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PART 3
Whereas Wrigley Field sneaks up on you, the lights at Comiskey Park give you advance notice. It tells you that something good is coming up. And with the way the Dan Ryan Expressway snakes southward, you were treated to different perspectives of these light structures. Later it became a contest: who can see the lights first? In some seasons this game would be more exciting than the one played inside the ballpark. For the 8 PM night games the lights would already be turned on, but not for the Fourth of July day game.
When you got close enough to see what was beneath these celebrated lights, the immensity of the building got your attention. White, clean, and traditional are adjectives to describe this place, once referred to as a baseball palace. Inside, cigar smoke and pillars abound. Ladies and little kids are not as commonplace as they are on the North Side. A sense of, “This is baseball, pal,” permeates the grounds. No ivy on the wall, no pretty blue uniforms, no little cubby patch on the shoulder, no nonsense. (One frivolous exception surfaces in the person of Andy the Clown. This clown in the stands entertained fans with his long-winded cheers for players like Don Buford and Tommie McCraw. His bright red nose lit up, so he could be seen and heard from far away. Much fun.)
The coziness of Wrigley Field is in stark contrast to the vastness of Comiskey Park. Double-deck stands surround the entire playing surface and make the wind much less of a factor. Even a first-grader can tell that while homers can be a big thing in Wrigley Field, outs are the attraction at Comiskey Park. Looking at this stadium, it reminded me of golf. If you stood at home plate and hit the ball as hard as you could, waited until it stopped rolling and hit it again, and continued this process, by the fourth or fifth stroke you might reach the outfield seats.
The numerical dimensions don’t tell the story. The 375 foot sign in the power alleys is only seven feet farther than the 368 sign in Wrigley Field, but it might as well be seven miles. At Comiskey Park, wind-blown homers didn’t happen. Unless your name was Foxx, Mantle, or Bunyan, forget about it. Comiskey Park was big.