Take Me Out to the Ball Game--and Score an Entry to Strike Out ALS 5K

Just me and my media team buds after last year's race.

Baseball and beer? They go together: You’re most likely going to sip—or slam—a brew when you’re at the ballpark. Baseball and brats? Maybe it’s a brat or maybe it’s a hot dog, but it’s the meat in a bun that you’re ordering at the concession stand before the 7th inning stretch. But baseball and running? Sure, there’s plenty of running on the field between rounding the bases and sprinting for fly balls. But if you really want a connection between the two sports, or just run a 5K anywhere besides the lakefront or Lincoln Park, you’ll find it at the Strike Out ALS 5K, which does a riff on Take Me Out to the Ballgame that any runner can appreciate.

The Strike Out ALS 5K trades the typical Chicago 5K backdrop—the lakefront, the park, the city streets—for one of the ballpark variety with a course that starts outside U.S. Cellular Field, home of the White Sox, and finishes inside with a loop around the warning track (or at least that's how the course flowed in 2012 and 2013, but more to come on that.) And as its name would imply, it’s a race that sticks with the baseball theme from its location to its beneficiary. The 5K serves as a fundraiser for the Les Turner ALS Foundation, which is “Chicago’s leader in research, patient care, and education about ALS,” according to its website. ALS, short for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Gehrig was one of the most iconic and respected players in baseball who unfortunately had to quit the game far too soon.