In the 1986 hit movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Matthew Broderick made us want to be Ferris, if only for a day. It also made at least one guy want to find out what day game of the Chicago Cubs that Ferris, Cameron and Sloane had attended after skipping school.
This guy. Larry Granillo of Baseball Prospectus. Granillo worked out the details shown in the TV broadcast that was playing within the movie, dug through the box scores, and came up with a date.
June 5, 1985: Cubs vs. Braves. Attendance: 25,557, +/- three Hollywood actors
Here's the scene from the movie, with commentary from director John Hughes. Note that he'd rather have gone to Comiskey Park for the White Sox, but only the Cubs played day games to fit the script! Part of the scene to refresh your memory:
First week of June also makes total sense for a day that a high-school student would just want to play hooky and make a day of it with friends in the big city.
And as Granillo noted:
More interesting than that is the timeline that this presents for Ferris. It's said in the movie that the reservation he stole was for noon, but we can't say with certainty if that's what time they ate. Seeing as how they finished the lunch with no hassles, it's safe to assume either Abe never showed up or he showed up well after their lunch was finished. Either way, with a start time of 1:25pm that afternoon, there is plenty of time for Ferris and company to make it to Wrigley in time for the game.
The eleven-inning game took 3:09 to complete, which means that the foul ball Ferris catches had to have been sometime after 4:00pm. That leaves, at the most, one hour and forty-five minutes for their trips to the museum, Sears Tower, the lake, and Sloane's house, while squeezing in two musical numbers during the parade before racing home at 5:55pm. Seems a bit tough to squeeze all of that in for most normal people. But, seeing as Ferris has the magical ability to sound exactly like both a young Wayne Newton and a young John Lennon, I'm willing to believe he could make the schedule work.
Fun Ferris Bueller facts! Now, back to 2011, already in progress.
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