Now, why is that? Well, it’s because it’s a great place to hang out, and enjoy yourself, as long as you don’t care about baseball.

Enter the local Wrigley Field, the bar and grill which shares two attributes with its big-city cousin. People love to hang out there and enjoy themselves, and you don’t have to care about baseball to do it.

Celebrating its 13th anniversary in business this year, Wrigley Field is undergoing changes from bleachers to press box, so to speak. Under the energetic new ownership of brothers Carl and Dan White, Wrigley Field is solidifying its dual reputation as a neighborhood bar where everybody knows your name and a happenin’ club where you find different entertainment possibilities every night, often on the same night.

The brothers bought Wrigley Field from former owner and founder George Kotsopoulos last August, but they were hardly strangers, each having worked there for several years. Carl was with Kotsopoulos nearly from the beginning, starting as a night cook and slowly learning each job in the place, and learning along the way what Wrigley Field’s loyal customers want and need.

“This is a neighborhood bar. We have many, many regulars who know us by name, people who know they can come in whenever they want and find a good meal and a drink with excellent service,” Carl White said.

But Wrigley Field also is a comfortably rambling, three-room club in which patrons can wander from watching sports on one of 36 TV monitors, to playing on one of five pool tables, to trying their hand at one of many video games. Or, if they prefer the traditional, they can sit at a gracious horseshoe-shaped bar and simply forget that the new president of the United States may never include the word subliminal in his vocabulary.

Beginning with the solid base established by the former owner, the brothers White have worked extremely hard to get Wrigley Field to the point at which they want it, and they are nearly there.

They are working on a new, expanded menu (although there is nothing wrong with the current one, as a long night of eating by whatzup representatives proved). They have scrubbed and polished every inch of the place. They have established a lineup of entertainment with little equal for an establishment this size. They have instituted bounteous free buffets Mondays through Fridays from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. (starting a half hour later on Fridays). They have talked long and hard with their 20 team members about the importance of service.

What they’ve created is a one cool place to be, with never a chance of being bored (or hungry or thirsty). Would that homelife were this good.

At home, you generally can’t get $1.75 long necks every day and the famous Bucket of Beer (10 domestic beers in a bucket of ice) $17.50. But you can here.

In a throwback to the good old days in Fort Wayne, when bars offered free buffets after work, Wrigley Field offers the following (and these are only samplings of each night’s menu): Monday — brats, polish sausage, hot dogs and chili; Tuesday and Thursday — pizza, pasta, soup; Wednesday — tacos; Friday — wings, salads, cheese.

On a good Friday night, Wrigley Field gives away nearly 3,000 wings, with their unique sauce.

To ensure our readers of all this, whatzup planted two observers there on the night of the IU-Purdue basketball game recently: yours truly and local TV star Indiana Bob, The Human Cannonball, whose “For a Few Nickels More” is seen at 10:30 p.m. Thursdays on Comcast Channel 57.

Although it features live entertainment, a DJ and a VJ with music videos on the TV screens on various nights, Wrigley Field is still the perfect place to see a sporting event. NFL games are their specialty, but NASCAR and March Madness rank a close second and third.

As the place filled up and excitement built that night, the big game appeared on virtually every screen, including two over-sized screens (with one exception, a program featuring a report on breast augmentation, cruelly suffering from the only poor reception in the place).

Unaccountably, the Human Cannonball showed up in a nice shirt and tie, temporarily spoiling the mood. And what a great mood. If you’re a fan, the best place in the world to watch the Big Game is a place such as Wrigley Field, where skilled servers keep bringing you large plates of hot food and you can whoop and holler to your heart’s content.

As the forces of good from Bloomington vanquished the forces of evil from West Lafayette, the Human Cannonball and I sampled manly food and called out things such as, “Gene Keady’s a mouth breather!” and “Look at that breast augmentation!”

Being manly men, we ordered food in keeping with our manliness. I had the beer-battered onion rings with ranch dip and the six-ounce char broiled ribeye steak, with steak fries, cole slaw and roll. The Human Cannonball had the breaded mushrooms with ranch dip and the Cajun chicken strip basket with fries, cole slaw and roll.

“Excellent button mushrooms, very moist and tender,” he reported. “Mmmpphh,” I said, meaning these were among the best onion rings I had ever had. My steak was tender and his Cajun chicken was manly enough to make him order another adult beverage.

Even having to listen to mush-mouthed Bill Rafftery broadcast the game did not diminish the evening’s joy and roomful of camaraderie.

“That was a great night,” said Dan White. “We weren’t sure what to expect with Bobby Knight being gone. Uh, did you order the wings? They’re our specialty.”