How Wrigley Field Got Its Ivy

                             George F. Will is as eloquent on baseball as he is on politics.  In his March book, A Nice Little Place on the North Side, out in time for Major League Baseball's opening day, he celebrates the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field.  Here, an excerpt on how Wrigley got its famous Boston ivy.

                             Pursuant to [Cubs owner William] Wrigley's plan to have a beautiful setting for ugly baseball, [Bill] Veeck [whose father was Cubs president] suggested that they borrow an idea from Perry Stadium, in Indianapolis, where ivy adorned the outfield walls.  Wrigley responded enthusiastically, "And we can put trees or something in the back."  Except he did not want the trees outside the park; he wanted them in the bleachers.  And although Wrigley seems to have had too much patience when trying, sort of, to grow a good team, he did not want to wait for saplings to grow big enough to shade the steps leading up to the scoreboard.  So tree boxes large enough for full-grown trees were built on each step.  These required concrete footings, which, in turn, required new steel supports for the bleachers, to withstand the weight.  The trees were planted and, Veeck recalled, "a week after we were finished the bleachers looked like the Russian steppes during a hard, cold winter.  Nothing but cement and bark."  The wind off Lake Michigan had stripped the leaves from the trees.  So new trees were planted.  And the wind again denuded them.  The forestation of the Wrigley Field bleachers was abandoned.  The footings for the trees had cost $200,000.  That year, 1937, the Cubs' team payroll was about $250,000.
                           The day before the team returned from a long road trip, Wrigley told Veeck he had invited some friends to the next day's game to see the ivy.  But Veeck had not yet bought it.  A specialist at a nursery was consulted.  He said ivy could not be deployed in one night.  Veeck asked what could be.  The specialist answered with one word: "Bittersweet."  He was not a philosophic merchant commenting on the human condition; neither was he summing up the experience of being a Cubs fan.  Rather, he was recommending a plant with that name.  So that night Veeck and Wrigley Field's groundskeeper strung light bulbs along the outfield wall to illuminate their work, and by morning the wall was entirely covered with bittersweet.  In  its midst they planted ivy, which eventually took over the wall.