Community Corner
Wrigley Field's 'Pink Hat Guy' is From Highland Park
Jim Anixter has been in the front row behind home plate for half-a-century, and since 1990, has donned the famous pink hat.
Chicago Cubs fans who have tuned in to the team’s playoff home games at Wrigley Field may be wondering who is the guy behind home plate who wears the pink hat.
DNAinfo.com Chicago has identified the man, who has had season tickets in the first row at Wrigley, as Jim Anixter, a Highland Park resident and co-founder of A-Z Industries.
“It’s so my wife can see I’m really at the ballpark and I’m not fooling around,” he laughingly told DNAinfo on why he wears such an obvious hat. “I like being the ‘Pink Hat Guy,’ but my family thinks I’m a total child. I tell people I’m going to be 71, going on 12.”
Anixter has worn the hat in the stands ever since the Cubs passed them out during the 1990 All-Star Game, the most recent mid-summer classic to be held on Chicago’s north side.
A lifelong Cubs fan despite growing up in the south side neighborhood of Hyde Park, Anixter says he hopes for a Cubs win over the New York Mets in five games, meaning the team would clinch its first pennant in 70 years on his 71st birthday: October 22.
“Like the rest of us, he’s been waiting his whole life,” DNAinfo’s Justin Breen wrote. “He’s just had better seats.”
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
