Those other guys across town are kicking and screaming for municipal favors again, this time to get the City to remove the cap on regular season night games played per year at Wrigley. Cubs management argues it will be easier for the team to cope with the rigors of travel and reduce some of the grueling stress of the back-to-back night/day games. Neighborhood activists and Ald. Tom Tennuy counter the neighborhood will be out of control with that many people in the area at any given time. Both seem to be missing the larger question.

If it’s a problem of too many people converging on too small an area at once, the North Side party line would suggest that people go for the game, not for the neighborhood (even though it’s a pretty nice neighborhood). If this were the case, the neighborhood should theoretically have nothing to worry about because the pre-game crowd, game crowd and post-game crowd should theoretically be the exact same theoretical people. So either everyone is lying, or the Good Alderman has just shown up the “Wrigley Experience” as a total crock of shit. Well done, sir. Well done.

All that aside, it’s shocking the Cubs don’t better understand the people they’re trying to market to.

If the Cubs experience is, as they say, fun for the whole familiy (which it generally isn’t) you’d think they’d cater to a daytime audience more conducive to mom and dad getting the kids in bed at a reasonable hour.

If the Cubs experience is, as everyone kind of jokes about it being, a bunch of drunks trying to get phone numbers (which it generally is) you’d think the Cubs wouldn’t want to become bad neighbors by antagonizing the Friday and Saturday night crowds from the nightlife in the area. Either way, the likely outcome is some combination of bad PR for the neighborhood, bad PR for the team, and ultimately less cash flowing in for the City on game days thanks to the condensing of the day’s temporary population spike into a smaller, angrier window. As Cubs Chairman Crane Kenney told the Sun-Times:

“Initially, the thought from residents was, ‘We don’t need night games clogging up our streets on Friday and Saturday.’ But, given the build-up of the bar and restaurant district, Friday and Saturday nights are already pretty crazy. The crowd arrives at noon and leaves in the wee hours. If it’s a night game,the crowd would show up a little later,” he said.

Kenney apparently doesn’t realize that’s exactly the point. If you have a 1:20 game on Friday at Wrigley Field, you have both the baseball crowd AND the regular nightlife crowd. With a 7:05 start, all you have is one ugly mess of people at cross purposes. There’s a reason no one without a ticket has lunch at Mullen’s on game days, you know.

Cubs want weekend night game ban lifted [Sun-Times]

Piniella backs plan for weekend night games [Chicago Tribune]