With their epic drought, die-hard fans and mythic title hopes, the Cubs face insane expectations. But spend a week in their clubhouse and you’ll wonder if anyone told the players.
MORE THAN ANY OTHER PLACE IN SPORTS, the baseball clubhouse is a womb. Submerged inside a stadium, windowless and guarded, it allows the men who play the game to bathe in the sanctity of their profession. As an outsider, walking into one always feels like a covert act.
The Cubs’ brand-new 30,000-square-foot clubhouse is a grocery-store-sized monument to comfort, status and excess. In the middle of the main room is a circular conversation pit with leather seating and a projector beaming the Cubs’ logo onto the ceiling, giving the space the feel of an underground planetarium. The lockers circle the room, each one precisely 60 feet, 6 inches from the logo.
It’s disconcerting to walk through the 102-year-old ballpark, descend a staircase, make a left and a right and find yourself in this room, staring at the Cubs-blue mood-lighting panels that separate each locker and looking up to see the gallery lights that bend toward photos of children and spouses. It’s like they built a Vegas nightclub beneath Stonehenge.
This story is from the October 03,2016 edition of ESPN The Magazine.
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This story is from the October 03,2016 edition of ESPN The Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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