Pink Hat Guy Merges With The Infinite

Baseball is a sport that takes place over 160 games per season, at three hours-ish per game.  Not all of the games are a thrill-per-minute, and so it gives you some time to notice things other than what's happening on the field.

You can start focusing on some kind of funny things.  Some folks focus on a slow-boiling hate for announcers (I personally cannot stand Ken Rosenthal) or your favorites.  The game pauses enough to become familiar with what's going on in the stadium - see the Cup Snake that forms in the bleachers at Wrigley. 

But, also, people are on-camera - especially behind home plate - usually not aware of the cameras.  Over the course of a game, you may notice particular people, like and excited kid or a partner who does not want to be there.  Less often do you note "regulars".  

But very early on in our Cubs-watching, we noticed "Pink Hat Guy".

His seat was directly behind home plate.  He never wore Cubs blue, but always wore a bright pink cap.  

You knew two things:

1. He clearly had money - after all these were maybe some of the most expensive seats at Wrigley.  And if he wasn't there, he often sent people in pink hats, I assume sent as his ambassadors.
2. He loved the Cubs like no one's business.  Sure, he'd show up in the 3rd inning - probably in the club having a cocktail before taking his seat, but he'd be there for a huge portion of almost every home game. 

Honestly, this is probably the sign you'd have that I won the lottery.  You'd lose track of me as I absconded with my dough, but then find me on TV sitting next to Jamie in club seats at Wrigley.  (I'd prefer to be a little higher up and close to the hot dog guy.)

But it was hard not to notice that the past two seasons, Pink Hat Guy was not there.  

He started showing up less maybe three or four years ago, and has been absent all season this year, making maybe a handful of appearances last year.

Word came down today, the day after the Cubs won a game 23-3 (which is what I *planned* to write a post about - it was crazy, y'all) that Jim Anixter, Pink Hat Guy, has passed.

From Chicago's own WGN.

Why write about this guy?

Well.

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. 

 America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. 

This field, this game -- it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

Baseball is a series of player records going back now 180 years.  It's a history of teams rising and falling, stadiums built and then torn down, it's World Series records and drudgery in a farm league team in Nowheresville, USA.  

But it's also the fans who show up, game after game, 160 times per year, part of a procession of people going back to maybe even the dawn of the 19th century who were happy to watch people bat around a ball.  It's the only sport I watch where the kids are seen not just as adorable moppets dressed for the game and eating ice cream from an inverted plastic helmet, but as the *next generation of fans*.  Kids go from loving the crowd, spectacle, food and day out with family to, one day, watching the game and falling in love with it.

I'm an unusual baseball fan.  I didn't really watch baseball full time til getting the league pass that one magical Cubs season in 2016* - the year I finally paid money for MLB.tv instead of catching games randomly across cable after WGN stopped carrying games.  But a lot of kids do grow up that way, and I am weirdly sad that I missed so much baseball before making it a major hobby.

Jim Anixter, who surely had a lifetime of responsibilities, strikes me as one of those kids who went to games and - when adulthood and finances allowed - bought front row season tickets.  Apparently he first got those seats in 1967 and held onto them this long.

I can't imagine what he's seen over the years.  Who he's met.  

He saw Fergie Jenkins pitch for years.  He was there for Kerry Wood and Ryne Sandberg and Ernie Banks.  He saw Chicago decide to light the stadium in the mid-80's and finally play night games.  He saw them add the basket to catch home run balls in 1970.

He saw Dexter Fowler, Rizzo and John Lester and all those guys play the 2016 season and bring home the pennant.

I don't know anything about Jim Anixter as a person - I just know him as a fixture, like the Ivy on the walls.  He may not be as famous as the goat curse, the rooftop seats or Harry Caray, but he was there!  Game after game, for Cubs good and bad.  And was part of what the Cubs were for many, many years.

I wonder if folks will wear pink hats in those seats for a good, long time.  They really, really should.

Here's Mr. Anixter's obituary.

*Or, according to social media, maybe not so unusual as I routinely see people saying "why am I just now finding out about baseball?".