Where to Sit at Wrigley Field

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The quick read

Wrigley Field’s bowl was rebuilt in pieces during the 1060 Project (2014 to 2019), but the core decisions for a visiting fan are the same as they have been for decades. The bleachers are general admission within most of their footprint and are their own seating culture. The rooftops across Sheffield and Waveland are a completely separate ticket category (you don’t get into the park with one). For sun and shade, third-base side beats first-base side once the afternoon shadow moves across the bowl. The right field corner sections take the worst of the setting-sun glare on summer night games. Premium clubs (Catalina, W, 1914, Maker’s Mark Barrel Room) are all-inclusive and worth pricing against the cost of an equivalent night out on Clark Street.

The seating bowl

After the 1060 Project, the bowl from the field up is roughly:

Field level. Dugout Box behind home plate and flanking the dugouts (lowest double-digit sections). Field Box wrapping out toward the corners. Bullpen Box at the field-level seats next to the relocated bullpens. Bleacher Box along the outfield walls in the bleachers (a separate category from general bleacher admission).

Terrace level (100s and 200s). Terrace Box closer to the field, Terrace Reserved deeper. This is the middle tier of the bowl, with most seats in the 100s on the home-plate and lower-bowl side and the 200s in the back ring of the same level.

Upper deck (300 and 400 levels). Upper Deck Box in the 300s for the front rows of the upper deck. Upper Deck Reserved in the 400s for the back rows. The 400-level seats are among the cheapest in the regular bowl and the farthest from the action.

Bleachers (500 level on the bleacher chart). General admission within most of the bleacher footprint. Wrap the entire outfield, left to right. Bench seating without backrests.

Premium clubs. Catalina Club, 1914 Club, W Club, Maker’s Mark Barrel Room, eero Club. These are all-inclusive and bundle the seat with food and beverage. Covered further down.

The bleachers as their own seating culture

The Wrigley bleachers are the only seats at the park that come with a defining fan culture attached. The “Bleacher Bums” name dates to 1969, when a group of regulars in the left field bleachers led by Ron Grace adopted the name, wore yellow hard hats, and became part of Cubs lore during the late-summer collapse of that season. The name was later attached to a 1977 stage play co-written by Joe Mantegna. Through generations of fans, the bleachers have stayed loud, opinionated, and self-policing.

Our call, and it is a call: the bleachers are the best seat at Wrigley Field. Get there when the gates open, take a spot, watch batting practice, and spend nine innings with people who came to do exactly what you came to do. The premium clubs are more comfortable and they cost multiples of this. They are not a better afternoon.

That opinion comes with costs, so here they are first.

• The benches have no backs. Nine innings, no backrest, aluminum. This is not a small thing by the 7th.
• A day game is a sunburn. The bleachers are uncovered and they face back toward home plate, which in a July afternoon means you are looking into the sun for most of the game.
• It is not the family section. The bleacher bums are drinking, and somewhere out there a beer snake is under construction. If you have a seven-year-old, this is not where you sit.
• Restrooms are concentrated in center field down the bleacher concourse, and the lines build on a busy day game.
• General admission within the bleacher footprint. Your ticket gets you in; you pick an open spot first-come. Early matters.

On the backrest problem: a soft, flat foam cushion is fine to bring in. A folding stadium seat with a metal frame, hard sides, or a backrest is not.

Front row in left and right is prime home-run territory, and it is where the throw-it-back tradition gets loudest.

The Bleacher Box

The Bleacher Box is a separate ticketed category along the outfield walls in the bleachers, distinct from general bleacher admission. Bleacher Box seats are reserved and sit closer to the field than the GA rows behind them.

The Bleacher Suite

The Bleacher Suite is a private hospitality space inside the bleachers, sold as a group buyout with food and beverage included. It is not part of the bench seating area.

The Budweiser Patio

The Budweiser Patio is a standing-room and table area in the right-center field bleachers, branded with Budweiser since the 2014 Anheuser-Busch partnership. It has historically corresponded to sections in the 510s along the back of the right-center bleachers.

The throw-it-back tradition

If an opposing player hits a home run into the bleachers and you catch it, the bleacher culture expects you to throw it back onto the field. The expectation is enforced socially. A fan who keeps the ball will be booed loudly by surrounding sections until the ball goes back.

Keep Cubs home run balls. Throw opposing home run balls. That is the whole rule and the bleachers will make sure you know it.

You will read elsewhere that the move is to carry a decoy ball in your pocket, hold up the real one so your neighbors see the catch, then throw the decoy and keep the souvenir. People really do this. It has been done a few feet from us. The odds that you personally catch an opposing player’s home run on the one day you are at Wrigley are somewhere between slim and none. Do not pack a baseball. Just know why the whole section is yelling if it ever happens to you.

The basket and the ivy ground rules

The wire basket atop the outfield wall was installed in 1970 as a fan-safety measure after a string of late-1960s incidents in which fans climbed down from the bleachers and ran onto the warning track during games. The basket projects out roughly 42 inches from the top of the brick wall and counts as out of play.

Ground rules to know:

• A batted ball that lands in the basket on the fly is a home run. The basket extends the home run line out from the wall.
• A batted ball that lodges in the ivy on the wall is a ground-rule double. The outfielder raises both hands to signal the umpire, and the play is dead with the batter awarded a ground-rule double.
• If the outfielder reaches into the ivy to retrieve the ball instead of raising hands, the ball remains live and runners can keep advancing. Outfielders are coached to play the carom when the ball comes off the brick because raising the hands gives up the chance at a play.

The rooftops across Sheffield and Waveland

The rooftop seats on the buildings across Sheffield Avenue (right field) and Waveland Avenue (left field) are unique to Wrigley among current major-league ballparks. The setup developed organically: tenement buildings across the street had clear sightlines over the outfield walls, owners installed permanent bleachers on the roofs, and a separate ticketed product emerged.

A few things to get straight before buying a rooftop ticket

Rooftop tickets and Cubs tickets are entirely separate. A rooftop ticket gets you onto the rooftop building across the street. It does not get you into Wrigley Field itself. If you want to be inside the park, you buy a Cubs ticket. If you want to be on a rooftop, you buy a rooftop ticket. Going from one to the other means leaving and re-entering through a different gate at a different address.

The Ricketts family owns most of the rooftops. Wrigley Rooftops LLC, an entity affiliated with the Cubs ownership group, acquired most of the Sheffield and Waveland rooftop properties through a wave of acquisitions from roughly 2013 through 2016. A small number of properties have historically operated outside that ownership.

Packages are all-inclusive. Rooftop tickets bundle the seat with food and beverage. Buffets typically include ballpark fare (hot dogs, burgers, sausages, sides, dessert). Beverage packages typically include domestic beer, wine, and soft drinks, with premium liquor often available as an upgrade.

Pricing runs higher than a typical bleacher ticket. Recent ranges have run from roughly $200 per person for lower-demand weekday games up to $500 or more per person for marquee opponents and postseason games, with private buyouts running well into five figures.

Which side faces what

Sheffield Avenue rooftops (3617 through 3643 N Sheffield) sit across the street from the right field corner and right field bleachers. They look toward right field and home plate from the right field side.

Waveland Avenue rooftops (1032 through 1048 W Waveland) sit across the street from the left field corner and left field bleachers. They look toward left field and home plate from the left field side.

Rooftops closer to the foul-pole corners have shallower angles into the park. Rooftops closer to straightaway outfield have flatter, more head-on views. The right answer depends on whether you want the wide-angle scene with the bleachers in the foreground (corner rooftops) or the more direct look at the action (deeper rooftops).

Sun and shade by section

The field runs northeast from home plate. At a 1:20 start in July the sun opens the game behind home plate, crosses to dead behind the plate by the 4th, and finishes the afternoon behind the third-base stands. It is 67 degrees up at first pitch and still better than 40 at the last out.

That last number is the one that matters, and it cuts against the way people shop for these seats. At a July day game the sun stays high the whole way. High sun means short shadows, and short shadows mean a deck can cool the rows tucked underneath it and nothing on the far side of the diamond. So at a summer day game, buy on what is bolted over your row, not on which baseline you are sitting along. The shadow you have watched crawl across the infield on TV is doing its work on the players. It is not on its way to your seat in the sun across the way.

The covered seats for a day game

These sit under a deck, so they hold shade whatever the sun is doing:

• Behind home plate at field level (Dugout Box and Field Box behind home, low double-digit sections).
• Behind the third-base dugout and down the left field line at the Terrace level (low 100s on the third-base side).
• Upper deck behind home plate and down the third-base line (low 300s).

Sunniest sections for a day game

• The bleachers (500 level). Uncovered, and they look back toward home plate, which through a July afternoon means looking straight into the sun. Full exposure for essentially the whole game. Bring sunscreen and water, and reapply at the fourth and seventh.
• Right field Field Box (29 through 32) and Terrace (129 through 134). Sun side, plus the right field corner sections face the setting sun on evening games.
• Right field upper deck (327 through 331).

Evening games and the right-field sunset glare

For 7:05 p.m. starts in summer, the sun is low off the third-base side and setting. The right field corner sections at all three levels (Field Box 29-32, Terrace 129-134, Upper Deck 327-331) get the worst of the glare for the first hour or so. By the third or fourth inning the sun is below the bowl roof and it ends.

In April that same glare is the best seat in the house. A cold Wrigley night with the wind off the lake turns the sunny corner into the warm corner, and the shaded seats you would fight for in August are the ones you will regret in the first week of the season.

If glare bothers you, avoid right field corner sections for evening games. If you don’t mind it and prefer being closer to the right-field action, the glare is a tolerable trade for two innings.

Premium clubs

The Cubs operate several premium clubs at Wrigley. All bundle the seat with all-inclusive food and beverage, and most sit behind home plate. Naming rights change with sponsor turnover, so confirm the current names on Cubs.com before you buy.

Catalina Club

Named for Santa Catalina Island, the Cubs’ historical spring training home from 1921 through 1951 (during the William Wrigley Jr. ownership). Currently sponsored as the James Hardie Catalina Club, a premium indoor space with all-inclusive food and beverage, and the corresponding seats are in a designated premium section.

W Club

Named after the W flag flown after Cubs wins. Currently sponsored as The W Club powered by Gordon Flesch Company, a hospitality area with all-inclusive food and premium beverage, with tickets bundling club access with seats in a designated premium section.

1914 Club

A behind-home-plate field-level club, named for the year Wrigley opened. Now sponsored as the AbbVie 1914 Club. Includes access to a private dining room beneath the seats and the first several rows directly behind home plate, with all-inclusive food and beverage.

Maker’s Mark Barrel Room

An underground club space beneath the seats near home plate, themed around the Maker’s Mark bourbon program. Opened as part of the 1060 Project and connects to certain premium seat inventory.

eero Club

A suite-level club (also called the Executive Club) with all-inclusive food, beer, wine, and non-alcoholic drinks, sponsored by eero.

For a visiting fan, premium clubs are worth pricing against a comparable night out on Clark Street plus standard tickets. For a group on a marquee weekend who would have eaten and drunk before the game anyway, the all-inclusive math can come out close to break-even and the seat upgrade is real.

The overhang problem, which is not the problem you think it is

Everybody warns you about the poles. Almost nobody warns you about the ceiling, and the ceiling is what will actually ruin a lower-bowl ticket at Wrigley.

Sit far enough back under the upper deck and the deck stops being shade and starts being a lid. Your view of the field is fine. Your view of everything else is gone: no scoreboard, no skyline over the bleachers, no sky. At Wrigley that matters more than it would anywhere else, because the scoreboard and the ivy and the neighborhood over the wall are most of what you paid the premium for.

So if you are spending up for the lower bowl, spend it on a row that is not under the upper deck, or only partly under it. That is worth more than a few rows of proximity.

The exception is a July afternoon, when the same overhang is the only shade in the building and you will be grateful for the lid. The sweet spot on a hot day game is the front portion of a section that the deck reaches, roughly the front quarter of it: covered, but not buried.

The poles

Wrigley is a 1914 ballpark and the upper deck is held up by steel posts that stand in the lower bowl. Some seats sit behind one.

The Cubs discount those seats and flag them as limited view in the Cubs.com selection tool, and the reasonable expectation is that a legitimate marketplace discloses it too. But plenty of ordinary post obstruction exists below the level of “you are staring at a pole,” and it clusters in the back rows of the Terrace where the posts and the overhang both live. Which is the same place the lid problem lives, so the fix is the same fix.

Buy the front of a section rather than the back and most of this takes care of itself. If you are on a secondary marketplace, pull up the seat photos on Cubs.com first. A discounted obstructed-view ticket is a real bargain when you know what you bought and a bad afternoon when you don’t.

How to find the right ticket

Wrigley Field tickets are one of the noisier markets in the majors. The same seat for the same Cubs game can be selling at one price on Tuesday morning and meaningfully less by Thursday night, depending on demand patterns, opponent narrative shifts, and reseller behavior. Most fans don’t have time to refresh four marketplaces twice a day to catch the drop.

That’s the gap Bleacher Bound closes. The alerts track price patterns across the major secondary marketplaces and flag the high-value drops on Wrigley Field tickets that match your saved preferences: sections, dates, opponents, and price ceiling. Subscribing gets you the alert in real time, with a free trial to try it first. For a Yankees or Dodgers weekend, or the Crosstown Classic, that head start is what keeps a good section within reach instead of gone.

A few seat-buying patterns worth knowing while you’re at it:

• Marquee opponents (Yankees, Dodgers, Cardinals weekend series, Crosstown Classic vs. White Sox) push every section higher. Set your alert early.
• Weeknight games against weak draws are where the value is. Tuesday against a non-contender can mean Terrace seats at upper-deck prices.
• Bleacher tickets jump in price for marquee games. General admission does not mean cheap on a Yankees Saturday.
• Day games are still the Wrigley default because of the city ordinance. If you have flexibility, a Wednesday 1:20 p.m. is often a smoother experience than a packed Saturday night.

Know Wrigley Field better than we do? Tell us what we got wrong, or where we should be sending people instead.