Today is the 100th anniversary of the first baseball game played at what now is Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Wrigley Field wasn’t known as Wrigley Field when it opened April 23, 1914; it was Weegham Park, then Cubs Park, before the Wrigley family, of chewing gum fame, purchased the Cubs. Tribune Co. didn’t change the park’s name when it purchased the Cubs in 1980, and neither has the Ricketts family, the current owners.

The Chicago Tribune, former owner of the Cubs, has a cool page of Wrigley’s past, present and proposed future.

Perhaps ironically given where I’ve lived my entire life, I have seen more Cubs games than Brewers games, between in-person attendance and watching on TV. But that’s not really ironic given the Cubs’ long relationship with WGN-TV, which formerly televised nearly all Cubs games for decades.

The important games to televise were home games. That way viewers could see how nice Chicago can be on a nice summer day — the green grass, the ivy, and, when the wind was blowing out, plenty of offense.

The games were first announced by the eternal optimist, Jack Brickhouse. After Brickhouse retired in 1981, the Cubs brought in Harry Caray, formerly of the White Sox and before that the Cardinals.

Caray’s moving across Chicago was one of the many things Tribune did after purchasing the Cubs. The other things included bringing in unprecedented, well, competence. Dallas Green, manager of the 1980 World Series champion Phillies, was hired as general manager, and raided his former team and its farm system to bring in players who could actually play — shortstop Larry Bowa, outfielders Gary Matthews and Bob Dernier, catcher Keith Moreland (who moved to right field because he could hit), pitcher dick Ruthven, and, most importantly, second baseman Ryne Sandberg. Green also traded for third baseman Ron Cey from the Dodgers and, most importantly, traded for pitcher Rick Sutcliffe at midseason.

During high school and college, when I wasn’t at work, I’d sit outside, work on my tan, and have Caray in the background, mispronouncing player names, saying names backwards, giving birthday greetings and get-well wishes, and either flying or dying with the Cubs that day. Games usually started at 1:20 p.m. after the Lead-Off Man at 1, hence the time of this post.

Caray worked with former Cub and White Sox pitcher Steve Stone. They were a great combination, because Stone would correct when necessary. Working with Caray wasn’t always the greatest experience, according to his former broadcast partner, but Stone wrote a book, Where’s Harry?, in which Stone admitted he missed Caray.

I’ve been to Wrigley a few times — happily, never when the weather has been bad there. The first time we went there, we parked at a convent, with a nun in full habit and Cubs hat taking our money. The last two times, we parked at a bowling alley and walked a few blocks past, shall we say, a leather goods store.

Following the Cubs is like having followed the Packers in the 1970s and 1980s — a few moments of joy interspersed among years of failure.

The 1984 Cubs stunned everyone by actually winning their division, then taking a two-game lead in the best-of-five National League Championship Series. And then Cubs fans’ hearts were broken by the Padres’ three straight wins, including a walk-off home run by Steve Garvey in game four, and the winning runs scoring unearned in game five.

Five years later, the 1984 manager, Jim Frey, was the general manager, and Frey hired his friend Don Zimmer to be the field manager. In some ways, 1989 was even more improbable than 1984, because it seemed as though every decision Zimmer made worked — having rookies bat leadoff and third, replacing pitchers and hitters in mid-at-bat, having Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams as your closer.

A nationally televised game against San Francisco looked like a lost cause until the Cubs scored three runs with two out in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game, then won it two innings later when pitcher Les Lancaster, career batting average .098, hit one of his four career doubles and drove in one of his five career runs. Cubs 4, Giants 3 in a game that made you think that there might be something going on this season.

Nine years after that, the Cubs essentially won a playoff berth for Caray, who died before the season began. The Cubs brought in Harry’s grandson, Chip, to work with his grandfather, but unfortunately it didn’t happen.

Then came 2003, when the Cubs not only won the NL Central and their first playoff series since their 1908 World Series win. They took a three-games-to-two lead back into game six of the National League Championship Series, leading Florida 3–0, needing five outs to clinch their first World Series berth since 1945. And then …

The collapse following the Bartman incident was epic even for the Cubs. The Marlins scored eight runs after the Bartman incident, won that game 8–3, and then won the next night 11–6. The last 11 innings of the 2003 NLCS might be an example of the one thing the 2003 Cubs apparently didn’t have — player leadership, of the Matthews/Kirk Gibson/Joe Girardi variety. (Matthews, who was known as “Sarge” during his playing career, was the Cubs’ hitting coach.) At any point after the Bartman incident, someone should have called time out, gone to the mound, gathered all the on-field players together, and told them to get their heads out of their asses and finish the inning, with as many expletives as necessary to get the point across.

That incident basically finished the Cubs as lovable losers, and made them just losers. Even though the Cubs won the NL Central in 2008 over the Brewers, the Cubs were swept in the National League Division Series. (The wild-card Brewers managed to win a game in their NLDS.) The last two seasons, the Cubs won 61 and 66 games. (That’s out of 162, for those unfamiliar with the length of a Major League Baseball season.) Harry Caray is gone, and the Cubs aren’t on free (that is, cable) TV nearly as often anyway. Renovations are planned for Wrigley Field despite substantial neighborhood opposition.

And, yes, the Cubs have no prospect of a World Series win anytime in the foreseeable future. But hey, anybody can have a bad century.