Wrigley Scoreboard Operator, Darryl Wilson and Hot Doug's, Doug Sohn, Dish on Life at Wrigley

I am fascinated with the scoreboard at Wrigley Field. It is made of sheet steel, as are the numbers that are manually adjusted by operator Darryl Willson to reflect the scores of the games going on at any one time in the National and American Leagues during Cubs baseball games. The scores come through on a computer and Wilson scrambles the three flights of stairs to replace the numbers and keep the scores current.

The scoreboard hails from 1937 with very few changes. The clock was added in 1941 and has incredibly never lost time since its addition. A fifth row of scores was added to each side in 1961, and later, a sixth. A set of light stands facing onto the scoreboard was added in 1988 with the introduction, sadly, of lights and night games.

An electronic message board was also added below the scoreboard; but, this has been replaced by a God-awful Wintrust video board to the West of the original scoreboard. A trap door at the bottom of the board is still the only entrance and exit.

In the podcast below, just in time for the Cubbies to be back at Wrigley for the National Championship games, I sit down with Wrigley Field scoreboard operator, Darryl Wilson, and hot dog aficionado and podcaster, Doug Sohn. Over Old Style, peanuts and Chicago dogs, we chat about life in the scoreboard, the end of a curse and our favorite memories at Wrigley Field on the most recent podcast of The Dinner Party with Elysabeth Alfano on WGN Radio's WGN Plus.

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