Among the many very cool and obvious things about the Chicago Cubs playing in a ballpark that’s been around for over 100 years is that there are memories – real, it happened memories – from inside those walls from decades and decades and decades before. The legends that have played for and against the Cubs have done so within those same Friendly Confines, and that is awing as an idea, even if you don’t have any visual documentation.
… and sometimes you *do* have visual documentation!
Enjoy a beautiful look at the 1937 Phillies warming up at Wrigley Field. A video from over 80 years ago, in (sort-of) color:
Rare Color-1937 pre-game, Philadelphia Phillies, at Wrigley Field (from the Flagstaff Films baseball home movie archive) pic.twitter.com/9Pe4jIGtvV
— Flagstaff Films (@Flagstafffilms) November 12, 2018
Did you catch The Old Scoreboard in the background at the very end of the clip? How’s this for fun: it was *brand new* that season. Just constructed and installed in 1937. That’s fantastic.
That 1937 season was a transformative one at Wrigley Field, because it also saw the addition of the brick outfield wall and then the addition of the famous ivy by Bill Veeck. The bleachers were totally reconstructed, and, overall, the outfield at Wrigley Field started to look a whole lot more like what we would recognize today.
I don’t know exactly when the video was from, but if it was created to show off the Phillies’ first visit to Wrigley Field that year, it would have been before a May 25 game, which the Cubs won 5-3 in a breezy 1 hour and 41 minutes.