CHICAGO — At 2:28 p.m., 120 days after Chicago Cubs baseball was supposed to begin, and four hours before it finally did, a man in a retro, baby blue Greg Maddux jersey pressed his masked face to the barred exterior of Wrigley Field. With a raised right hand, he clasped Gate 17, outside Section 132, down the right field line. He leaned in. Narrowed his eyes.
“See anything in there?” a passerby asked him.
“No. I wish I could be in there though,” he responded.
And he hobbled off down a quiet Sheffield Avenue, his words speaking for thousands of diehards, his longings part of an eerie, unprecedented scene: Wrigleyville, on Cubs gameday, nearly empty.