CHICAGO — Last Thursday, we visited Sox Park, a/k/a Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox, in the South Side of Chicago; over the weekend, we hopped on the El’s red line and hightailed it over to the city’s other hardball haven, Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs.

Accompanied by my best girl and my best baseball gal pal, Kirsten, I got off the train at the corner of Sheffield Avenue, and within a few steps of the subway exit, there it was: Major League Baseball’s other crown jewel, the Friendly Confines.

It is difficult to emphasize how different Wrigley Field, its surrounding neighborhood, its team, and its fans are from their cross-town rivals. As we mentioned in our review of Comiskey (www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/sportingeye/documents/02457576.htm), the ChiSox’ home park is practically brand new. Opened in 1991, it caters to the fan who needs to be kept awake during the game. Its gigantic center-field scoreboards blast away throughout the game with interactive crowd games, news and traffic reports, historical sidelights, and so much player-bio info that you’re practically up-to-date on each utility infielder’s rap sheet and favorite therapist. It is a busy atmosphere, and would probably keep you entertained even if a game were not taking place on the field itself.

Wrigley Field, on the other hand, is only about the baseball, and focuses on the experience of taking in a game with a friend or family member. Whereas Sox Park has no real neighborhood or pre-game haunts surrounding it, Wrigley is definitely part of the fabric of the area, and there are dozens and dozens and dozens of restaurants, bars, and shops in the immediate vicinity. There are actually houses across the street from the ballpark itself, and as with Fenway Park, it seems obvious that a residential neighborhood was in place long before the park was built, and the stadium was ultimately shoehorned into the surrounding avenues. The famous WRIGLEY FIELD: HOME OF CHICAGO CUBS marquee sign out front is a popular photo opportunity for first-time visitors, and the watering holes nearby have so much character and allure that it is not unusual for the stadium to remain nearly a third empty until around the third inning, when pre-game warm-up festivities are brought to their conclusion.

Ticket prices are reasonable, with the top ducats costing in the mid $30s, and the most-sought after seats being — surprisingly — the $24 center-field bleachers. While my contingent did not get an opportunity to sit among the world-famous "Bleacher Bums," this sun-drenched section seems to be the place for high-spirited Cubs rooting (and is usually the first to sell out), and though they’re sold as general-admission tickets, they are highly in demand among those seeking out scalpers on the streets despite the fact that patrons are forced to sit on actual bleachers, not seats with backs. The one unbending rule that bleacherites are required to follow is this: should an opposing player hit a home run into the bleachers, the ball must be thrown back onto the field. Those who cherish the souvenir and/or savor the catch too much to relinquish the prize will be roundly booed — not just by the Bleacher Bums, but by the entire park — until the proper "Toss of Disdain" is completed. God save the fool who doesn’t.

Wrigley opened for business just two years after Fenway Park, but the Chicago edifice has aged much more gracefully over the years than its Boston counterpart, and there is absolutely no talk of replacing it. Aisles still offer plenty of legroom, rows aren’t overly long, there are cup-holders at nearly every seat, luxury-box suites seem to abound, and there’s not a bad seat in the house. With its capacity of just under 40,000, the Home of the Cubbies is still the second-smallest ballpark after Fenway’s 33,000-plus, but it feels as intimate as a minor-league park because of its lack of outfield bullpens (two mounds set up in foul ground wide of the first- and third-base lines serve as the warm-up spots) and its scarcity of foul territory. Wrigley can boast that it is home to the first permanent concession stands; that it originated the custom of spectators’ keeping foul balls hit into the stands (except you-know-where) and the pre-game tradition of singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner"; and, perhaps best of all — that the wave has never been done here.

Lights were originally going to be installed at Wrigley in time for the 1942 season, but the day after the Pearl Harbor attacks, owner William Wrigley decided instead to donate the lights to the war effort, and the park remained day-games-only until the late 1980s because of neighborhood resistance. It was not until Cubs management threatened to leave the area and Major League Baseball demanded that lights be installed (otherwise, the team would have been forced to play its postseason games at St. Louis’s Busch Stadium) — that the light towers were finally erected. Thus, after 5687 consecutive day games, the team played its first night game on August 8, 1988. Today, the Cubs’ schedule still is weighted toward day games (approximately 50-30), but the team does not seem to suffer at the gate despite the weekday tilts, drawing nearly 2.7 million fans this past season.

Like Comiskey Park across town, Wrigley Field is dominated by its huge center-field scoreboard, but the difference between the two behemoths is like night and day. Wrigley’s scoreboard sits atop the center-field bleachers, but is nearly devoid of any electronic hook-up, and despite its size (27 feet high, 75 feet wide), it is operated almost completely by hand. There is a small rectangular electronic scoreboard that hangs below the main one that updates the batter’s name and basic statistical information (batting average, home-run total, and runs batted in), but the rest of the giant board is just numbers. Lots and lots of numbers. Included on it are line scores for every major-league game being played that day — not just the scores, but inning-by-inning totals (though to figure the score of a particular game in progress, you are forced to add up the run totals yourself). Other than the scoreboard numbers, which typically change quickly (balls, strikes, outs), the workers inside the massive structure presumably scurry around on ladders or scaffolding inside the big board to update the rest of the posted numbers (their tasks are similar to those of Fenway’s Green Monster crew, but on a much grander scale). Atop the scoreboard are a 10-foot-diameter old-fashioned clock, along with six flagpoles representing the six divisions of Major League Baseball, with pennants of each team flown in the first-to-last-place order of the baseball standings of that day (along with a separate pole for a white "W" flag to be flown after each win by the Cubs, and a blue "L" flag hung for each loss).

Other than the scoreboard, the trademark visual effects at Wrigley consist of the brick wall that surrounds the park, the evergreen background in straightaway center field, and the ivy growing from the outfield walls. There was a heap of controversy and ill will generated this past summer when the south-side Sox came to Wrigley for an inter-league series, and a traitorous White Sox fan poured acid down the ivy from his front-row seat, ultimately creating a gap in the greenery that is only now growing back.

One of the other traditions of Wrigley Field that highlighted the folksy neighborhood nature of the area was the rooftop seating areas that were constructed beyond the outfield walls across Waveland and Sheffield Avenues. Sadly, that common-man ritual has been pretty much eliminated by corporate takeovers, as most of those rooftops (and the homes which support them) have been bought up by large businesses, and in some cases have had actual sections of bleachers erected so that corporate bigwigs can watch the game from these hallowed perches. Many of these roof boxes have the company logos displayed nearby, with no corporation more prominently displayed than the Anheuser-Busch house located just past the left-center field, which features a giant Budweiser logo emblazoned on its red roof.

More so than anything else, though, a day at Wrigley is all about the baseball. The Cubs have a long, storied history, though that history is for the most part unencumbered by any championship lore. The Cubbies haven’t been to the World Series since 1945, and haven’t won it since 1908, and the franchise’s tendency is to reach the playoffs every 12 to 15 years. With this kind of history, Cubs fans do not get themselves worked up about the team’s wins and losses; they’re just there to have a good time. A win by the Cubbies is always a pleasant outcome, but it’s not live-or-die as it is in some (ahem) cities. Chicago has a couple of bona fide superstars (Sammy Sosa and flamethrower Kerry Wood) and a few past-their-prime veterans (Fred McGriff, Moises Alou, Joe Girardi), but the biggest star is the park itself, a situation not unlike Boston’s.

The concourse area down below the park is very similar to Fenway’s (which is to say that it’s a little cramped compared to most of the modern parks), and the men’s rooms still have the dreaded "troughs" that were a part of Fenway Park until the mid 1990s. Concessions are priced within reason, and it’s nice to find a $2.25 hot dog (compared to the $3.50 Fenway Frank) and a $4.50 beer (that’s a 16-ounce can, not some $4.75 12-ounce watery-tasting draft) sold in the stands (John Henry, are you listening?). Whereas Comiskey was a Miller and Pepsi brand park, Wrigley is decidedly a Bud and a Coca-Cola park, except for the presence of a regional beer called Old Style, which is a century-old brew produced by the Heileman Brewery up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in special ivy-adorned cans for Cub fans.

Though there are great seats everywhere, the absolute best seats in the house are directly behind home plate, in the upper deck, a view not unlike the one enjoyed by .406 Club (formerly 600 Club) fat cats at Fenway, only without the four-inch-thick glass in front of them. This perch at Wrigley, which can be had for $26 per seat and is located immediately in front of the old-time press box, offers a spectacular, poster-worthy panoramic view of the park. In addition, it also offers patrons the opportunity to take advantage of a beautiful patio area that is connected to this section and that offers an impressive bird’s-eye view of the surrounding neighborhood and beyond.

As a devotee of the game of baseball and all that it stands for, I was totally captivated by Wrigley Field and the aura that surrounds it. Would I transpose Fenway and Wrigley if I had the chance? Probably not, although the Red Sox pooh-bahs could learn a lot from their Chicago counterparts — both north- and south-side — particularly in the areas of creature comforts. Still, despite its faults, Fenway has the Green Monster, the nooks and crannies, the explosion of color (Wrigley is predominantly green), the informative yet unobtrusive scoreboard, the Citgo sign, the skyline, and the unmitigated passion that resides there on a game-to-game basis. Not to mention a playoff team every few years.

No, the Cubs probably don’t drive Cubs fans crazy like the Sox drive their fans to drink, but I tell ya, if you want to truly enjoy a deeply religious baseball experience outside of Boston, there’s no better place to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" than Wrigley Field.

I can’t wait to get back.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com