Ocelopotamus

There are very few circumstances in which I can imagine a lifelong sports-hating pansy like myself setting foot in Wrigley Field. But a Police concert is, well, in the ballpark. Via Gaper’s Block, it looks like The Police are coming to Wrigley Field:

Sting and the Police will headline a pair of nighttime concerts at Wrigley Field over July Fourth weekend, thanks to an ordinance advanced by a City Council committee Monday that requires the Cubs give up a night game in return. The Police won’t make it official until Wednesday, when the full Council signs off. But sources said the band has agreed to play Wrigley on July 5 and 6.

Bonus: It’s uncharitable of me I know, but I love how every time the Dave Matthews Band gets mentioned in the Chicago press, there’s always a matter-of-fact (but subtextually gleeful) reminder of the unfortunate Magic Brownies Incident.

The star of the show was originally scheduled to be the Dave Matthews Band, whose bus driver unloaded 800 pounds of human waste on a tour boat passing under the Kinzie Street bridge in 2004.

Abracadabra!

My second apartment in Chicago was just across a parking lot from Wrigley Field. (I was new in town and didn’t know any better when I signed the lease.) The lights from the night games were so bright you could read a book in my apartment without turning on any lights as long as the curtains were open. (Like I could afford curtains that year!) When I was talking to friends on the phone long distance, they’d be able to hear the Wrigley crowd cheering loudly in the background. “Is that the GAME?!” they’d ask. “Yeah, ” I’d sigh, in a voice like Eeyore staring past a graveyard. “That’s the game.”

Anyway, it might have eased the pain of that year a little if there’d been just one night when the sound of drunken baseball fans had been replaced by, say, “Can’t Stand Losing You” or “Bring on the Night.”

UPDATE: Oh, who am I kidding? I love The Police, but I hate arena shows. Wrigley Field, you’re still safe from me.