The Cubs play their first Saturday night game at Wrigley Field in 13 years this weekend, and it could be a while before the next one.
But if some in upper management had their way, home night games on Fridays and Saturdays would be scheduled more often.
Would it help the Cubs to have a few more Saturday night home games?
"It helps me," reliever Kerry Wood said. "I get to go to my son's Little League game that day. But for us, I don't think it matters. We're so used to playing day games here. It'll be pretty exciting for the fans more than anything."
A city ordinance from 1988, the first year of night baseball at Wrigley, prohibits the scheduling of Friday and Saturday night games except in the case of nationally televised games, such as Saturday's Cubs-Giants affair on Fox's "Game of the Week."
The last time there was a regular-season Saturday night game at Wrigley was Saturday, June 20, 1998, when Wood was a rookie phenom and Sammy Sosa was engaged in his home run duel with Mark McGwire. Wood struck out 11 in 7 1/3 innings that night and Sosa hit his 28th and 29th home runs in a 9-4 victory over the Phillies.
Wood said Thursday he doesn't remember anything about that night, though it included his first career home run.
The main reason the ordinance was passed was to relieve the neighborhood of congestion on weekend nights when parking is scarce. But since parking zone stickers for local residents became commonplace in the late 1990s, parking is not as big an issue as it once was.
Cubs management believes a couple of Friday or Saturday night games during the regular season would be beneficial to the team and to local establishments as well. But whether the ordinance will be changed soon is doubtful.
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