Renowned minor league baseball team owner, Cubs fan and sometime actor/comedian Bill Murray was inducted into the South Atlantic “Sally” League Hall of Fame.
His speech was at times poignant, funny and rambling, but mostly it was awesome.
And the part about the first time he saw Wrigley Field is worth your time, as is pretty much all of it.
H/T Amy K. Nelson, SB Nation
This really was awesome. I probably wouldn’t have seen this if you hadn’t tweeted it, so thank you.
My first view of Wrigley Field was from the bleacher in 1947. I was a guest of the Cubs because I was a patrol boy. It was a Phillies game that the Cubs won. Although I was hooked, it isn’t the experience that I remember now as my first view of Wrigley. That came that summer when my buddy, Ronnie Riska (about whom, unfortunately, I have recently written in The Dead Pool) and I would take the Lawrence Ave. streetcar and transfer at Clark and get kids’ tickets to sit in reserved seats. My memory is just as Bill Murray described it. Walking up the stairs and that magnificient view of the grass, the ivy, the bleachers, the scoreboard. 65 years later that image is still indelibly etched in my mind
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: walking up the steps and catching my first glimpse of the grass, the ivory and the scoreboard was the closest I have ever come to a religious experience. I get goosebumps even now, thinking about it.
The Hialeah story is classic.