If Roy Wood Jr. were allowed to make one change as commissioner of Major League Baseball, he would encourage more bat flips and personality in the game.

“It’s a simple change,” he said while sitting in Section 124 of Wrigley Field during the Chicago Cubs-Arizona Diamondbacks game on Sept. 9. “I like bat flips. I like K-struts. I like designs on sneakers. The cool bat paintings during the Home Run Derby. That should be a normal thing.

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“If a player wants to strut, if a player wants to dare to show an ounce of fun while playing this game …,” his voice trailed off as Seiya Suzuki stepped into the batter’s box in the second inning.

Wood, a comedian, was in town with his son Henry, 7, to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch. It wasn’t his first time leading the crowd in the song. In fact, Wrigley Field is his favorite place to experience a baseball game.

Chase Field in Phoenix has the best food, he said. Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City has the best ballpark experience. But that Saturday in Chicago, it was a perfect 70 degrees — hot in the sun, cooler in the shade. The wind was blowing left to right. It was the kind of day at the ballpark he had hoped to share with Henry, who isn’t into baseball yet.

A Cubs fan since he was a small child in Birmingham, Ala., Wood said he was the only sports fan in his home. Even though his father, Roy Wood Sr., once hosted a weekly radio show with Cubs Hall of Famer Ernie Banks, Wood Sr. “never really cared about sports.”

“My father’s only alliance was to Black people,” Wood said. “I can’t tell you that I ever saw my dad watching a single organized sporting event. My mother never watched sports.

“Ernie Banks was a very integral part of the city in terms of being the Black guy on the white side of town doing extraordinary things. And we’re still in the early days of the integration of baseball. So my father looked at Ernie Banks as a bit of a bridge to the Black experience in a sport that was still very, very white — at a time that was still very, very racist. I think if it had been any other player, he probably wouldn’t have even done it.”

WGN-TV brought Wood into what would become his lifelong baseball allegiance. His choice was between the Cubs in the afternoon and the Atlanta Braves in the evening on TBS. The Cubs won because watching the Braves too often would mean cutting it too close to bedtime.

Wood’s love of baseball led him to play the sport. His high school team, the Ramsay Rams, played at Rickwood Field, the oldest professional ballpark in the United States — an opportunity many baseball nerds would be excited about.

Wood said his hometown wasn’t all that into baseball and many weren’t even aware of the state’s rich history within the sport. Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Tim Anderson hail from Alabama, and Rickwood served as home to the Birmingham Barons and the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro leagues.

“To grow up playing high school baseball in a stadium as historic as Rickwood, it never really dawned on us,” he said. “We were never really told about it. We were taught a lot of Black history, but we were taught all the struggle and strife. The Black experience in baseball is one of division and optimism.

“So when they renovated Rickwood for the Ty Cobb movie in 1992, it became a cool place to play. The grass was butter, the dirt was perfect.”

In June 2024, Rickwood Field will be the site of a regular-season game between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants, similar to the Field of Dreams game in Iowa.

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Baseball was a “safe” sport for Wood. “Nobody was messing with you on the baseball team,” he joked.

Today, baseball remains that space for Wood, who calls it “calm, normal.” When most people around him have their TVs tuned to news networks, he’s watching MLB Network or listening to a game. It’s his white noise. He can think and get work done with a game playing in the background. There’s no need to interact or engage with it; for him, it just is.

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Wood stays up to date on the Cubs, including their minor-leaguers. He’s excited about this current iteration of the team, though he was disappointed when the World Series veterans started to leave in 2018.

“They’re fun to watch,” he said. ”Once you add in people like Brennan Davis and Pete Crow-Armstrong, we’re almost in a little of a logjam, which is a good problem to have. There’s been some pleasant surprises, and as long as you’ve got youth, you’ve got a chance. And youth is affordable. But I’m really curious about whether or not (Cody) Bellinger stays.”

The Cubs had lost eight of their last 10 games entering Tuesday and were tied with the Cincinnati Reds for the final National League wild-card spot.

“Nobody would have expected them to be more than third or fourth in the division,” Wood said. “At the All-Star break they were like ‘OK, well, we’re just looking at the pieces we have to get ready for next year.’ And then we came out like a bat out of hell. And it’s like, ‘Oh, wait a minute.’”

The team’s future looks promising to Wood.

“We’re still looking at all we can do next year,” he said. ”It’s impossible we’re not looking at this season, if it ended today, with a wealth of optimism about what the core parts are and what we’re putting together right now.

“In baseball all you need is a hot bump and you’re the world champion. But I think this season has already been a win for Cubs fans. Cubs fans are a bunch of Eeyores, always sad. But I think we’re in a good place and it’s not fake optimism.”