Wrigley Field: The Life, Death, and Life of a Core

Imagine Wrigley Field at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. Empty. Silent. Except for the hollow night sounds that bounce off the brick, roll for a bit, then stop, there is nothing here; no life, no reason, no purpose.

As the night slips by, first one person, then another arrives. Lights flick on in interior offices and among concession stands. Dawn. Now small clusters of people show up. A few players arrive early to loosen up and practice. Eventually the gates open and early birds arrive to watch batting practice. Business at the ticket windows picks up. By 11:00 a.m. Wrigley Field has become a dynamic, pulsing core. Its presence on West Addison now exercises a strong and intensifying field of magnetic energy that dramatically bends and shapes traffic in a ten block radius. This magnetic pull can be felt much further out as well, in the northern and western suburbs and (we know this through careful comparison of game-day observations by Hubble and geocentric satellites) can be shown to affect activity even on the south side of town.

From 1:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m. and sometimes much later, Wrigley Field is a self-sustaining core around which  it can be said much of Chicago and northeast Illinois orbits. Radio signals begin in the center of this core that travel a complex electronic route until they finally escape Wrigley to become detectable around the globe and in space (in a parallel process photons are created and find their way out of the labyrinthine core of our Sun, escaping the heliosphere to warm fans sitting in Wrigley bleachers).

Now think of an outlet mall the day after Thanksgiving; a high school on any weekday between September and June; Washington DC when Congress is in session (or even out of session for that matter); a star at the center of planets; a black hole at the center of a galaxy; a Big Bang at the center of time and existence. These are all cores around which a fringe orbits. In each instance the core and fringe are separate but mutually defining, mutually dependent, and stuck with one another by the firm but subtle rule of attraction.

What does a Sunday game between the Cubs and Phillies tell us about cosmology and physics (common and quantum)? I don't know, but I feel certain I'll come up with some sort of connection that I will attempt to make clear in Chapter 232.

It's sunny and warm today...at least part of the fringe basks in the cast offs of the Core.

Alfred