On this day 36 years ago: Lights go on for Cubs at Wrigley Field for first time (2024)

CHICAGO (CBS) -- On this day 36 years ago, Wrigley Field was lifted out of the darkness as the Cubs played their first ever night game at the Friendly Confines.

The game on Monday, Aug. 8, 1988, did not actually wind up being the first official night game—as it got rained out. But it was still a historic day, and one of excitement for many in Chicago and beyond.

Lights in Wrigley Field: A long time coming, and controversial

As documented on the website Chicagology, plans for lights at Wrigley Field date back to the early 1940s. In the fall of 1941, Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley ordered lights to be installed by February or March of the following year—and the team got together all the steel, cable, reflectors, and electrical equipment for the project by late November.

The original plan, Chicagology recalls, was not for night games as they are now known, but for twilight games starting at 6 p.m.—with a City Council ordinance forbidding new innings from starting after 8 p.m.

But after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the 165 tons of steel that had been intended for light standards for Wrigley Field were instead donated to the U.S. effort in World War II.

There were other pushes by the Cubs to install lights in the 1940s after the war, Chicagology notes. But it never happened—as the Cubs went on to lose the 1945 World Series to the Detroit Tigers, see their storied 1969 season led by icons Ernie Banks and Ron Santo end up falling apart, and go through numerous other seasons of poor or unremarkable baseball. The Bears played at Wrigley Field for nearly half a century too—also only during the day.

As the renowned CBS Chicago reporter John Drummond pointed out, there had been a couple of prior occasions for which lights had been erected and turned on temporarily at Wrigley Field. These were not baseball or football games—they were for sports that have not been seen at Wrigley Field in a long time, and hadn't been in 1988 either.

In 1934, lights were turned on at Wrigley Field when Jim Londos took on Ed "Strangler" Lewis in the wrestling ring for the World Heavyweight Championship. Then in 1946, lights went on again as future world middleweight champion Jake LaMotta took on Chicago's own Bob Satterfield in a boxing match at the Friendly Confines.

But baseball remained a daytime-only endeavor at Wrigley Field as the decades went on. As early as 1948, Wrigley Field was the only Major League Baseball stadium left without lights.

The Tribune Company bought the Cubs in 1981, began serious discussions of hosting night games at Wrigley Field.

But some neighbors in surrounding Lakeview fought such plans tooth and nail. They formed the advocacy group Citizens United for Baseball in the Sunshine (C.U.B.S.)—which expressed concerns about the effect of nighttime baseball on the surrounding residential neighborhood.

There were concerns about increased noise and traffic, and about nuisances such as public drunkenness and urination. An unnamed founder of the group was quoted by Chicago Tribune baseball writer Paul Sullivan about the kind of people they thought night games at Wrigley Field would attract: "This whole neighborhood would fall apart with night baseball. We'd pack up and move. I don't want my daughter exposed to someone out in the alley peeing on my car."

Those concerns about public urination—which was a problem in the residential areas of Wrigleyville even when baseball was only played during the day—were an especially common theme.

"A night crowd is different from a day crowd. People don't mind a dog urinating on their lawns," attorney Alan Borlack argued in court. "But there's something about a human being urinating on your home lawn that is a little bit disconcerting."

Citizens United for Baseball in the Sunshine was successful in keeping lights out of Wrigley Field—for a while. In 1982, as published reports recall, the Illinois General Assembly approved legislation that prohibited night games in cities of more than 1 million people—of which Chicago is the only one in Illinois—in stadiums where night games were not already played. A similar ordinance passed in the Chicago City Council the following year—worded in such a fashion that it would apply only to Wrigley Field, not to Old Comiskey Park, where the White Sox had been playing night games for many years.

After many years of total futility, the Cubs won the National League Eastern Division Series in 1984. As noted in an MLB story by Anthony Castrovince, then-MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn had a plan in place to limit World Series games at Wrigley Field to daytime hours if the Cubs made it. But they lost the National League Championship Series to the San Diego Padres.

But in 1985, Cubs season ticketholders received a letter saying the Cubs would not be able to play World Series home games if they made it that year due to the lack of lights. The following year, MLB ordered the Cubs to play their hypothetical postseason home games at Busch Stadium in St. Louis due to the lack of lights at Wrigley—a move that infuriated Chicago Mayor Harold Washington.

"Since when are they in a position to tell us that our team—and it belongs to us—has to go 300 miles away to play a baseball game?" Washington said at the time. "They've got a lot of nerve."

Of course, the Cubs did not get anywhere near the World Series in 1985 or 1986, or any year before 2016. But a more serious threat of the Cubs moving to the suburbs arose—an outcome that some feared could mean Wrigley Field would be demolished.

Finally, in February 1988—a few months after Mayor Washington died and Mayor Eugene Sawyer was appointed to take his place—the City Council voted to allow eight night games at Wrigley Field that season, and 18 in future seasons.

The big night arrives, only to be rained out

After the lights were installed, and the Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies were all ready to take the field for the first game at Wrigley, Citizens United for Baseball in the Sunshine insisted their fight was not over. Opponents raised $100,000 to have the new lights turned off again.

"This isn't a baseball issue. This is a neighborhood issue," Citizens United for Baseball in the Sunshine President Charlotte Newfeld said the day of the first night game. "The tradition going down tonight of daytime baseball is not the one that we're concerned about—and that's neighborhood self-determination."

Phil Ponce reports on the fight against lights in Wrigley Field that were not over when the lights were turned on

Meanwhile, there were new concerns about parking in the neighborhood—with a brand-new permit parking zone in place for much of the Lakeview community. Those without permits to park on residential streets from Irving Park Road on the north to Belmont Avenue on the south, and from Lake Shore Drive on the east to Ashland Avenue on the west, risked being towed.

"Don't even bother driving in," then-Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation Commissioner John Halpin warned. "Take the public transportation, because we're going to start towing at 4 o'clock this afternoon, and to retrieve your car is going to cost a minimum of $105."

But when game time game around that evening following a blazing hot day, everyone was thrilled. As Lester Holt put it in that evening's report on the Channel 2 News, "Thomas Edison couldn't have dreamed his invention would cause such a stir after all these years."

Mayor Sawyer and Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson were both in the crowd. Longtime Cubs slugger Banks and broadcaster Jack Brickhouse didn't miss it either. People gathered on nearby rooftops—back in those days before rooftop baseball clubs dominated the buildings on Sheffield and Waveland avenues—and even on top of vans to watch the game.

Giselle Fernandez reports on the fans who didn't get Cubs tickets, but couldn't stay away

As the blog Bleed Cubbie Blue recalled, the Cubs' Rick Sutcliffe threw out his first pitch at 6:59 p.m., and the Phillies' Phil Bradley went on to homer onto Waveland Avenue off Sutcliffe's fourth pitch. But Ryne Sandberg hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the first, bringing the score to 2-1.

But around the third inning, ominous clouds started to blow in. By the fourth, with the Cubs up 3-1, the thunder started clapping, and the rain started falling. The game was called for rain, and did not officially count.

The following night—Tuesday, Aug. 9—was the first official Cubs night game at Wrigley Field. The Cubs beat the New York Mets 6-4.

Today, the Cubs host more than 40 nighttime events at Wrigley Field, including concerts.

Thumbs up at Wrigley Field hours before the Cubs' first night game there, from a Channel 2 News credit roll video

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• Chicago Cubs
• Wrigley Field