Whitefish family has ties to Wrigley

Lesley Quigg’s family history with the Chicago Cubs goes back a long way.

In 1914, her great-great-uncle Charles Weeghman, owner of Chicago’s Federal League baseball franchise, moved his team’s home games from DePaul University to a booming neighborhood on the corner of Clark and Addison streets on the city’s north side. At the time, his team and his stadium, Weeghman Park, were built to rival the Cubs.

Now known as Wrigley Field, her family’s name no longer graces the marquee but the structure has outlived many of the parks it was modeled after and has become one of the most beloved landmarks in the country, drawing millions of devoted fans each year to “The Friendly Confines.”

The Cubs, who celebrated the 100-year anniversary of the ballpark on Wednesday, invited Quigg, a mother of two from Whitefish, and her family to Chicago this week. Quigg’s mother, Sue, threw out the first pitch, using the same ball her grandmother used to kick off the inaugural game a century earlier.

“Back then they used to throw (the ball) from the stands,” Lesley Quigg said of the evolved first pitch tradition. “But, my mom said, ‘Nope, I’m going on the mound.’ ... She’s been practicing for months.”

Weeghman, who Quigg calls Uncle Charlie, was a young entrepreneur at the turn of the 20th century who earned his fortune by owning and maintaining a group of restaurants known as “lunch counters” in the city. The restaurants were popular among the working class at the time as places to grab a quick bite to eat in the pre-fast food world. He used his wealth to purchase a controlling interest of a baseball team in the new Federal League, an upstart looking to rival the established National and American leagues.

His first step was to build a stadium that would fit the times. Near the newly built “L” train in an open plot of land formerly belonging to a seminary, Weeghman built his new park to rival the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, home to the New York Giants, and enlisted the architect of the newly-built Comiskey Park on the south side of Chicago. Comiskey, opened four years prior, was a gleaming, modern concrete-and-steel stadium known as “The Baseball Palace of the World.”

With that in mind, Weeghman Park was intended to draw fans from the National League Cubs, who played at the quickly deteriorating West Side Grounds. The Cubs park, infamous for its dirty seats, rude ushers and pushy vendors who regularly blocked aisles, was quickly falling out of a favor with a   public that now had a third option.

Weeghman used his experience in the restaurant and hospitality business to create an inviting atmosphere. Combined with success on the diamond — the Whales, as the team came to be known in its second and final season, won the Federal League in 1915 — the place became a hit.

When the Federal League was folded into the American and National leagues following that season, Weeghman was allowed to buy a controlling interest in the Cubs. He merged the two teams under the Cubs banner the next season and moved their games to Weeghman Park, where they’ve stayed for 98 years.

The Cubs won a pennant in just their third season in the new park, meeting the Boston Red Sox in a war-shortened 1918 season. With the club struggling for cash, Weeghman chose to play his home games in the series at the much larger Comiskey Park, hoping to draw more ticket sales. The Cubs still failed to draw and lost the series in six games in Babe Ruth’s final season in Boston.

His restaurants struggling due to a influenza outbreak in the city, Weeghman was forced to sell his shares in the club to chewing gum manufacturer William Wrigley Jr. after the season. Wrigley would take Weeghman’s name off the stadium in 1920, calling it Cubs Park. The park got its final name change in 1926.  

 Quigg went to Wrigley Field for the first time with her sons on Wednesday.

“I’m so excited that we get to go out,” Quigg said. “I’m excited the Cubs are recognizing our family.

“I’m excited. Let alone these two boys from Whitefish, Mont., are going to be in this huge city. And stepping into that huge stadium, watching their grandmother out there throwing a baseball.

“It’s just going to be awesome.”