Chris Scheld stood in line at the Norris Box Office for more than an hour Monday to get tickets to NU Day at Wrigley Field, a May 24 game between the Chicago Cubs and the Houston Astros.
But Scheld, a Weinberg sophomore, said he has not always been a Cubs devotee. He’s from New York, and has traditionally been a New York Mets fan.
Scheld said he’s always liked the Cubs, but when he came to Northwestern he decided to adopt them as his home team away from home.
“I think especially last year, since they were so good, it seemed like the entire city was behind them, it was so easy to jump on the bandwagon,” Scheld said. “(Also) a lot of people from this school are from the area so you adopt what they do, because it’s all around you.”
Chicago sports teams have attracted many out of state students yearning for a hometown team to root for.
The 1,450 tickets to NU Day at Wrigley Field sold out within a day and a half, said Karen Rowse, a Weinberg senior who works at the Norris Box Office. She added that about 250 tickets were sold within the first hour.
“There was a line wrapping around Norris,” Rowse said. “People had been asking us about (the event) leading up to Monday, and people were really ready to get tickets.”
Last year about 1,000 tickets were sold, said Frank Zambrano, the Norris Box Office cash operations coordinator.
For Weinberg sophomore Stephanie Bowen, last fall was all about her hometown team, the Boston Red Sox. But when she isn’t rooting for the Red Sox, Bowen supports the Cubs. She said she’s gone to three games in the last month and will also be attending NU Day at Wrigley Field.
“I still follow the Sox first and foremost,” she said. “But I also follow the Cubs pretty regularly because I’m living out here and they’re a pretty historic team.”
Bowen said she would support the home team of any city she moved to, as long as they had “a real team history and there was a really strong fan base for the team and a strong sense of community.”
But Scheld said the Cubs have a special quality that drew him in that other big-city teams don’t have.
“They seem like such a cool team,” he said. “I like how people think about them here as a friendly-fan team.”
Some out-of-state students were Chicago sports fans before coming to NU, and found that their admiration for the teams increased after they moved to Chicago.
“I partially applied to a school in Chicago because of the baseball out here,” said Blake Kluger, a Chicago White Sox fan from the New York suburbs.
Kluger, a Weinberg junior, said he was always a fan of White Sox first baseman Frank Thomas, but when he came to Chicago he developed a greater interest in the whole team. Kluger was also drawn to the White Sox because so many NU students “arbitrarily” choose the Cubs as their favorite Chicago team, he said.
Since coming to NU, Kluger has followed the White Sox on TV and attended a game his freshman year. He said he has found a community of White Sox fans to share his enthusiasm, but added that they are mostly from the Chicago area.
Many students adopt the Cubs or White Sox because its easier to follow a local team with a steady fan base, Kluger said.
“It probably stems from fact in that (students) want to immerse themselves in what’s available,” Kluger said. “It’s much easier to watch baseball on local broadcast, and it’s cheaper.”
Reach Julia Neyman at [email protected]
