Wrigley Field's Philly connection | Frank's Place
Cubs owner who bestowed his name on the beloved ballpark grew up in the city
Maybe it's jealousy.
Maybe I've never been a Wrigley Field worshipper because somewhere deep in my dark Philadelphia soul I wish my city had preserved - or at least re-created - a vibrant urban ballpark of its own.
Or maybe the aversion stemmed from the fact that I'm a contrarian who has always been repelled by the universal adoration of anything, be it ivy-covered or not.
That said, I must confess that my ill will toward the Cubs' much-beloved North Side home abated this week when I accidentally discovered that it bears the name of a fellow Philadelphian.
Over the years I've spent many nickels and dimes on the chewing gum that made William Wrigley Jr. famous and spectacularly rich. I've often passed by and admired the handsome Michigan Avenue skyscraper he built. I was aware that for a time he owned a minor-league club in Reading, and that his name also was attached to the Los Angeles ballpark where TV's Home Run Derby and so many Hollywood baseball movies were filmed.
But I never knew he was one of us.
Wrigley, it turned out, was born during the Civil War to a wealthy family that lived and worked in then-tony Germantown. His childhood home was on Morton Street, not far from where his most successful Cubs manager, Joe McCarthy, later grew up.
His mother, Mary Ladley, came from a prominent Chestnut Hill family. His namesake father was a successful manufacturer and a Philadelphia school board member. In 1870, the senior Wrigley opened a soap factory close by what's now SEPTA's Wayne Junction station.
Made from, among other things, pulverized quartz, Wrigley's Mineral Scouring Soap, according to its bright red wrapper, could be used to "clean, scrub, scour and polish."
Not much is known about the younger Wrigley's youth, but he apparently was both a born entrepreneur and a young rebel. At 11, one biography notes, he ran away to New York, where he sold newspapers on street corners and lived God-knows-where.
He soon returned to Philly - but not to school - and began working with his father. At 21, already an avid and peripatetic soap salesman, he was given a share of the business.
Believing that there was money to be made in the west, he traveled to Chicago at age 29. There he soon started producing and selling soap.
In order to entice customers, Wrigley offered them a premium of baking powder. When that proved more popular than the soap, the pragmatic businessman began manufacturing baking powder. He switched the premium to chewing gum and the story repeated itself.
By 1893 Wrigley had launched the two iconic brands that became the basis of his fortune - Juicy Fruit and Wrigley's Spearmint. Those products so penetrated the market that in the first decades of the 20th century, 99 percent of Americans recognized their names.
A lifelong baseball fan, Wrigley purchased a share of the Cubs in 1916 and within a decade was the National League team's majority owner. His brick ballpark was originally called Weeghman Field. It became Cubs Park in 1920. Finally, in 1927, it assumed the name of the team's owner.
Giving the ballpark his name wasn't mere egotism. He shared that name with his successful company. Wrigley was one of the first to recognize the power of branding, whether it was for a chewing gum or a politician.
In 1920, GOP presidential candidate Warren G. Harding, locked in a tight race with Democrat James M. Cox, was looking for help. He turned to Wrigley, a rock-ribbed Republican, and Albert Lasker, an advertising master who was himself a former Cubs owner.
Harding, a wealthy newspaper publisher, sought to be portrayed as a man of the people. He thought photographs of him golfing would accomplish that. But, as a 2015 National Pastime article on the episode pointed out, golf was then "perceived as somewhat less than manly, a game played only by the rich."
Wrigley and Lasker advised Harding to try baseball instead. They arranged a game between a semipro team and the Cubs. Newsreel cameras filmed Harding pitching as well as chatting with popular Cubs star Grover Cleveland Alexander.
The strategy worked. Harding carried 37 of 48 states.
Wrigley died of what was termed "acute indigestion" in 1932. Son Phillip inherited the Cubs, but little of his father's brains and none of his generosity. But he did one thing right.
While baseball teams everywhere were abandoning cities and old-fashioned ballparks, he insisted the Cubs weren't moving.
Once seen as hopelessly outdated, Wrigley Field has survived and prospered. Over the years, it has added lights, scoreboards, additional seats.
Of course, it has also added that cloying aura of cutesy charm that Philadelphians hate.
And I'd like to think that if he were alive today, William Wrigley Jr., a Philly guy like me, would find it all more than a little off-putting.