I felt a buzz in my ear lobe – a BigMarker message popped into GMail right before my (right) eye:

“Calling all baseball, whiffle ball and die hard Cubs fans at 1871!! Want to play on Wrigley Field?”

Yeah, brah … I was wearing a computer on my face when I learned that 1871 was sporting a squad in Kerry Wood’s Celebrity whiffle ball tourney. I replied instantly with the second shortest word in the English dictionary … “in”.

(1871 has asked me to get all bloggy about playing ball for them at Wrigley, so please excuse some of my mischief for the next few minutes)

The Intro

Since I’m only asked like 1,871 times per day let’s get this outta the way real quick. I became a Google Glass Explorer thanks to some tweet I made back in Feb:

I then wondered aloud what it would be like to stare down a wicked curveball from a top Major League pitcher while wearing Glass.

As fate would have it, I then flipped the scripted and re-wrote the Steve Jobs Biography strictly using baseball metaphors in a piece called “Cupertino to Cooperstown”. At the very end when Steve launches the iPad as his career ending “walk-off” grand slam home run I got all emotional and said:

“Take the bat off your shoulder…SWING FOR THE FENCES. Die trying to hit home runs.”

Easy to say, hard to do. Well Done is better than Well Said. (IMHO that’s what separates entrepreneurs from want-trepreneurs.)

And now here I am, standing on the historic Wrigley Field grass, Glass resting upon thy nose, baseball bat in thy hands… WTF would you do, with the count 3&2?

Play Ball

Luckily on the pitching mound for the 1871 Whiffle Ballers was my man Ryan Jacobs. He had Greg Maddux like accuracy and in my first at-bat Ryan served me up a money ball that I knocked outta the park. (Videography done by our friend Lindsey Anne)

And that’s just how the day began, ski-daddy. But before I describe what happened further yonder, allow me tell you the silliest thing…

I threw on the Google Glass to start snappin’ some pics & vids when I see this guy who I swear I’ve seen his face a million times over the years…Yup, it’s Bill Murray.

We all have our fave Murray movie, and I strolled right on up to Bill and spit the Caddy Shack “18^th At Augusta, Cinderella Story” line at him. He smiled but couldn’t help himself from asking about the Glass.

K, sorry, back to baseball… My next time at bat I did my best Carlton Fisk at Fenway impression by hooking one right around the foul pole in left. It’s only 10 seconds long so just check it out:

Then about halfway through the game some blondie wearing pig tails shows up, says she’s the celebrity whiffle baller for 1871. Turns out she’s Kristy Swanson a.k.a. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie version).

Kristy & I? We quickly became besties and I gave her a batting tip before busting out the Glass to record her first swing of the day.

Then we started talking about the Glass and she told me about some cool meditation glasses she’s tried.

Kristy may be a Hollywood movie star but her iPhone battery dies just like the rest of us. When hers hit the red zone (20% or less) I swooped in to save the day with my external portable battery charger. Now me and Kristy are gonna go meditate and do yoga and stuff and it’s gonna be sweet.

K, sorry, back to baseball…For my next at bat Asaf Elani was already on base, and I ended up belting another homerun. Here’s asaf and I rounding the bases on this one…

The reason I became a Glass Explorer is by telling Google I’d put the Glass on athletes to record live action. I may as well wear it myself and take an at bat here at Wrigley… right????

Seeing the ball through Glass was weird, so I waited for my pitch from Ryan, and then smacked one over the fence:

Let’s Play Two: 1871 Whiffle Ballers vs. Walgreens

Next up was the tournament sponsor, team Walgreens. (I had just visited one of their stores earlier that morning buying sour patch kids…sheesh).

The billion dollar Walgreens brand came out swinging against the small startup CEO’s of 1871. We were getting absolutely crushed, down so many runs I don’t even remember what the score was.

So we did what every great startup company must do when the time comes around. We pivoted.

Our celebrity coach, NFL Hall of Famer and Chicago Bear (and pro wrestler) Steve “Mongo” McMichael called in the CEC’s Mike Huffstetler in from the bullpen and as Huff strutted his stuff (in Reebok Pumps) to the pitcher’s mound, my mind wandered to the long rich history of this classic stadium … when it suddenly hit me …

BABE RUTH CALLED HIS SHOT ON THIS VERY FIELD IN THE 1932 WORLD SERIES

The Bambino pointed his bat at Wrigley Field’s center field scoreboard then hit a homer straight away on the very next pitch. For real yo, got the Wikipedia page to prove it. Imagine if the Babe had worn Glass for that!

I snapped back to reality when I heard Huffstetler shouting “OK, Glass”. The moment was now.

I pointed my whiffle bat at the Wrigley Field Scoreboard and instinctively said:

“OK Glass … Home Run”.

And that one pitch and swing kickstarted the now famous 1871 Whiffle Baller rally against the corporate giants of Walgreens.

Ryan was now totally focused on hitting now and drilled one out of the park.
Randy Ellis was like Ryne Sandberg out there making diving defensive stops nearly every inning.
Gerhard Boiciuc was gobbling up everything at the hot corner over at third base. Not bad for playing his first baseball game ever.
Asaf Elani was getting on base all over the place (and also recorded a sweet video of Bill Murray ripping a double)
Aaron Frazin transformed his ping pong skills into a baseball stroke and hit a long ball that I think is on someone’s rooftop on Waveland.
Lucas Ward robbed the opposition of a homerun and crushed some of his own.
But when Jake Bernstein hit a walk-off home run in the final inning to cap the stunning rally against the stacked Walgreens ball club…

We went completely nuts at homeplate. That’s just how 1871 Whiffle Ballers roll out at Wrigley Field.

WE DID IT. A group of individual entrepreneurs of all different backgrounds and skill sets and startups bonding together to join as one winning team.

The other games began to wind down and everyone was pretty tired from SMF (so much fun). What a day.

I was sweaty, sunburned, stained with grass and dirt everywhere as I started to walk off the sacred grounds of Wrigley Field. Time to go home and get back to work on my startup Blog Into Book …

BUT THERE’S ONE MORE THING (Steve Jobs Voice)

Who do I see standing around hanging out near the pitcher’s mound …

It’s the tournament host and strikeout king himself – KERRY WOOD. The guy once struck out 20 batters in one game!! An all-time Major League record.

My swing was feeling good so I pressed my luck and shouted out:

Hey Kerry, think ya can strike me out? Show me what you got!

And this, folks, is what it looks like to face Kerry Wood at Wrigley #throughglass:

So now Kerry and me are BFF’s. Woody didn’t only play for the Cubs ya know … he also threw heat as the closer for my Cleveland Indians. (Check my bio, I’m from Ohio). Now Kerry and I, we’re gonna go paddle boarding together and it’s gonna be great.

Kerry loves paddle boarding so much he wouldn’t stop talking about it … in fact he told me he’s tried some of those helmet cams to record him in action on the water. He can’t wait to cruise downstream wearing Glass. He even found a dead corpse in the water right by my condo in Belmont Harbor just a few weeks ago. This is a terrible thing, obvs, and totally creepy (but the discovery woulda made for a wild live Google hangout stream). With future apps for Google Glass such as facial recognition it’s possible he coulda identified the deceased on the spot, as well as call authorities – while keeping his hands on the oar (not digging in his pocket).

It’s been a few days since we played at Wrigley and my videos are pinging around online thanks to some retweets including one from Kerry Wood and back at Google HQ they found out about my mischief as well. WGN Radio threw it on their home page and the rest is internet viral history.

My 1871 Whiffle Baller teammates taught me a lot today.

Every day as an entrepreneur it can seem like it’s us against the world. We’re fighting for ourselves out there. But we always have each other as fellow CEO’s … We family.

1871 is our own little field of dreams. Most of us used to work solitary at our kitchen table, or coffee shops … or anywhere we could find a wifi signal.

Then the CEC built 1871 and now we have 50,000 square feet and hundreds of other like-minded tech-preneurs to trade ideas with, get advice from, and build relationships that mean much more than even our own career trajectories.

Some of us will become CEO’s of public companies, some may get acquired and ride off into the sunset. A few may be lucky enough to live ’til age 100 and show their great grand-kids this same traditional ball park at Clark/Addison.

We might even be so blessed to see a Cubs world series game at wonderful Wrigley, just like when the Babe called his shot right here in 1932.

But I will tell you this one thing, and I speak for my entire 1871 Whiffle Baller posse … we will never experience a day at Wrigley quite like what happened on this one hot August day in 2013…

when 1871 wasn’t just a number … we were a four letter word the corporate giants feared.

(check the out the full album including tons of cool stuff taken through Glass)

(highlights of the day will be shown on Comcast at 7pm on Monday 8/26/13)

Zack Price
BlogIntoBook.com
Turning Bloggers Into Authors

To read more of my silly blogs about startups check ZackPrice.com

Yup, that’s Jenny McCarthy taking a selfie of me & her. Ugh, I hate when that happens…