Opponents may come and go, but it's always a bum's life

CHICAGO — It's more than an hour before game time Thursday, and Eric O'Flaherty, of all people, is what's on the minds of the Bleacher Bums.

What's on their lips, of course, is a beer cup. Manager Lou Piniella wasn't kidding a couple of days earlier when he called a Cubs game at Wrigley "the world's largest cocktail party."

These folks are maestros of the brewski. A popular T-shirt says it all: "Win or lose, we still booze."

Especially on a broiling hot day, which it happens to be (and I have the red nose to prove it). I have decided to watch the final game of the Mariners' first-ever series at Wrigley from the left-field bleachers, just to get a sense of an experience that some swear borders on the religious. (Note to editors: My beverage of choice was Diet Pepsi. Honest.)

It's the first day game of the three, which is still how Wrigley Field was meant to be experienced.

The Wrigley bleacher fans have become part of baseball legend. It is a culture unto itself, a unique blend of party animal, heckler extraordinaire, and Cubs diehard.

And to some of the regulars, it is something akin to family. A couple of years ago, a University of Chicago anthropologist, Holly Swyers, studied the Bleacher Bums and determined they displayed all the traits of a community.

Swyers even determined, as quoted in a Sports Illustrated article from 2005, that the fans in left, center and right had "a different energy, different centrality of organization, a different moral order."

That is eloquently illustrated on this day, right after the national anthem, when the fans in my area start chanting, "Right field sucks! Right field sucks!" It seems you can stick your different moral order where the sun don't shine.

But back to O'Flaherty, the Mariners reliever who has chosen a spot in left-center field to do his shagging. He stands next to Felix Hernandez and Mark Lowe, and the fans seem to be warming up for the game by firing taunts their way. When Felix charges after a looping fly but can't glove it, they are all over him.

Cubs fans, mind you, are said to be so sharp in their heckling that they sometimes pass out printed sheets highlighting a particular peccadillo of the opposing fielder in front of them. For instance, they not only serenaded former Pirates outfielder Rob Mackowiak with a chant of "D-U-I," after his 2003 arrest, they also chanted his Breathalyzer result.

Omar Moreno of the Pirates was once so incensed over the taunts hurled his way that he started to climb the ivy wall, until deterred by a tidal wave of beers being dumped on him.

But the best way to deal with the B-Bums is with good humor, as when Colorado's Dante Bichette, jeered mercilessly for losing a fly in the sun, put on a pair of ugly purple shades that a fan had mockingly thrown at him. He wore them for the rest of the inning, and won the fans over to his side.

So O'Flaherty, as fans begged him to toss them a ball, did just that — only he flung it all the way over the bleachers and onto Waveland Avenue. He was roundly booed, but they were laughing all around me, too.

"Sometimes you have to fight back," he said after the game.

The dirty truth, as the game — an eventual 5-4 Cubs victory — unfolded: Sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley was not that much different than sitting in the bleachers at Safeco Field, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Dodger Stadium, or any other ballpark I've been in.

In fact, the hardcores will tell you, with sadness, that the bleachers are becoming increasingly yuppified, and are losing their intimacy and family-like flavor.

That's what happens when tickets go for $42 on what are termed "prime dates" — which this one was. They are just $17 on seven "value dates."

It's still a lot of fun, though. And, as far as I could tell from several different vantage points, not as vicious as has been portrayed.

Of course, I didn't have the same vantage points as Mariners outfielders, who bore the brunt of the heckling.

None of them got to see what Luis Gonzalez, then with the Astros, did in 1995: a fan leaning over the left-field wall to dump a bag of his late father's ashes on the warning track.

But they did find it to be an ear-opening experience.

"You do hear some foul language, more than in other places," left fielder Raul Ibanez said.

Right fielder Jose Guillen said, "I don't want to say what they said. You don't want to hear that coming out of my mouth."

"I didn't talk to the fans, but there was one guy that was annoying me," said Ichiro through interpreter Ken Barron. "I said some mean things to him."

Ichiro wouldn't detail his comeback to the offending fan, but he had an interesting observation about Wrigley Field. He said the odor reminded him of an old, now-defunct stadium from his youth.

"It had a similar smell of fresh garbage," he said.

That's the kind of trash talk that the Bleacher Bums are likely to remember next time he comes to town.

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com