Dr. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field has never been to Wrigley Field.
“I’ve built it in my head to make it a great event,” he said. “I want to be on the scoreboard, get close to the Cubs and work it out with them.”
The name is purely coincidental. Born to a mother with the surname Wrigley and a father with the surname Field, they initially did not want to join hyphens, fearing she would be teased excessively. But at the age of 7, Elizabeth decided that she would like to use both. When her family moved to New York, her parents enrolled her in the school system with the hyphenated last name and the rest of her was history. She legally changed her name from Field to Wrigley-Field when she was 20 years old.
“I love having the name,” he said. “We weren’t really a baseball family, my parents didn’t even realize [the connection] until a family friend pointed it out. They didn’t take into account how much fun it would be to have this name.”
Having bounced around the Midwest and East Coast throughout her life, Wrigley-Field, now a sociologist at the University of Minnesota, said she gets the least backlash in Chicago.
“I think a lot of people in Chicago think I changed my name,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, there are so many crazy Cubs fans around, this one changed his name.'”
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But it’s a great conversation starter just about anywhere else—although many people assume they’re sick of being asked about it, Wrigley-Field feels otherwise. She says it’s an easy way to have fun interactions with strangers and has sparked some fun encounters with random people, whether it’s checking in for a flight or paying with a credit card.
“Most people are really interested,” he said.
His newborn daughter has inherited his iconic last name, which Wrigley-Field believes will make her first visit to Wrigley Field an even more special occasion, with two generations of Wrigley-Fields in the park.
As for whether she’s a Cubs fan?
“As far as I have a team, it’s the Cubs,” he said. “But I would say I’m more of a stadium fan.”
While there may be a Mr. Fenway-Park somewhere, Elizabeth may have one of the latest stadium names that doesn’t sound completely and utterly ridiculous. I cannot imagine that there is a Mary American-Family-Field or a John Minute-Maid-Park in the world.