Illinois Judge Upholds the Ban on Night Games at Wrigley Field

On March 25, 1985, Cook County Circuit Judge Richard Curry ruled that Illinois state and Chicago city laws banning night baseball at Wrigley Field were constitutional. His 64-page decision, delivered to a standing-room-only courtroom, kept the lights off at the only unlit stadium in the major leagues.

The Tribune Company, which had purchased the Cubs in 1981, filed the suit after the team won the National League East division title in 1984. The club argued that banning lights at Wrigley violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution, since no other stadium in baseball operated under such a restriction. The legal fight was straightforward, but the politics behind it were tangled.

The anti-noise ordinances that blocked lights had been adopted by the Illinois General Assembly in 1982 and by the City of Chicago in 1983, responding to pressure from the Wrigleyville neighborhood. Residents near the ballpark, organized under the name Citizens United for Baseball in Sunshine, or CUBS, intervened in the case. They argued that night games would bring increased traffic, noise, and crime to their residential streets.

Judge Curry agreed with the neighborhood position. The ruling forced the Cubs to continue playing all home games during the day, a tradition that stretched back to the park's opening in 1914. The Tribune Company appealed, and the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the ban later that year.

Lights eventually came to Wrigley on August 8, 1988, after a political compromise allowed a limited number of night games per season. But for three more years after this ruling, the ivy-covered outfield walls saw only afternoon shadows.