The one and only Mets trip to Wrigley Field this season had been circled on my calendar since the schedule came out late last year.  I went out for the final two contests of the mid-week three game set and had a wonderful time.

The Cubbies are in the early stages of a substantial rebuilding effort.  My Dad and I sat just beyond the vines in right field for Anthony Mike Rizzo’s Cub debut Tuesday night.  The 22-year-old left-handed slugger (pictured above) wore uniform #44 and had a couple hits on his first night wearing the blue hat.  Rizzo is the start of what should be a significant injection of young talent acquired and deployed under first-year personnel whiz Theo Epstein.  The former Red Sox boss is charged with conducting a top-to-bottom overhaul of an organization that stunk in each of the last two seasons.  Epstein will be expected to reload the Cubs with youth before adding much in the way of new, expensive free agents.  He’ll likely be allowed two or three seasons to execute his plan before contention is expected.

Rizzo’s power is legitimate but plate discipline will be a focus as he goes along.  He seems to have trouble laying off pitches at his ankles.

Mets first baseman Ike Davis came up to the big leagues last year with attributes and expectations similar to Rizzo’s.  After a flurry of immediate success, Davis got hurt and missed the final five months of the 2011 season.  His first three months of 2012 have been bad.  On Tuesday night, Davis was tossed from the game when he argued a blown call on a pickoff attempt at first base.  It was the first MLB ejection for Ike and it prompted an unusually emotional on-field defense from his manager Terry Collins (pictured above with Davis and umpire Manny Gonzalez).  It’s way out of character for Collins to yell at an umpire.  Gonzalez likely felt compelled to give Davis the thumb after Ike’s glove brushed him during the initial debate of the call.  Ike’s removal from the game was costly since his spot in the order came up in the next and final inning of a 5-3 loss.

My Dad and I had a red hot at Wrigleyville Dogs on Clark before the game. Earlier in the day we roamed the city as tourists on familiar turf.  We hung out on the concrete blocks along Lake Michigan just north of Irving.  We had lunch at Tamales Garibay on Kedzie.  We grabbed an intensely flavorful cup of joe from the Intelligentsia coffee bar on Broadway.  We knocked around Logan Square and sat in the center of that neighborhood next to the Illinois Centennial Monument which has sadly been defaced with scribble.

The next day I went back to the ballpark and met up in the right field bleachers with my brother Chris and old pal Matt.  The wind was blowing straight out at a good clip so you knew baseballs would be flying.  It turns out it was only the Mets who benefited from the breeze.  Danny Murphy hit his first two home runs of the year.  Ike had one and so did Hairston.  17-1 Mets was the final.  The first Murphy long ball landed just a few rows in front of us.  Sitting in the bleachers gives one the perspective of an outfielder.  The ball is a tiny white speck against the blue sky backdrop and it’s an unusual feeling to interpret its movement as it gets closer to you.

The ballpark was less than full both of the games I attended.  There was plenty of room to stretch out in the bleachers.  I thought the crowd was less annoying than in recent visits.  It got a little boozy on Tuesday night but not in a bad way.  We had a bachelor party sitting behind us on Wednesday but even those guys turned out to be pretty tame.  My only beef about the ballpark experience is the incessant ad reading by the PA announcer 45 minutes before first pitch.  It’s a stream of commercials that runs a solid 15 minutes.

The old guy who sells umbrella-shaped sun hats outside the park was in fine form before both games I attended.  Wearing a leisure suit and speaking through a small mega-phone, the guy’s sales pitch was pitch perfect.  “Get your sun hats, people!  Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern wear them.  They come in many different colors.”

Unlicensed vendors sold two dollar bottles of water on Waveland and a father-son combo entertained with aggressively-played percussion on upside-down plastic paint pails.

We went to The Piano Man on Clark and Grace for a round after Wednesday’s game.  It’s just far enough from the park that you avoid the loudmouths.  The sixteen-ounce cans of Old Style are ice cold.  Yum.

My brother Tim took me to the airport Thursday morning.  We squeezed in breakfast at Mac’s in Park Ridge before the drop-off.  Mac’s opens at 5:30 AM.  When we arrived at that time, the griddle was already hot and the coffee had already been brewed.  We were in and out in 20 minutes.  I‘ll repeat what I‘ve said here before: the corned beef hash at Mac’s is as good a way to start one’s day as there is.