BCB After Dark: Where will you watch the 2027 All Star Game at Wrigley Field?

Welcome to your late night indie coffee shop and bar where we’re packaging the hottest tunes and the fanciest cocktails along with all of your favorite caffeinated beverages. We’re still serving up hot chocolate (spiked or not) along with hot toddies because Chicago appears to be confused about how warm and sunny it should be as we head into Memorial Day Weekend.

That won’t keep the late night indie coffee shop from dreaming of summer days, though because there are reports in Chicago Thursday night that Wrigley Field will host the 2027 All Star Game:

It’s been a hot minute (well over 18,000,000 minutes, if we’re going to get technical about it) since Wrigley Field last hosted the All Star Game. The Midsummer Classic was last played at the corner of Clark and Addison on July 10, 1990.

Al will have a lot more on this in the morning, but I’ve got some questions for the late night Cubs aficionados right after some tunes.

Music. Let me think about it. Top song on July 10, 1990? (This is the actual outline note I left to myself. It seemed like a good idea at the time).

I apologize in advance for tonight’s song because I basically decided it would be very cool to figure out what the top song in the United States was the last time the Cubs hosted the All Star Game and talk about it. I definitely did not appreciate exactly how long ago 1990 was, because I sort of thought I’d end up with some early Nirvana angst and I most certainly got something very different:

This is obviously not the general oeuvre of BCB After Dark: indie coffee shop. If God is willing we may never have another boy band in this space again. But the very worst part of this song is that I definitely owned this CD (Would it have been a tape then? It might have been a tape...). I definitely knew all of the names of the New Kids on the Block in 1990.

Here, in the year of our Lord 2025, I refuse to debase myself by looking this up. There was a Joey. And Mark Wahlberg somehow turned this into a career. I think he had a brother who might have been named Donnie. If my life depended on picking any of these people other than Mark Wahlberg out of a lineup I would die. I’m deliberately not fact-checking this to demonstrate how bad my memory here is. Someone is going to come into the comments and be like “how do you not remember?!” and I’m just going to be like I just don’t. I’ve blacked it out of my memory. For my own good, probably. My Aimee Mann loving 22-year old self required I forget this to thrive.

But I admit midway through hearing this song for the first time in who knows how many decades, I knew every word. It was wild. I couldn’t have sang it if you’d asked me to before I heard it, but I immediately remembered all of it.

I also immediately considered sending a message to my family and friends for making them listen to my New Kids on the Block phase, because...what was I thinking (and or hearing?)

Anyway. The last time the Cubs hosted an All Star Game at Wrigley Field we thought Step By Step was the best song in the country. I know. I can’t believe it either. We apparently all thought that for three weeks.

It’s borderline unbelievable, but it happened. I was so shocked I’d just mentally erased music in 1990 that I did a smattering of research to confirm that New Kids on the Block did NOT play or sing the National Anthem or any other such thing at the actual 1990 All Star Game. An event I clearly remember better than anything else that was going on in my life in 1990.

Welcome back to Cubslandia where the top song is definitely not Step by Step.

So Bruce Levine reports that the Cubs are going to be announced as the host of the 2027 All Star Game. He also reports that this could be a huge windfall for the city (I’m assuming he forgot a “million” there):

It’s obviously far to early to speculate on ticket prices or anything else, but I did find myself wondering where I’d want to spend the All Star Break in the neighborhood.

There are so many great options in and around Wrigleyville. Do you hang out at Murphy’s or Bernie’s on the corner opposite the bleachers? Are you more of a Clark and Addison type who finds yourself at The Cubby Bear or The Sports Corner? Or maybe you’re a Wrigley diehard and the type of day baseball lover who knows better than to dream of a drink with more than three ingredients on gameday at Nisei Lounge.

Maybe you want to be outside the park where the ballhawks have been chasing down some of the most famous longballs for decades. Are you more of a home run derby ballhawk or a gamer ballhawk? I imagine we’ll find out in 2027.

Be sure you bus your tables and tip the waitstaff as you place your vote. We’d hate to leave a mess for Josh and Co.