“Hey, hot dog here!” boomed the chubby Wrigley vendor. “Who needs one?”
“I do,” Kevin said, raising a $5 bill.
“You got it, pal,” the vendor replied.
It was the fifth inning, and Kevin and I were sitting in the left-field seats. We were in the lower level, in foul territory, a couple rows behind the Ovozis. Omar and his dad sat in our section but in the first row.
The place was packed. Loud chatter was constant, and between-innings organ music added to the ballpark ambience.
The vendor yanked a boiled weenie and a moist bun out of his containers.
“What do you want on it, slugger?” he asked.
“Just ketchup,” Kev said.
“Ketchup?” the vendor retorted. “You must be an out-of-towner, ’cause Chicagoans don’t put ketchup on their dogs.”
“We’re actually from Cleveland,” Kevin said.
“Oh, yeah?” the vendor replied with a chuckle. “Indians fans?”
We nodded.
“You have my sympathies,” he said. “I predict a Cubs–Indians World Series—in the year 5000.”
We smiled, and Kev paid the guy five bucks for a $4.50 dog.
“Keep the change,” Kevin said.
“Thanks, champ,” the guy said. “Go Tribe. . . . Hot dog here! . . .”
“That guy’s like one of those ‘Chee-ca-go’ guys,” Kevin said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I thought he was gonna start saying, ‘Da Bears! Da Bulls!’”
Kev with a Chicago accent: “Yeah, after all dose beef sanwiches, I dink I’m gonna have anudder hart attack!”
We cracked up.
Wrigley Field was a whole lot of fun. There’s no other ballpark like it. The outfield fence is made of red brick, and that brick is completely covered with ivy (green vines and leaves). The park is a hundred years old, and a large, green manual scoreboard towers in center field.
Wrigley is the only major-league park that sits in a neighborhood. People live in condo buildings across the streets. You can see a bunch of the buildings behind the outfield bleachers. In fact, some people have constructed bleachers on top of the condo buildings. They watch the games from their rooftops!
“This place is awesome,” Kevin said through a bite of his hot dog.
Kevin was a different person at Wrigley. He was normally a nervous Nellie, but Wrigley had a way of putting fans in a good mood.
Except the two guys directly behind us. They were about nineteen or twenty years old—and obnoxious. One guy wore a Reds cap; the other a Joey Votto Reds jersey. Both were big muscular guys—like football players—with neatly shaved heads. They continuously heckled the Cubs, who were leading 4–2.
“NINE-teen, OH-eight!” they chanted, referring to the year the Cubs last won the World Series. “It’s choking time, Castro!”
“I heard Babe Ruth called this place a dump,” said the guy in the cap.
“It smells like one,” said the other. “And the hot dogs taste like the crap they serve in our cafeteria.”
Kevin rolled his eyes. It was hard for us to ignore them.
Down below, I saw Omar eating something out of a cardboard basket.
“What do you think the Big O is eating?” I asked Kevin.
“Oh, I saw those,” he said. “Cholula Tater Tots. They’re potatoes with sour cream, cheese, and hot sauce.”
“The hot sauce is probably why he needs that giant Pepsi,” I said.
Omar appeared to be enjoying himself. He was pointing to the field and explaining a lot to his dad. Like, “On a fly ball, the runner on third has to go back and tag the base.”
Mr. Ovozi is from Uzbekistan, and I’m sure they don’t know much about baseball in that Eastern European country.
Thankfully, we no longer had to deal with the Reds fans. After Cincinnati couldn’t score in the sixth, they left in a huff.
“Cubs suck!” one of them yelled as they walked away.
“What sucks,” Kevin said to me, “is mean people. Let’s hope we never become jerks like those guys.”
“I hear ya,” I said.
Soon we all rose for the Seventh Inning Stretch. At Wrigley, broadcaster Harry Caray used to lean out of his WGN booth and sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” with the fans. Ever since he died in 1998, celebrity guests have entered the booth and sung the song—from race-car driver Jeff Gordon to singer Ozzy Osbourne. On this day, a player on the Chicago Bears led the rendition.
In front of us, Omar and his dad sang along and swayed to the song. Omar turned and gave Kev and I a thumbs-up and a beaming smile.
But twenty minutes later, everything went horribly wrong.
In the top of the ninth, the Cubs led 4–2, but the Reds were threatening. With two outs, Cincinnati had runners on first and second. That’s when the newest Cubs curse began—and our friend Omar was right in the middle of it.
A Reds slugger lofted a high fly ball to down the left-field line. Andres Cabrera—the Cubs’ superstar left fielder—raced into foul territory near the wall. With the ball headed in our general direction, I took a quick picture with my cell phone camera.
Fans in the first three rows crowded together—right around Omar—trying to catch the foul ball. I couldn’t see what happened, but most everyone else in the ballpark could. The fans’ reaction can only be described as a collective gasp, followed by a large “Ohhhhh.”
“What’s going on?” I asked Kevin.
“Look,” he said.
The woman in front of us was watching the game live on her iPad. We leaned over and saw Cabrera screaming at the third base umpire. The fans were booing their lungs out.
“Why’s Cabrera all wet?” I asked.
“Somebody spilled their pop on him,” the woman said.
They showed the replay: as Cabrera was waiting to make the catch, a fan in the first row—several feet above Cabrera—dropped his large Pepsi on the player’s head! Temporarily blinded by the beverage, Cabrera couldn’t catch the ball. It fell harmlessly foul.
Now we watched the “action” on the field. Cabrera was enraged with the umpire, claiming that the ump should have ruled “fan interference.” Cabrera thought the ump should have called the batter out, which would have ended the game.
Cubs manager Joe Hargrove tried to corral his star player, but Cabrera broke free and shoved the ump. In baseball, that’s a huge no-no.
“Oh, he’s so gonna get suspended,” Kevin said.
The umpire ejected Cabrera from the game, eliciting a huge “boooo” from the crowd. While that was happening, a ruckus brewed in the first few rows. Fans were throwing cups and paper wads and food at, of all people, Omar!
“Loser!” someone cried.
“Go home, you moron!” shouted another.
I looked at Kevin, and he at me.
“That was his Pepsi!” I said.
We looked at the replay on the iPad. The fans were bunched together, so it was hard to tell exactly what was going on. But sure enough, the large cup of Pepsi fell out of Omar’s hand.
“Oh, my gosh,” Kevin said.
Amid the bedlam, security guards were surrounding Omar and his father, shielding them from flying objects. They escorted the Ovozis toward the exit.
“Kick ’em out!” a fan yelled.
Since the Ovozis were our ride, we had no choice but to follow. Kevin’s vacation from his anxieties was over. Stress lines returned to his face.
“Where are they taking him?” Kev asked.
I had no clue. But we followed the Ovozis as the guards rushed them out of the seating area and down the concourse—the walking area between the seats and the food stands.
“Omar!” I yelled.
With guards’ hands pushing him forward, Omar turned around and gazed at us. I could see the worry in his eyes. He looked like a kid who had just been arrested.
The guards opened a door and led the Ovozis into a room. When Kevin and I reached the door, it was slammed shut in our faces.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I told Kevin.
We leaned back against the wall and slunk to the floor. Kevin performed his most nervous habit: rubbing his tooth with his finger until it made a squeaky noise.
Meanwhile, on a TV monitor next to the Connie’s Pizza stand, we watched a nightmare play out before our eyes.
The batter who had hit the two-out foul fly ball to Cabrera wound up cracking a double. Both runners scored, tying the game. He himself scored on a single, making it 5–4. And now, in the bottom of the ninth with the game on the line, the Cubs went down, one-two-three. Omar’s cup of Pepsi was the reason they lost the game.
When the final out was made, the crowd vented its anger with a chorus of “boos.” As they left their seats and flooded into the concourse area, many fans were visibly upset.
“Why do these things always happen to us?” pouted a redheaded young woman in a Cubs cap.
“It was that kid who blew the game,” barked a grumpy old man. “Just when things start to look up, something like this happens.”
“I feel so sorry for that boy,” a mother told her two young sons. “That’s all Chicago is going to talk about.”
As we watched the fans rumble by and grumble about our friend, I felt sick to my stomach. Sure, Omar was weird, but he wasn’t a bad kid.
“Well, at least it was just one game,” I managed to say. “They’re still in first place.”
“It’s not like they could blow a five-game lead with ten games to go,” Kevin said.
A man in a mustache and a “1908” T-shirt overheard Kevin.
“What did you say?” the man asked.
“Huh?” Kevin replied. “I just said that they’re still five games ahead of the Reds, so that should be safe.”
“Son, you’re so naïve,” the man said with a chuckle. “This is the Cubs we’re talking about!”
Kevin noticeably gulped. He and I feared the doom that may lie ahead. We didn’t want to say it, but we knew what fans would call it.
The Curse of Omar.