NEWSLETTER
Wrigley Field played host to a team that won 103 games and a World Series in 2016 (the first in … some time), so it should come as no surprise that the Friendly Confines was named one of the happiest places on Earth by CNN.
The list spans the globe and includes a BBQ joint in Owensboro, Ky., a spa and massage center in Bangkok, protected wilderness in Botswana, and a Giant Panda research base in China. So, it’s not as if whoever came up with this list didn’t go far and wide to find the happiest of happy places.
According to CNN … https://t.co/UT0A0skIVl pic.twitter.com/QRdxlmhrdl
— Brett Taylor (@BleacherNation) January 19, 2017
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But the fact that Wrigley Field is one of the happiest is remarkable.
Just let that sink in. The world is a pretty big place. And one of the 15 happiest places in the WORLD is a baseball stadium in Chicago. And to be fair, as Toni Andracki points out at CSN Chicago, CNN didn’t even mention/consider the World Series when making the rankings.
“Wrigley Field, on a warm summer night when the breeze off Lake Michigan makes the flags flutter and your cheeks flush with relief from the damp heat.“No matter where you sit, you are close to the field, which makes you feel both the intimacy of the game and the immensity of it.“The players, standing just feet away from you, feel like giants. And the vendors in the stands hawking hot dogs and beers and Italian ice really are a study in that particular species of Chicago native.”
It’s mind blowing when put in the context of the other locations in the rankings.
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The Cubs won 57 games at Wrigley Field during the regular season and five more in the postseason – including the franchise’s first win at the stadium in a World Series game since 1945. The stadium drew more than 3.2 million people in 81 regular season games and another 336,000 in the playoffs. It all adds up to 3,569,226 people going through the turnstiles of one of the happiest places on earth.
Now, that is a ton of happiness in one place.
