Ron Kantowski on how every day at the old ballpark with bosom buddy Dwight was just as good as Opening Day

Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.

Anybody can be a baseball fan on Opening Day, when the home team is 0-0 and the infield grass is green, or, in the case of those of us who grew up in or near one of baseball's northern cities, it delays batting practice until the sun kisses it because there is still a thin layer of frost on it.

But the sun eventually did come out and the frost melted and you went to the games because back in those days, sitting in the bleachers was cheaper than going to the movies and a lot less traumatic than watching some tower become an inferno. Except, perhaps, when Ray Burris was pitching on three days' rest.

It's a little harder to be a baseball fan during the last week of September if your favorite team doesn't wear pinstripes and/or "NEW YORK" across its chest.

This was usually the scenario in Chicago in the 1970s during the last week of September. By then, the Cubs were 28 1/2 games out of first place and most of us had wistfully turned our attention toward the Bears, because they were 1-1 or maybe even 2-0 and the grass at Soldier Field was still an emerald green, probably because it was made of plastic.

I say most of us, because I had an eccentric baseball buddy named Dwight who didn't care much for football. Dwight also frightened me on a number of fronts, none of which had anything to do with his indifference to football.

For starters, he smoked pot. He also liked to take the "L" to Wrigley Field, which, if you smoke pot, is probably a good idea. But in retrospect, I must admit that riding the train with all those strangers from the city made us Cubs fans from the suburbs nervous. It was the same queasiness I felt when Willie Stargell came to bat with the bases loaded and the wind blowing out toward Sheffield Avenue.

Another reason I found Dwight odd was that he believed the last week of the season, when the Cubs were 28 1/2 games out of first place, was the ideal time to catch a game. Perhaps this was because the Cubs still played day games that started at 1:30, which also was the time we were supposed to be studying American history.

We'd sit in the bleachers, me and Dwight, catching what seemed to be the Last Rays of Summer, and sometimes we'd have an entire row to ourselves. With the Cubs 28 1/2 games out of first, the businessmen weren't playing hooky at the ballpark and the kids our age were back in class.

Sometimes, Dwight would get all philosophical and start rhapsodizing about what made a meaningless game in September so meaningful to him. How he loved being surrounded by hard-core baseball fans who were there because they appreciated the game for its inherent beauty and intricacy, not because they were on a field trip from Dubuque or because their dad had dragged them along in the family station wagon.

After a while, Dwight began to sound like James Earl Jones, or at least, what James Earl Jones might have sounded like if "Field of Dreams" had been done about 20 years earlier. These soliloquies would usually be uttered after Dwight had brazenly fired up a fatty right there in the bleachers, not more than 25 feet or so from where Jose Cardenal was waiting for somebody to hit him another can o'corn. The Andy Frain ushers always seemed to be more tolerant during the last week of September.

It would be the top of the seventh or eighth, and the shadows would be longer than Lou Brock's lead at first. And after every other pitch you'd hear a loud pop, the sound an empty beer cup in a nearly empty stadium makes when a hard-core baseball fan stomps out the bottom of it.

Then Don Kessinger, the Cubs' aging shortstop, would sprint into short left field to flag down a bounding ball, pirouette like Baryshnikov, and throw a seed across the diamond to nip the runner at first by an eyelash.

It was then that my baseball buddy Dwight would extend his palm and I would lightly slap it, just like it was Opening Day.

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