Maybe all this hoopla about the Chicago Cubs trading off all their best players can be summed up in relation to Wrigley Field Hot Dogs.

Management is attempting to go back to the good old days of “The Lovable Losers,” when the folks who came to the games cared more about hot dogs and beer than the game unfolding in front of them. Come early September, you could get a cheap ticket and sit anywhere you wanted and stack beer cups and put your hand up to flag hot dog vendors who were omnipresent, and you could sit back with a handful of people and spend a nice afternoon.

You would be surprised at the end of the game, and often you wouldn’t know the score – but you could be pretty sure that the Cubs lost.

It was all very pleasant. Families could even go to game without dipping into their life savings and nobody in the neighborhood tried pulling the $45 charge for parking in their condo driveway. That would, and should have been, laughable.

When the beer and hot dogs got to you, you could boo to your heart’s content and hit your field box laughing. Some old timer writing the scores and plays in his program might give you a glare or two, but you’d respond in that Chicago way by staring him back at him dead on, and going, “WHAT!” You might even mutter, “Freaking accountant” under your breath.

The game was simply a game – and baseball is the best game man has ever devised.

A simpler time? You bet.

And the dogs that were available were, and still are, I gather, world class. Wrapped in foil, they were big and tender and juicy, and you would saddle up to the condiment station, where you’d slather on brown mustard with a stick, and apply the relish the same way, and then go to the onion machine, where you’d turn a crank and chopped onions would tumble down on your dog.

Getting around required no jostling, no hurried pushing, no parents with that grim look on their faces that said, “Holy shit, this is costing me a fortune.”

The game was simply as game, and playoff hopes being over, the players would be out there putting on a little entertainment for the ne’er do wells in the stands, the ones that Lee Elia famously derided:

So farewell Anthony Rizzo. The Yankees are a better fit for you. Jake Marisnick, the Padres have better weather. Kris Bryant, they will love you in San Francisco. Visit Alcatraz when you can. Javy Báez – No place like New York. And Joc Pederson, Atlanta has boiled peanuts, I bet.

For a while I employed a bit of a scam: I wore a sandwich board and called myself “The Human Scoreboard.” For the price of a beer, I would allow ‘one lucky fan’ the opportunity to write the inning’s score on my board with a white paint marker. It worked. I got many beers.

So it could be a genius ploy at work. Just wait. We will have plenty of nice late summer and early Fall days ahead at the old ballpark. Nice, minor-league type days.

And there is nothing like the old ballpark.