CHICAGO — Adorned in Cubs gear — hat, sweatshirt and jacket — Al Yellon was the first in line nearly four hours before the Wrigley Field bleacher gates opened Monday night. He has sat there regularly since the 1970s, has had season tickets since the early ’90s and rarely misses a game. The bleachers, he said, were like home.
But with the century-old Wrigley undergoing a multiyear renovation, the bleachers were closed for the season’s first month, and Yellon, who writes a blog for SB Nation, was relocated to the left-field grandstand. In response, he and some friends wore buttons they had made reading, “Bleacher Refugees.