Seona had a lot of questions about how the interview went. Wendy from WGN Radio said it went well. She’s probably heard a fair number of Cubs game interviews, so I trust her opinion. We enjoyed the remainder of the game from our seats. Our seats were fabulous, by the way. They were on the third base line and you could almost look straight down the first base foul line. And, most importantly, they were in the shade the entire afternoon! Great seats!

Our return to Geneva after the game was pretty much a reverse of the trip to Wrigley Field. The only difference was that the thirty minute ride on the CTA subway was pretty crowded. Very crowded in fact. People were packed in! If I had dropped the backpack I was carrying, it wouldn’t have hit the floor, it was so packed. In addition to the people, just to make it interesting — and aromatic — throw in a good dose of sweat, sunscreen, and beer. Now, you get the idea of how crowded that CTA subway was. I tell you what, I have to really admire Chicago Cubs fans because not only do they have the longest championship dry spell for any of the four major U.S. sports leagues (they haven’t won a World Series since 1908), but it’s tough work getting to and from the games!

Oh yes, by the way, today the Cubs won!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 30th, 2006 at 9:32 am and is filed under The Dream Tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.