It's not 8/8/88

It is, however, 8/9/88, when the first official night game at Wrigley was played, ending in Cub win over the Mets 6-4. The original magical date of 8/8/88 was rained out after 3 1/2 innings.

The first baseball game was played there (then Weegham Park) in April 1914 by the Chicago Federals of the Federal League. The Federal League folded after the 1915 season and led to Weegham teaming with 9 others (including William Wrigley, Jr.) to purchase the Cubs from the Taft family. Up until then, the Cubs had played at West Side Park. The Cubs first game at Weegham Park was an 11-inning victory against the Cincy Reds on April 20, 1916.

In 1920, the Wrigley family purchased the Cubs outright and renamed the park to Cubs Park, which would become Wrigley Field in 1926.

But, back to the lights. Crosley Field in Cincy installed lights in 1935 and the Cubs were to be one of the early adopters after seeing the success of night baseball. In 1941, lights were purchased and ready to be installed at Wrigley. However, the day following the Pearl Harbor bombing, the Wrigley family donated all the material to a shipyard to help the war effort.

The original reason for the 1941 plan to install lights was, of course, financially based. After the war, there wasn't as much financial pressure and lights were not to be. That is until the 1980's when MLB told the Cubs that they would have to play playoff games in St. Louis. As you can imagine from seeing yesterday's game against bitter rival St. Louis, the Cubs quickly managed to get some lights up. Wrigleyville has never been the same.

Other notes:

• First permanent concession stand (1914) for hot dogs and beer
• First tradition of throwing back opponent home runs
• The famous "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"
• The tradition of singing the National Anthem before games started at Wrigley for the 1918 World Series
• First field with an organist (1941).

I dragged tons of this info from this very informative site. It was one of the few that could confirm my long held belief in the scheduled 1941 lights installation (other than Wikipedia, and I would rather go with some random website than some random bozo's Wiki entry).