CHICAGO — “Here we go, into the smoke,” one Cubs player said late Tuesday afternoon as he passed through Wrigley Field’s underground clubhouse. That walk toward the tunnel that leads into the home dugout presents a sweeping view of the Friendly Confines and its iconic bleachers and center-field scoreboard. Except this time, a gloomy haze hovered over the rooftops in Wrigleyville, dulling the normally brilliant colors of the grass and ivy.
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A heavy smell lingered as smoke from wildfires in Canada drifted into the Midwest. The National Weather Service and Illinois Environmental Protection Agency issued air quality alerts. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson warned the city’s residents of an unhealthy environment, recommending that certain groups — children, senior citizens, pregnant women, people with heart or lung diseases — avoid strenuous activities and limit their time outdoors. IQAir, a tech company that tracks international developments in real time, rated Chicago as having the worst air quality in the world.
The decision to stage Tuesday night’s Cubs-Phillies game was made by Major League Baseball with input from the MLB Players Association. After multiple rounds of discussions among the various stakeholders, Cubs right-hander Jameson Taillon threw the first pitch at 7:04 p.m. Some stadium workers wore masks, a reminder of how empty Wrigley Field felt during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s not ideal,” Cubs manager David Ross said before a 5-1 loss to the Phillies.
“I could smell it the whole game,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said afterward. “But, yeah, as long as it’s safe for the players, you play.”
The Cubs were expecting to be more concerned about jet lag from their recent trip to London for two showcase games against the Cardinals. This homestand is supposed to feel more like the street festivals that pop up throughout the city’s neighborhoods in the summer. With no days off until the All-Star break, this run of 13 games in 13 days already loomed as a test that could determine what Jed Hoyer’s front office will do at the trade deadline.
Ian Happ, the union representative for the Cubs, saw the advisory from the City of Chicago on social media and contacted the MLBPA’s New York office. Happ exchanged text messages with Kyle Schwarber, his good friend and former teammate, for updates and context on how the Phillies handled a similar situation earlier this month. Happ checked in with Cubs players to gauge their levels of concern.
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“I had conversations all morning,” Happ said. “It’s just trying to figure out what the protocol is, what’s safe, what’s not safe. None of us have had to deal with this or play in this before, so it’s just trying to figure out what makes sense.”
Schwarber looked out the window of his hotel room in downtown Chicago in the morning, scanning Michigan Avenue, and thought to himself: Man, it’s foggy outside. As a World Series champ who was drafted, developed and non-tendered by the Cubs, Schwarber knows all about the unpredictable elements at Wrigley Field. A text message from Bryce Harper alerted Schwarber that the Phillies would be dealing with more smoke.
Around the same time that Schwarber knocked Taillon’s first pitch into right field for a leadoff double that set up the game’s first run, AirNow logged Chicago’s Air Quality Index at 254 and gave it a “very unhealthy” rating. AirNow, a centralized data system run through a partnership that includes multiple federal agencies, had recorded a higher AQI on June 7 in Philadelphia, when MLB postponed a Phillies-Tigers game at Citizens Bank Park and rescheduled it for the following day.
“I think we’re all kind of just learning what that really means,” said Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner, a Stanford graduate who almost always gives expansive answers whenever reporters approach his locker. This time, Hoerner sidestepped a question about his level of concern. “The air quality numbers and things like that are not something I’m really familiar with.”
“I don’t know if there’s been studies done on this,” Happ said. “I don’t know if there are numbers. I guess that’s a conversation we can start having. I don’t know how often Canadian wildfires are going to affect baseball games. But I think until somebody goes out and sets a standard of what that is, it’s just an arbitrary line. We’re all trying to figure it out together.”
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“It’s not up to us,” Schwarber said. “We can tell them what we prefer, but at the end of the day, it’s going to be the health (experts) to make the decision if it’s good enough to play.”
As the defending National League champs, the Phillies (41-37) are both a measuring stick and inspiration for this up-and-down Cubs team (37-40). The 2022 Phillies were a third-place team that fired its manager in the middle of the season, got swept at Wrigley Field in late September and sneaked into the expanded playoffs with 87 wins.
On Tuesday, Brandon Marsh, one of the key additions at last year’s trade deadline, hit two home runs off Taillon, a pitcher the Phillies pursued this winter before he signed a four-year, $68 million contract with the Cubs. Taillon, who has a 6.90 ERA and one quality start in 13 outings, was involved in the union’s negotiations around the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and MLB’s lockout.
“I was on a text thread with some of the union reps, and I know there were conversations about (delaying the game),” Taillon said. “It seemed like MLB got the information it wanted to see as far as the air quality was supposed to get better by start time and get better throughout the night. I guess they felt better about it, and we just had to trust that. There wasn’t much we could do at that point.
“We’ll see how we all feel tomorrow bouncing back. But I think we’re all right.”
The Cubs announced a crowd of 37,072. The bleachers were packed. Fans danced to “Y.M.C.A.” — and cheered as they saw their faces on the video board — when lefty reliever Gregory Soto replaced Philadelphia starter Ranger Suárez with one out in the eighth inning. With the windows closed in the press box, it almost looked normal.
“You just got to trust that it’s safe out there,” Thomson said. “You make sure you’re reminding guys to go inside and every once in a while get a breath of fresh air and keep them hydrated, all that stuff. They did a good job with it. I didn’t hear anybody complain. I didn’t think anybody was affected by it.”
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— The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma contributed to this report.
(Top photo of haze from the Canadian wildfires shrouding the sun before the game at Wrigley Field: David Banks / USA Today)
