After 25 years, the mystery of which Chicago Cubs game Ferris Bueller and his pals attended on his legendary day off has finally been solved.

Of course, anyone who has seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the seminal 1986 teen comedy starring Matthew Broderick, knows that one of the odder, and more sport-centric, parts of the flick occurs when the gang, having decided to skip school and cruise around Chicago for the day, find themselves attending an afternoon Cubs game. (Well, of course it was a day game, since the first night game wasn’t played at Wrigley Field until 1988.) In the clip, Broderick actually catches a foul ball from his field-level seat near the left field foul pole. (The relevant part of the clip runs until the 3:30 mark.)

Heretofore, no one has been able to firmly identify which game it was that the filmmakers shot the sequence at. However, Larry Granillo, a Baseball Prospectus author who runs the fantastic Wezen-Ball blog, drilled down on the facts presented to us by Cubs announcer Harry Caray’s voiceover, scoured various reference sources, and gotten to the bottom of this long-standing enigma.

The scene finally shifts to Wrigley Field, where Ferris and company are sitting near the left field foul pole. Off in the distance, we can see the Cubs on the field and one or two baby-blue uniforms around the diamond.

It appears obvious now that this is a real ballgame that Ferris is at, not just something recreated for a film crew. The Harry Caray play-by-play and the Braves players on the field are pretty solid evidence of that. So what game, then, are they watching? Did the Cubs win, or did Ferris sing “Danke Schön” as a way to wash away the stink of a Cubs loss?

The movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” was released on June 11, 1986. The ballgame then must have been filmed either real early in the 1986 season or sometime during 1985. Looking at game logs from those seasons, we see that there was no game in 1986 in which Lee Smith (#46) faced the Braves at Wrigley Field. There were four such games in ‘85, though Smith left the Braves hitless in one of those. Of the remaining three games, it isn’t hard to find the game we’re looking for.

I don’t want to ruin it for you, but check out Larry’s BP post and you’ll see that he indeed comes to a definitive answer. Although I probably don’t have to tell you that the Cubs lost because, well, they’re the Cubs.

And as for that foul ball being caught? Well, a post by Al Yellon on sports site SB Nation makes a compelling case that the filmmakers actually staged that part of the film, perhaps at another game (or even an off-day) later in the season. Still, anyone who decided to skip work (or high school) for either game is forever a part of cinematic (and baseball) lore.

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