crosstown White Sox playedin — a run for their money.

After hiring the same ar-chitect who a few years ear-lier designed Comiskey Parkfor the White Sox, workersneeded just two months todemolish the buildings thatonce housed a seminary andbuild a simple, single-storygrandstand and the rest ofthe 14,000-seat WeeghmanPark just in time for the startof the 1914 season. Finishedtwo years after Boston’s Fen-way Park, it cost about$250,000. Two years after thepark opened, the Cubsmoved in.

“It was considered a greatlooking park, a lot nicer thanthe rat-infested park the Cubswere playing in on the WestSide,” said Stuart Shea, au-thor of “Wrigley Field: The

Long Life and ContentiousTimes of the Friendly Con-fines.”

More important is that itwas built with an eye to thefuture: It could be retrofittedand expanded, somethingthat was considered genius,he said.

From almost the day itwas built, the owners startedtinkering with the place. Afternine homers were hit in thefirst three games — an astro-nomical total for the time —the Chicago Federals, theoriginal tenants, picked upthe left field fence and movedit back about as much as 50feet in some spots. In theearly ‘20s, the Cubs ex-panded the seating capacityand the size of the playingfield itself by slicing thegrandstand into 11 piecesand moving them to createmore space. The pitcher’smound today sits where thebatters’ box used to be.

Wrigley also was keen tounderstand the Cubs werelosing money because

women simply refused tocome, or let their childrencome, to a filthy and unsafeballpark.

The park, renamed CubsPark in 1919, began to feel dif-ferent than anyplace else.Shea believes the reasonsstart with Weegham’s obses-sion with cleanliness, some-thing he learned in therestaurant business. Hartigsaid it was William WrigleyJr., team owner P.K. Wrigley’sfather, who, after a coupleyears of investing in theteam, bought Weeghman’sshares and started makingchanges.

“The Cubs were really thefirst ones to start cleaningthe ballpark after every sin-gle game and (make) surethat the players always hadthe cleanest uniforms,” Har-tig said.

Wrigley also cleaned upthe way the park operated.

“You could have a ticketand someone would be sit-ting in your seat already be-cause the usher was bribed,”

Hartig said. “So coming homefrom the game with a bloodynose because there was afight over a seat was not un-common.”

To fix that, Wrigley hired aprofessional ushering serv-ice. The Cubs also started toview the park as a “greenspace,” kind of like an urbanoasis, said Tim Wiles, formerdirector of research at theNational Baseball Hall ofFame.

The Cubs didn’t inventLadies Day. But that didn’tmatter; they just did it betterthan anyone else, lettingwomen in the park for freefor every Friday home game.At the same time, they re-jected the popular notionthat if they put home gameson the radio fans would listento games instead of attendingthem. The games simplywhet the appetite of fans.

By 1927, two years afterthe first regular-seasonbroadcast, the Cubs becamethe first National Leagueteam to draw more than a

million fans. Now, the famed ballpark is

in for another makeover. The$500 million project, whichincludes a Jumbotron pro-posal, is on hold because theteam wants assurances fromthe neighboring rooftop own-ers that they won’t sue overobstructed views.

The Cubs have also saidrepeatedly they don’t want todestroy what makes Wrigleyone of the most popular andrecognizable sporting venuesin the country.

Still, the team arguesWrigley needs to be broughtinto the 21st century, gener-ate more revenue and attract

younger fans who expectthings like Jumbotrons. TeamChairman Tom Ricketts hassaid he’s running a baseballteam, not a museum.

While some disagree, oth-ers say no change will erasewhat makes Wrigley Fieldwhat it is.

“The Cubs is sort of aChicago institution that is notentirely dependent on theexact nature of WrigleyField,” said former U.S.Supreme Court Justice JohnPaul Stevens, who as a childwatched Babe Ruth’s calledshot from his seat near thirdbase. “There’s sort of a spiritthat goes with the Cubs.”

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WrigleyFrom Page 12

BY JOHN KEILMAN© 2014 Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO (MCT) — TaraMontgomery didn’t thinkmuch of rowing when shefirst gave it a try. Though sheoutdid all of her high schoolclassmates on a strength testthat gauges aptitude for thesport, she didn’t attend prac-tice until her mom, struck bythe swelling number of col-lege scholarships offered bywomen’s rowing teams,bribed her with the promiseof an iPhone.

Four years later, Mont-gomery, an 18-year-old seniorat Chicago’s Innovations HighSchool, has gotten muchmore than a gadget out of thesport: She has been offeredan athletic scholarship at theUniversity of Tennessee atKnoxville that she says willcover nearly all of her collegecosts.

“I have a single mother;she could not afford for me togo to a four-year university,”Montgomery said after a re-cent practice. “I’d either bebuckets and buckets in debtor at a community collegenext year if it weren’t for thissport.”

College sports are boom-ing, thanks to gargantuan TVcontracts and the increasinguse of athletics as a market-ing tool, and women’s teamsare enjoying much of thebounty. NCAA statistics for2011-12 show they are chip-ping away at the scholarshipgap after decades of inequal-ity, with much of the growthcoming in sports that barelydent the public conscious-ness.

Unlike the men’s side, inwhich the big money specta-cles of football and basket-ball account for more thanhalf of all athletic scholar-ships, women’s scholarshipsare spread more evenlyamong a wider range ofsports. That has produced fa-vorable odds for some highschool athletes: Female row-ers, for instance, haveroughly a 1 in 3 shot at land-ing a scholarship.

“It’s a good thing to createthose scholarship opportuni-ties, but it creates an interest-ing dynamic,” said Ryan Wellsof NCSA Athletic RecruitingNetwork, a Chicago-based re-cruiting service for highschool athletes. “In some es-tablished sports like footballand men’s and women’s bas-ketball, there’s too much tal-ent (compared with) thescholarship opportunitiesthat exist. You have the in-verse for these emergingsports.”

Just like the boys, though,Chicago-area girls who haveclaimed scholarships in low-profile sports have had towork for them with single-

minded discipline and focus.And while the payoff canvary, ranging from a full rideto just the cost of books,many say the recognition it-self is meaningful.

“It’s sort of unreal,” saidKatie Appell, 17, an Oak Parkand River Forest High Schoolsenior who has received apartial scholarship to playwater polo at MercyhurstUniversity in Erie, Pa. “WhenI first started playing, I could-n’t imagine that that wouldever happen. But I love thesport. My friends say I’m ob-sessed with it — it’s all I evertalk about. To be able to con-tinue on with it for at least

another four years, it’s reallyexciting for me.”

Bowling:53 colleges, 358 scholar-

shipsWhen Julia Bond started

bowling at age of 11, her fa-ther, also a novice, pointedout bowlers who looked likethey knew what they weredoing and told her to copythem.

He must have chosen well,because seven years later,Bond, a senior at WaubonsieValley in Aurora, Ill., becameone of the most sought-afterrecruits in the country withtwo perfect games on herrecord. In November, she ac-

cepted a full scholarshipoffer from the University ofNebraska.

“I enjoy the competitive-ness,” said Bond, who lastmonth led Waubonsie Valleyto its second consecutivestate title. “Bowling is a teamsport but you still have toperform by yourself. If some-thing goes wrong, you can’tblame anybody but yourself.”

NCAA statistics show thatwomen’s bowling scholar-ships have almost doubledsince 2005, the fastest growthrate of any college sport, andMarty Miller, Bond’s highschool coach, said he getsfrequent emails from fledg-

ling programs looking for ath-letes.

He added, though, thatonly dedicated, successful,hardworking competitorsneed apply.

“We’re not talking aboutpizza and Coca-Cola, strobelights and balloons (at thelanes),” he said. “If you wantto be good at it, you becomedarn serious.”

Bond expects her game toget serious indeed at Ne-braska, which won the na-tional championship lastyear.

“I’ve been able to meetsome of the girls, and they’reawesome,” she said. “There’s

much more of a competitivedrive. They all know whatthey’re doing, so I think it willbe a more intense experiencefor me.”

Equestrian:23 colleges, 540 scholar-

shipsCollege recruiting tales

usually involve coaches bom-barding talented athleteswith phone calls, text mes-sages and personal visits.That’s not exactly how itplayed out for Hayley Banas,a senior at Loyola Academyin Wilmette, Ill., who has re-ceived a partial equestrianscholarship to SouthernMethodist University in Dal-las.

“Initially, she found me,”said coach Natalie Burton.“She was very enthusiasticabout college equestrian,SMU in particular, and sheemailed and called a lot, defi-nitely something I recom-mend. She got my attention.”

College equestrian in-volves jumping and a dres-sage-like display of ridingskills, often on horses theathletes have never ridden.Competitors are valued fortheir “soft, educated hands,”Burton said, a level of dexter-ity that takes years of prac-tice to achieve.

Banas, 18, of Lake Forest,Ill., took her sport so seri-ously starting out that shespent two hours a day, everyday, on one of her family’shorses. When she got to highschool, she spent monthsgetting home-schooled so shecould live and train inFlorida, where top riderscompete in a winter circuit.

“It’s a life commitment,”said her mother, Susie Banas.“Scholarship-wise, if they de-cide to ride in college, it’sjust a bonus.”

College equestrian isn’tfound at many schools, butBurton said the sport isslowly growing. While fullscholarships are exception-ally rare, Hayley Banas saidshe views her award as vali-dation.

“It’s pretty cool just to saythat I have a scholarship tocollege,” she said. “I’m justlucky to have gotten one fordoing what I love and suc-ceeding at it. I find it really re-warding when I have workedso hard and had it pay off.”

Rugby:7 colleges, 24 scholarshipsRelatively few Illinois girls

play rugby, so when FrankGraziano goes looking forathletes to join his women’steam at Eastern Illinois Uni-versity, he has to guess howtheir skills on the track or thebasketball court will translateto the field.

One good sign is aggres-sion.

Women Make College Gains With Low-Profile Sports

WOMEN | PAGE 14