Gabriel Dixson was lounging outside of his apartment building across the street from Wrigley Field on Friday evening, when organ music began billowing out of the ballpark.
“We were like, ‘We thought baseball wasn’t starting until July?’” he said.
Dixson was right — the proposal Major League Baseball owners approved Monday targeted an early July start. But with the sounds of baseball absent from the normally bustling Wrigleyville, the Cubs decided to inject some life back into the neighborhood.
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“Wrigley Field, living right next to it, you get used to hearing the organ, hearing the fans and everything like that,” said Dixson, who has lived across the street from the ballpark for about three years. “So, it’s kind of cool to hear it again because it’s been silent, and it’s been so weird.”
At 5 p.m. sharp, John Benedeck, one of three organists the Cubs hired recently to replace the retired Gary Pressy, began his Friday performance with "Hey Hey, Holy Mackerel."
A pair of pugs howled along from outside of Murphy's Bleachers. Christopher Sorley and a group of his fellow bleacher bums staked out the corner of North Waveland and West Kenmore avenues.
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“We’re just trying to keep the morale going,” Sorley said, “trying to keep some normalcy in our lives.”
Cubs fans Anne and Steve Lapp sat on the opposite side of the ballpark, after driving in from Rockford.
“The quickest we’ve ever gotten here, man,” Steve said.
They learned about the event from the NBC Sports MyTeams app. When the notification popped up on Steve’s phone, he called to Anne from the shower. It was time for a trip to Chicago.
“This is where we go,” Steve said. “This is where we go for anniversaries and dates.”
Anne chimed in: “Birthdays, Father's Day, Mother’s Day.”
Benedeck played for an hour, serenading Wrigleyville with songs from Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” to Neil Diamond's “Sweet Caroline.” Listeners congregated around the perimeter of the ballpark, most wearing masks and maintaining a distance of several feet from each other.
“We’re all looking for a light at the end of the tunnel,” Dixson said. “And this is a little bit of that, so we’ll take it.”
As if on cue, Benedeck launched into the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.”
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