Gary Pressy
The Organ Trail
September 8, 2006 | by brett | Permalink
There’s no better place to watch a baseball game than Wrigley Field in Chicago. It’s the home of the beloved Cubbies, with the brick outfield walls covered with green ivy and the retro scoreboard in centerfield, changed manually and lacking the flair of newer stadiums’. The 40,000 seats at Wrigley Field are sold out every game whether the Cubs are having a losing or winning season; surprising for a team that has not won a World Series in close to 100 years. Needless to say, Chicagoans are passionately dedicated to their Cubs! Vendors yell loudly to be heard over the fans’ chatter and can throw peanuts from distances a marksman couldn’t reach. Old Style beers are reasonable priced at $5.50 a far cry from the $9 domestics you find in newer stadiums. Wrigley Field is not just a baseball diamond, but a cathedral, the Mecca of professional baseball, where the gamel is found in its purest form. Adding to that purity is Gary Pressy, the Chicago Cubs’ in-house organist. Gary provides the notes that complete the Wrigley Field experience. His organ leads the crowd in cheers and chants and attempts to hide the poor vocals of celebrity singers during the 7th-inning stretch’s “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”.
Gary Pressy is your classic Southside Chicagoan with the Midwest accent to prove it (with elongated “a” sounds, resembling New Englanders accents). Gary’s passion for the organ began at the age of 4, when he had his first piano lesson. Later switching to the organ, he decided in his late teens that he wanted to be a professional organist. Gary had stints playing for a couple of colleges in Chicago and even the pre-Jordan Chicago Bulls.Still, Gary had his sites set on Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs, the first team to incorporate an organ into their ballpark.
From 1977 until 1984, Gary wrote letters to the Cubs organization expressing his interest to play at Wrigley. After seven years of continued persistence and disappointment, he finally landed an actual interview! He did not however get the position in his first attempt. His opportunity came one snowy April 1st, four days before the opening day of the season.
Seeing as it was April Fool’s Day, Gary suspected that it was a bad joke, but showed up to Wrigley anyway. He noted that“Jingle Bells” would have been more appropriate on account of the weather, but he went along playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. The organization liked what they heard and Gary soon found himself with the title, Official Organist of the Chicago Cubs. He first took his seat behind the organ on Opening day, 1987 and has not missed a game since. Next year, Gary will celebrate two landmarks in his career: his 20th season with the Chicago Cubs, and more impressively, his 16,000th straight game.
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