I made the trip to Chicago this past weekend-partly because it’s my home town, partly because it had been a while since I had been to Wrigley Field and partly because Chicago in August sounded good five months ago when tickets went on sale.

And let’s be honest, its fun being ‘out of town guy’ in bars.

There are some places and venues synonymous with an incredible ambiance. Until I’m witness to seeing Buffett play an acoustic set at an oyster bar in Key West or my alma mater play on New Years Day at the Rose Bowl, I’ll settle for an August Saturday with a seat at Wrigley Field with by beloved Cardinals in town.

As was the case this past weekend as I arrived in the second city, destined to get reacquainted with the league’s best rivalry, oldest park, and see a game that in no way would involve our bullpen.

Knowing full well this is not the forum to endorse anything Cub-related, I will not join the rest of the free world in telling you ‘every baseball fan alive should see Wrigley’ or there’s no cooler sight in baseball than the ivy in an outfield. No, you won’t get that here.

I’m also not going to ramble off some inaccuracies about how the Cardinals fans in Chicago are obviously less douchetastic than the Cubs fans in Saint Louis or how seeing my team win 12-3 was worth losing the other two games of the series.

The truth is, Wrigley is basically a shit hole with about 10 thousand good seats in a great part of town that people celebrate because it’s easy to get to. That is, unless of course you live more than five miles away, then it becomes impossible to park, arrive on time and leave without sitting in mind-altering traffic.

It’s also quite obvious that Cubs ownership isn’t pumping too much money into that place during the current on-sale process.

My friends and I found our seats in section 220 Saturday afternoon, right behind home plate, about 40 rows back and under the worst overhang in sports.

You know that moment when someone offers you a free ticket to the game but you still ask where the seats are and feel kinda bad about it? I had that, only worse when we sat down in the back row of the lower bowl with no breeze blowing in, a limited view of the outfield (let alone fly balls) and nothing to aid the view except two distant TWELVE inch televisions.

I know it’s great to be at a ballpark without Lumber Liquidator signs on the wall, Southwest Airlines commercials blaring on the loudspeaker between innings and a team of whistle blowing idiots launching tee shirts on the dugout. On the other hand, there are just some innovations that I’m comfortable saying I can no longer do without. When somebody makes a great cath, I wanna see a replay, when I look at the scoreboard I want to see the actual score without having to add seven innings of numbers and when I go to the bathroom I don’t want to pee in a trough and get splash back from the sloppy peeing tank next to me.

I also want to have something other to drink besides Old Style, I don’t want to have twist my head around obstructive beams and I don’t want to have sing along with some C-list celebrity in the seventh inning stretch.

On the other hand, there are some obvious plusses about baseball on the north side. We’d be kidding ourselves by saying Cerre St. could wash the jock of Clark St in Wrigleyville. Leaving the ballpark promptly after last out on Saturday, it almost appeared as if everyone in attendance flooded the streets for an impromptu celebration of white, affluent jubilance.

I use those two adjectives to merely contrast any similarity to Mardi Gras in St. Louis.

The impressive contingent of Cards fans walked side by side with their Chicago brothers that afternoon. Across the street, red and blue-wearing fans split a pizza, a block south of the park I saw two opposing fans load up a rickshaw together and at Chens- an upscale sushi bar that mistakenly welcomed baseball fans, my Cub-loving friends and I took sake bombs until one of us threw up on ourselves, then got caught trying to pee on the floor, then got escorted out by a bartender. Sadly, this was my same friend…at three different pubs.

That afternoon I learned that 10 years removed from the Sosa and McGwire summer, baseball is alive and stronger than ever in the Midwest. And while that may seem as significant as telling you NBC is excited the Olympics have arrived, just remember, we do have some common ground with Cubs fans- we both know it doesn’t get any better than this as baseball fans.

Several hours after the streets had cleared and the only bars remaining open were those that include a cover charge and a pair of glow sticks, my friend and I sat on his rooftop overlooking one of the world’s greatest skylines. The unseasonably cool temperatures reminded us both that the clock on summer was ticking.

‘What’s it like here when it’s not summer,’ I asked.

‘I try to not think about that,’ he responded.

Truer words from a Cub fan have never been spoken.

JCarnage is proud to say he’s never pulled off the aforementioned triple crown of bar ejections. Email him at JCarnage24@yahoo.com if you’ve somehow produced a worse public showing of baseball fanaticism.