Joey Doubles and the Free Bears Tickets
Walter Payton and Dennis Gentry at Soldier Field before taxpayers contributed $432 million to update it. (Chicago Bears photo)
“I know how to get free Bears tickets,” Joey Doubles insisted. “Wanna go?”
Free is my favorite price, I told him that long-ago Sunday. “But how do we get for no money what all the sharp guys are paying big dough for?”
“Jump in the cab and I’ll explain on the way there,” he said to me and two of our fellow cab drivers. “You three split the parking and that'll be it.”
He talked around a cigarette as he drove, and my friend Tom and I watched with lazy fascination as the ash kept growing. We bet with each other on when the ash would fall off onto Joey’s belly. There wasn’t anything else to do. The radio was busted.
“You know, there’s like 66,000 people in Soldiers’ Field,” Joey said. “Soldier Field,” somebody corrected him. “Yeah, same place, right? Smart guy. Anyway, what’re the odds something bad happens to some of them?
“When it does, they’ll give us their tickets.”
Big Jackie looked very confused. “You want we should put the hurt on some spectators on their way in, and then take their tickets from them?” he asked Joey.
“That is a pretty crowded place for such activity. What if they squawk?”
An exasperated Joey whipped his head around, and I won the bet. “Jackie. We are not going to rob them. We are going to wait until they run out of the stadium because of some unfortunate incident, and we will ask them for their ticket. They won’t need it anymore, except maybe a souvenir.”
Big Jackie said he thought he now understood but wanted examples of unfortunate incidents.
“Maybe they got the trots, you know?” said Joey. “Or maybe they get paged because their old lady is hit by a Continental bus.”
Big Jackie shook his head with determination. “I do not want the ticket of a man with the trots,” he said. “Who knows where that ticket has been?”
We took up our positions between two Soldier Field exits. It was sunny and unseasonably warm, a beautiful day to hang out and wait for people to suffer unfortunate incidents.
Finally, a youngish couple came out, moving fast. “Are you leavin’?” Joey asked. “Leave me alone,” the guy said.
“I just want your tickets so we can get in,” Joey said.
“We’re going back. We’re just going to the car to do a couple of lines,” the lady said sweetly over her shoulder. “Halftime.”
Great, I thought. They’re doing not one but two things we can't afford. And we’ve missed half the game we could have seen free on TV without any beggar-like activity.
“This is kinda depressing,” I told Joey. “I'm catching the bus.”
“Hang on another five minutes,” he said. “I know it’s been a long wait, but halftime has got to be our best shot.”
“Look, Joe,” I said. “Next time that for some reason I’m dying to see the Bears in person, I’ll rustle up the scratch for a ticket. At least then I’ll feel good about it.
“This feels awful. It just reminds me that some people live in fancy houses and get to do stuff like go to Bears games, and some people live in third-floor apartments and get to drive them there.
“If we’re lucky, that is, Joe. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had a good ride to Soldier Field in years. They take their own cars from Libertyville and Evanston and set up barbecue grills in the parking lot and cook steaks and drink Heinekins.
“They don’t want to hang out with me and I don’t want to hang out with them.”
But I knew Joey looked at things a little differently. For instance, as far as race tracks go, he liked lux Arlington Park and I preferred relatively bare-bones Sportsman’s.
At Sportsman's, there were rarely more than four horses in any race that were worth consideration. The purses were bigger at Arlington Park, so there were twice as many good horses. I could never figure out which ones to bet on.
Joey liked Arlington because the money was bigger, but that doesn't matter unless you win. He appreciated that Arlington was comfortable and pretty, but he never bought a sandwich there. They were expensive, and he had to save his bankroll to try to beat those fancy horses.
It makes no difference to me that the Bears are buying up the now-shuttered Arlington Park with the intention of moving their games there from Soldier Field. I’ve got enough fingers on one hand to count the times I’ve been to either venue, put together. And I also probably won’t be visiting Midway Monsters Mall of America, Three-and-Out Village or whatever they call the horror show that rises on the portion of the 326 exurban acres unneeded for the stadium.
Unless the McCaskeys turn the whole thing over to a smart developer -- and they might -- don’t expect anything that’s built to be successful. Remember, these are the people who’ve been unable to build an offensive line for 20 years.
Arlington Heights will likely offer a substantial tax break to the development. But you probably won’t see much affordable housing or anything else the town’s people really need on the site.
Look instead for 95% significantly unaffordable housing, overpriced restaurants and hotel rooms, a movie theater served by waiters, a giant fitness spa and maybe a casino.
We’ll eventually see, I guess, if Bears fans patronize anything in Arlington Heights, or just flee on Route 53 the way most of them now race away on the Outer Drive.
Joey Doubles, Big Jackie and Tom never got in the stadium free. Joey and Tom are now sitting on that 50 yard line in the sky. But Big Jackie is still with us, and almost never misses a Bears game nowadays. He owns a fleet of limousines, and the price of NFL admission is no big deal for him.
Years ago, his brother opened a hot dog stand on the West Side, and Big Jackie usually drives over after a game for a free grilled Polish and a pizza puff before heading home.
He never switches out and dines in the Loop. Never ever.
“What am I, an idiot? I’m pretty flush now, but I didn’t get that way by wasting money,” he explained.
“Hey, I got an extra ticket for the Ravens. You want to buy it?”
Sign up to get Irv Leavitt’s “Honest Context” free in your inbox by clicking on the subscribe button.
Three and Out Village! Howling