Headline:    Mission from the Cubs

Subhead:    Effort to erect West Side Grounds marker inspires quest

Outquote:    Unsure exactly how the park was situated, Elwood and I sprinkled some dirt in a flower bed in front of a housing project and jumped back in the Bluesmobile.

Karma is the belief that bad things happen to bad people (see Mussolini), and good things happen to good people (see Cinderella).

Well, a friend who used to work for the White Sox made a bet with me last year--a beer for each game separating his team and mine. I just had to pay off on that bet, don’t you think? Unable to get together in the off-season, finally, lingering into a new season, I cornered him: beers, wings, burgers--my treat.

That night, karma collided with Derrek Lee in Los Angeles.

Having heard about another friend’s efforts to get a historical marker erected at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I devised a way to appease karma. Mike Reischl is a graduate of UIC, a campus that used to be home to West Side Grounds, one of five ballparks the Cubs previously called home.

Reischl formed “The Way Out in Left Field Society,” whose mission statement is “to promote, explore and discover the hidden, forgotten and eccentric historical places, people and occurrences of baseball....”

My plan was to chat about his “pet project” while we visited the sites of the Cubs’ former homes. I had a 35-mm film case filled with dirt I scooped up from the infield during Tiger Stadium’s final month and grabbed a batch from Wrigley. Here was an opportunity to mix dirt from the two historic venues for the first time since Stan Hack’s spikes were cleaned up after the 1945 World Series.

Is that the right recipe? How should I know? I’m just a dumb voodoo dabbler. But considering it’d been 98 years since a Cubs world championship and they were riding an eight-game losing streak, how worse could I make it?

Since this is a Chicago story and we were on a mission from the Cubs, and Reischl is also a Chicago cop, I’ll refer to him as Elwood.

Our first stop took us to the southeast corner of Randolph and Michigan. Elwood, a history major, had done his homework.

The White Stockings of the National Association, he told me, played on this site in 1871. Lake Park, it was called, burned down in the Great Chicago Fire that October. Lakefront Park later was erected here as home of the White Stockings (today’s Cubs) from 1978-84.

Approaching an appropriate spot, we were startled for a moment by a hippie enjoying an afternoon siesta behind a monolith Millennium Park sign. We sprinkled some Wrigley Field and Tiger Stadium dirt and were off to 22^nd and State streets.

Built in 1874, 23^rd Street Grounds was home for Chicago’s first two seasons in the National League. Unsure exactly how the park was situated, Elwood and I sprinkled some dirt in a flower bed in front of a housing project and jumped back in the Bluesmobile.

Along the way to South Side Park, we talked about the $2,814 he needed to raise for the Illinois State Historical Society plaque. Reischl already had enough for the $500 application and plans a September event to raise the rest. We joked about his mission statement, in which there is wording to enjoy this lifetime pilgrimage with others equally “misguided” and “peculiar.”

Peculiar I’ll never deny, but how can a guy with two vials of dirt on a field trip be misguided?

“You really do have to be odd. Look at what we’re doing right now,” Elwood said. “Maybe we’ll raise enough money to put up plaques at all these places.”

Our next stop, oddly, took us to U.S. Cellular Field. In the east parking lot is where the Cubs played from 1891-94. South Side Park overlapped on what later became the original Comiskey Park. We dropped some dirt at the base of a small tree. “In 20 years it’ll either be dead or the biggest tree out here,” I quipped.

When we got to the northeast corner of Harrison and Loomis streets, where the West Side Park home clubhouse once stood, it was apparent a baseball stadium could not fit at this location. That’s because the Eisenhower Expressway now runs right through it.

We sprinkled some dirt and headed toward UIC. Researching has been how Reischl, 38, spends his Friday nights now that he’s married with a young son.

It’s how he discovered the phrase “out of leftfield,” as a way to describe an odd or eccentric person or idea, was derived from a mental hospital that used to be beyond West Side Grounds’ leftfield wall. He named his cause after the expression.

“Ninety percent of all knowledge is knowing where to find it. A baseball coach told me that. He was an idiot,” Elwood said. “It just goes to show you can learn anything from an idiot.”

Elwood found that West Side Grounds is where Pat Pieper got into baseball as a vendor. Pieper later became PA announcer there in 1915 and moved with the team to Wrigley, where Elwood and I heard him as young boys until Pieper’s death in 1974.

It’s also where the Cubs became the first franchise to repeat as World Series champions in 1907 and ’08.

“The Cubs were an absolute dynamo in that ballpark,” Elwood said. “If that’s not enough to put up a [historical] marker, I don’t know what is.”

We stopped at 912 S. Wood St. Elwood took out a map and pointed just steps to the south, where an alley still exists. The Cubs clubhouse once stood on that northwest corner, beyond centerfield. Also, a tall flagpole towered over wooden bleachers. Here is where he’d like to place the plaque.

“In every picture I see, this flagpole is real prominent,” he said. “It seems like the logical spot.”

We sprinkled a little more dirt. That night, the Cubs snapped their losing streak. Mission accomplished. I donated to Reischl’s cause, and he gave me a membership card. The address I used was 1060 W. Addison St., same as Elwood.

For membership or donating to The Way Out in Left Field Society, write to P.O. Box 316545, Chicago, IL 60631 or visit www.TheWayOutInLeftFieldSociety.org

 E-mail Jim McArdle at jmcardle@cubs.com.