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Written by: John Kass Chicago Tribune feature August 12,'09 Is this heaven? No, it's 'Beyond the Vines' Of all the creatures in the universe, are there any as optimistic as those perky Cubs fans?
"No," said Dennis Mascari as we sat in a Chicago cemetery in front of a giant ivy-covered red-brick center-field wall, on seats from Wrigley Field.
The grass was green. The warning track crunched under your feet. Vines grew along the brick. Home plate was so clean, you didn't want to step on it. And there was that iconic "400" in yellow paint, as we faced the center-field wall, with the cremated remains of deceased Cubs fans inside.
The 24-foot-long brick monument offering peace to the ashes of Cubs fans is called "Beyond the Vines." It sits in perpetual sunshine at Bohemian National Cemetery, at Pulaski Road and Foster Avenue on the Northwest Side.
Mascari, a former marketer, is the genius behind this concept. If you're a Cubs fan who wants your ashes in a stirring replica of the center-field wall, you can contact him at http:/www.beyondthevines.net. Just don't put a White Sox fan there, even if you hate the guy.
A Cubs fan friend of mine named Stanley brought me to the wall the other day. We sat in the bleachers and ate spicy peanuts in honor of the dead. We fed the birds. On Tuesday, I met Mascari. My colleague Wings took one of those cool Flip video cameras and crafted his movie, un film de Wings.
You can see his haunting film at www.chicagotribune.com/cubswall , before it is picked up by the Sundance Film Festival and then Cannes.
Wings and Mascari, both Cubs fans, sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." They know they're singing to the dead, and yet still demand, "Let's get some runs." How optimistic is that?
One of the serenaded dead is Russell H. Adams, who passed this year at 98. His plaque says simply, "Born in 1911, Died in 2009. "I saw Ruth & Gehrig play at Wrigley."
What else is there to say?
As a Sox fan, I didn't want to appear insensitive. So I asked, sensitively: Isn't this creepy?
"Creepy?" Mascari said. "A lot of people ask me if it's creepy, but when you get a call from a family ... and you actually come to a service, then it's nothing like creepy. It's pure satisfaction. Usually, when you go to a funeral, they're not the most happiest things to be at."
He plans to add to the monument, with right- and left-field walls, complete with views of the "L," the old Torco roof sign and the rooftops across the street. I suggested a basket at the top of the monument, so the angels can throw you back if you're not a good Cubs fan. Mascari said a basket would trap too many leaves.
Recently, a funeral service was held for Benjamin George Maldonado, 34, who died unexpectedly in May of an undiscovered brain cyst. His "skybox" includes a Cubs logo, his "lifetime statistics" (dates of birth and death), the words "beloved husband and father" and this epistle from Ben:
"I hope the boys win today."
His wife, Larissa Rzemienski, said she didn't find it creepy. "The priest gave a great eulogy of Ben," she said. "His urn had a baseball on top. We all signed the baseball that went into the wall. There were sandwiches and sodas, and we had a picnic. He was so young. A headstone would have been so somber."
I've written about other strange headstones in other cemeteries, including a video tombstone where the dead speak to you from beyond the grave, in a continuous loop, venting through the night. If you're looking for creepy, that's creepy.
But the Cubs wall isn't. Some might say a human life shouldn't be reduced to baseball, but then, you're not a fan like Maldonado. It was his life. It was his death.
Larissa isn't a sports fan. But she is a professor of psychology at a university in Arizona, where the couple moved after they left Chicago.
"It's funny because Ben always thought that if he was watching the game, they'd win," Larissa said. "If they were losing, he'd get stressed out, and it would really determine his mood. If they lost, I'd hear about it and think, 'Oh, great, the Cubs lost, he'll be in a crappy mood.' "
What would be the diagnosis?
"Obsessive-compulsive disorder, maybe?" she said.
She understands all too well, like the wife of a certain Sox fan. That fan insisted on taking the authentic 2005 World Series trophy through the Tribune newsroom, then mocking the Cubs-owning Tribune corporate chieftains, daring them to touch my Precious. If you're a baseball fan in Chicago and you're not obsessive-compulsive, then you're already dead.
Just like all Cubs fans -- eternally optimistic, perky and hopeful, in life and beyond.
jskass@tribune.comJohn Kass will appear on WGN-AM 720 on Greg Jarrett's program in the 7 a.m. hour Wednesday.
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