Cubs Will Keep Troughs In Wrigley, In Case You Were Worried You Wouldn't Get To Piss On People Anymore
WRIGLEYVILLE — The $300 million plan to restore Wrigley Field upgrades everything from the concessions to the locker rooms, but one antique feature will stay: the troughs in the men’s bathrooms.
An upgraded stadium will include 40 percent more restrooms that will offer modern facilities — and a bit of a border between urinating men.
But gentlemen looking for the nostalgic intimacy of those old-styled troughs will have the opportunity.
“The troughs are staying,” Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts said Tuesday to a laughing crowd at D’Agostino’s Pizza.
Ricketts said Wrigley Field is “by far the greenest park in baseball” partly because of day games and partly because of those troughs, he told attendees of the Lakeview Chamber of Commerce’s annual Lead Off Luncheon on Tuesday.
He joked that while he loves socializing during Cubs games, he hides his face when walking past the long lines outside restrooms. He’s touted more bathrooms in the restoration as a way for fans to watch baseball more and stand in line less.
The Cubs have been working with the city and Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) in hopes of receiving relaxed restrictions to move forward on a $500 million investment in the stadium and the surrounding neighborhood.
The team conducted a survey two years ago about the troughs, and sports blog Deadspin declared the old-style urinals “Wrigley’s most iconic feature.” The bathrooms have long been ridiculed as an unsavory aspect of watching games at the stadium.
But they’re a part of what keeps Wrigley Field feeling like Wrigley Field, said team spokesman Julian Green, explaining the decision to keep them.
“It’s one of those longtime fan favorites in our ballpark,” he said. “It’s tradition.”
Tradition, perhaps, of the shared suffering of Cubs fans?
No, Green said. More bathrooms will put a stop to that.
“Mutual suffering will end,” he said.
Who the hell are these people that are in vehement support of the troughs? I like the troughs, they are way more efficient and practical in terms of time management. But I don’t understand anyone that absolutely LOVES the troughs. It’s a fucking bathroom. If you go into a bathroom and think, wow, what a tradition this is, pissing 10 inches away from another guy’s penis then you have a screw loose. I don’t want to see Wrigley drastically change either, but if they got eliminated tomorrow it wouldn’t change my Wrigley experience in the least. It’s just bizarre to me that people out there have such an emotional attachment to a bathroom. Not exactly helping our label as fans that don’t watch the game when you have people saying how much they love playing swords at Wrigley
Then again we would no longer have trough diving, so that would suck.
(Does anyone have the Wrigley video? I looked everywhere and can’t find it. Its the one that looks like it’s from 1996, definitely from the upper deck bathrooms).