Bear down, Hammond Bears? At Soldier Field, fans didn’t even want to hear it

Bear down, Hammond Bears?

A smart-alecky reporter asked big-time fan Wlliam Garner, 42, of Burbank, if he was ready to sing those words Saturday shortly before kickoff of the Bears’ preseason opener against the Browns at Soldier Field.

Garner, with thick orange and blue chains around his neck and a Bears hat the size of a small Toyota on his noggin, met the idea with an “Oh, my God.”

“I’m just gonna say, ‘Bear down,’ ” Garner said. “Ain’t no place like Chicago.”

Andrew Ivinjack, son of a season-ticket holder, was enjoying a pregame beverage with lifelong pals Alan Checherz, Donovan Perry and Ethan Hunt. All four are in their mid-20s and hail from Lake Forest, though three now live in Lincoln Park or Lake View. Hunt was the most OK with the possibility of the Bears building a new stadium across the Indiana border, as long as it’s “truly state of the art.” The others, not so much. Perry called the very idea “disrespectful.”

“I would hate it if they built it in Hammond,” Ivinjack said. “How can you sing the fight song [about] ‘the pride and joy of Illinois’ if you’re in Indiana singing it? It just feels wrong.”

Bears chairman George McCaskey assured the public earlier in the week that fans would “adjust” to a stadium in Hammond if the team were to go that route. Checherz called that an “annoying comment.”

McCaskey and president/CEO Kevin Warren are pushing the idea of Hammond as the Bears’ “sole focus” among long-debated potential sites, which might not have the utmost truth to it considering they won’t rule out Arlington Heights, where the Bears are sitting on 326 acres.

If you said you were “solely focused” on the spiral ham Aunt Dotty just pulled out of her tote bag while not ruling out the 10-pound Wagyu prime rib roast you spent a fistful of hundreds on, it would be no less convincing.

Either way, “The time has come,” according to Warren, to move forward with a stadium that gives fans the “new environment and game-day experience” they deserve.

“I still love this experience,” said Ralph Peyton, 65, of Beverly, who was in the seats with brother Wayne Peyton, 63, and their cousin Keith Smith, 63, of Alsip. “I’m sure a new experience could be nice, but I appreciate this one.”

Of course, last season was a new game-day experience because the Bears were actually a good team, even beating the Packers twice on the lakefront. If the Bears went 6-11 in Hammond, in Arlington Heights or on board the International Space Station, that would be the old game-day experience.

McCaskey was in the broadcast booth as TV viewers got a look at images of the golf course — built atop a slag heap — at the proposed Hammond site. McCaskey pointed out that he could see the Chicago skyline in the distance.

Not the same thing, though.

“Where is the fan base in Hammond?” said Rich Zerillo, 44, of Mundelein. “There’s not much around there except for the casino, you know? So it’s kind of stealing away from the fan experience if they go to Indiana. It would be tough to stay a fan.”

Zerillo added that McCaskey “clearly is not in tune with his fan base if he thinks that people are just going to accept it.”

On fans’ first day at Soldier Field since the Bears’ board of directors voted in May to keep the Hammond train moving — at least for the time being — not all fans were bumming out. Smith, a former South Sider, thought a lot of people were overreacting.

“I’m not convinced that just because they go there, they’re going to be the Hammond freaking Bears,” Smith said. “They’re not. They’re still gonna be the Chicago Bears, and people will adjust.”

But Wayne Peyton, who lives a mere hop, skip and a jump from Hammond in Calumet City, has a “big problem” with it.

“The Bears belong to Chicago,” he said. “They’ve been the Chicago Bears since I was born. I’m going to have a hard time adjusting.”

When Lilianna Magana, 44, of Montgomery, south of Aurora, got wind of all this Indiana talk, she was “not happy at all.”

“You want to be on the lakefront and you want to be in the elements, right?” she said. “That’s what football is.”

Not that an Arlington Heights stadium would check those boxes, either, but at least it would be in Illinois.

“If it’s in the state of Indiana, I’m definitely not going to games anymore,” Magana said.

Zerillo is in the camp that believes the Bears are using the threat of moving to Hammond to leverage Springfield into giving the Bears the “tax certainty” they’re looking for to build in Arlington Heights.

“I’m not buying it,” he said. “It’s just a ploy.”

Garner lived eight years in Gary and another nine in Indianapolis

“I still wouldn’t want the Bears to go to Indiana. I’m going to be honest with you — not at all,” he said. “I wish they would just stay here. I love this area, love the atmosphere. Soldier Field is Soldier Field, and nothing can replace that.”