Monday, April 4, 2005 | 9:26 a.m.
Before games Friday night and Saturday afternoon, scores of Chicago Cubs fans lined the rail atop the first-base dugout at Cashman Field to gawk at their heroes and maybe score an autograph.
Those supporters wore home and road jerseys of familiar former and current Cubs. Sandberg, Stone, Wood and Grace were all proudly displayed on many of those backs, as was No. 22 and "Prior," and No. 31 and "Maddux."
And No. 21 and "Fuenty."
With three generations of the family that calls Chicago home at Cashman, they all deserved the right to call special attention to themselves during a sun-splashed major league weekend in Las Vegas.
Cubs shortstop Nomar Garciaparra's little brother Michael singled in the winning run Friday in the Mariners' 5-4 victory in 10 innings, and the Cubs used two solo homers in the bottom of the ninth to beat Seattle reliever Dan Reichert, 3-2, on Saturday.
The Las Vegas 51s, the Triple-A team of the Los Angeles Dodgers, list Cashman's capacity at 9,334, but a total of 23,187 packed the park to watch the boys of spring those two days. About 100 fans sat on each grassy bank by the foul poles both days.
"We could have sold 20,000 tickets to each game," said 51s president and general manager Don Logan. "Shoot, we probably could have sold 40,000 ... Vegas is Vegas. It's been great."
Logan was told that individual tickets on the Internet auction site eBay hit a high of $395.
Penny Fuenty, the matriarch of the family, bought $30 tickets to Saturday's game two weeks ago for herself, her son Kip, daughter-in-law Ronda and grandson Connor.
Kip and Ronda went on their first date at Wrigley Field in 1997. Later that season, he proposed marriage on the one blank block on the Cubs' Walk of Fame outside the ballpark.
"Hoping our son's name would be there some day," said 35-year-old Kip, who had a tattoo of his wife's name on his left biceps adorned with ivy. Get it? The outfield wall at Wrigley?
When they told Penny they were eloping in Las Vegas, she said, "Sounds great! We'll be there." They were married at The Little Chapel of the Flowers.
The couple gave Connor the middle name of "Sheffield" because North Sheffield Avenue runs parallel to Wrigley's right-field wall.
"We wanted to work the Cubs into his name," Kip said. "We were going to go with Samuel, for Sammy Sosa. And (Connor) was born in Memphis, so it would have had a dual purpose with Samuel Clemens, who was born near the Mississippi River near Memphis.
"Then we named the streets ... Connor Clark? Connor Addison? Connor Waveland? We got to Sheffield, and we both went, 'That's got a good ring to it!' So that's what he is."
Brian Duffy, 28, exterminates mosquitoes in the Chicago suburbs. With girlfriend Melissa Bloecks, he arrived in Las Vegas on Friday with eager anticipation to see the Cubs in an exotic and quaint venue.
"It's the first time I've been in a minor league ballpark, and it's kinda cool," he said. "This is a lot smaller, and you're closer to the field. Wherever you go, you'll see a lot of Cubs fans. That's pretty much how it is."
Both the Fuentys and Duffy said they would come to Las Vegas to watch major league games, if and when the city gets a franchise, and especially when the Cubs visit.
"We'd be here, unless there's some dire reason we couldn't," Penny Fuenty said.
"With the amount of people who come and visit here, I don't think they'd have any problems selling out a ballpark," Duffy said. "I think it would work."
Logan believes that time is seven, to 10, to 12 years away, for a variety of reasons that range from population and market size to the round-the-clock nature of the casino workforce.
Vegas was somewhere in the mix for the Montreal Expos, who were relocated to Washington, D.C., and renamed the Nationals for this season.
"All the talk in the last year related to Vegas and Major League Baseball has certainly raised the awareness of Vegas and Major League Baseball," Logan said. "The residual effect of that is positive for this type of event ... (but) we just have to let the market continue to develop.
"It's going to happen."
Logan's relationships with Seattle general manager Bill Bavasi and Chicago manager Dusty Baker helped facilitate the attractive games between Seattle, which features Ichiro Suzuki, and the widely popular Cubs.
ESPN even hired a special television truck, which costs $125,000 a day to rent, so it could broadcast the game in high definition.
"We don't make a lot of money on this," Logan said. "These guys don't come here for nothing. It takes a lot to bring them here and takes a lot to put it on. But I've always felt it's important, our way to wake up the community that baseball's back."
According to credit-card receipts, Logan said 3,000 tickets were sold to Chicago-area zip codes, 1,200 to zip codes in the Seattle area and about 300 in Japan.
One of the few Mariners jerseys, Ichiro's home-white No. 51, at Cashman was worn by 4-year-old Cade Loerwald, who sat beside his father LeRoy in chairs on the field near Seattle's dugout.
"I think he just likes the colors, actually," LeRoy Loerwald said. "I don't think he knows who the players are."
Loerwald knows Cashman, though. The 39-year-old general contractor builds custom homes in the Vegas area, but 22 years ago he went up against Cubs ace Greg Maddux in an American Legion semifinal game in the park.
A Bishop Gorman High graduate, Loerwald said Maddux and his Valley High squad were way too tough.
"They were a good hitting team back then. It was like an All-Star team when you went to Valley," Loerwald said an hour before Saturday's game. "Greg threw heat then and they were unbeatable.
"But this is great for Vegas. I like to see the turnout. I think we absolutely can support a major league team. By all means, I do. It's a well-kept secret, here in Las Vegas."
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