A Cubs-centric magazine has struck out in a bid to sell its issues just outside Wrigley Field’s gates before Cubs home games.

Left Field Media LLC Editor and Publisher Matthew Smerge, who publishes four magazine issues each baseball season, was ticketed by a Chicago police commander on April 5 — the Cubs’ opening night — for selling his magazine in a no-peddling zone.

Left Field sued the city and the police commander three days later in federal court challenging an ordinance prohibiting sidewalk peddling outside Wrigley Field on free-speech grounds.

The suit also challenges ordinances requiring peddlers to obtain a peddling license and barring anyone other than a licensed peddler from selling anything other than a newspaper on a public way.

Shortly after the suit was filed, U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso issued a temporary restraining order that cleared the way for Left Field to sell Chicago Baseball on public sidewalks next to Wrigley Field while the case was pending.

Alonso referred Left Field’s motion for a preliminary injunction to U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael T. Mason.

In a written opinion Monday, Alonso adopted Mason’s recommendation that he deny Left Field’s request for a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the license requirement.

Alonso also declined to enjoin the city from enforcing an ordinance that prohibits all peddling on public sidewalks adjacent to the stadium.

Barring a reinstatement of the restraining order in the coming days, the ruling means Left Field won’t be able to sell the magazines outside the ballpark entrances for any upcoming postseason games that could begin on Monday and Tuesday — but only if the Cubs win their National League wild-card game tonight in Pittsburgh.

Alonso held Left Field is unlikely to prevail on its claim that the ordinance violates the First Amendment.

Because the ordinance bans peddling any merchandise at all, it is not based on the content of any printed material, Alonso wrote.

He wrote that the city’s reasons for adopting the ordinance — crowd control and security — also are content neutral.

And the ordinance advances these goals without substantially burdening the right to free speech, Alonso wrote.

“The ban on peddling on the sidewalks immediately adjacent to Wrigley Field,” he wrote, “is narrowly tailored to address the congestion and safety problems that occur when tens of thousands of people are funneled along a crowded streetscape to a stadium occupying a single block.”

Alonso denied Left Field’s motion for a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the ordinance while its lawsuit is pending.

The lead attorney for Left Field is Adele D. Nicholas of Adele D. Nicholas Law Office.

She said Left Field will challenge the ruling before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We think that restrictions being imposed on our client violate the First Amendment and we intend to go forward and show that,” Nicholas said.

The lead attorney for the city is Michael J. Dolesh of the corporation counsel’s office.

“We are pleased that the court has recognized the city’s legitimate interest in maintaining order and safety on the congested public ways immediately adjacent to Wrigley Field,” Law Department spokesman John Holden wrote in an e-mail.

Left Field did not seek to halt enforcement of the newspaper exemption until the case is resolved.

In his opinion, Alonso rejected the argument that the newspaper exemption demonstrates that the sidewalks ordinance blocks the sale of Left Field’s magazine based on its content.

Quoting the majority opinion in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona, 135 S. Ct. 2218 (2015), Alonso did concede that the U.S. Supreme Court this year held a law or ordinance regulating speech “is content based even if it does not discriminate among viewpoints within the subject matter.”

The basis for Left Field’s argument that the sidewalks ordinance is content-based centers on the newspaper exemption, Alonso wrote.

But Left Field, he wrote, has not asked him to enjoin the exemption.

Either way, there is no evidence that the exemption is part of the sidewalks ordinance, Alonso wrote.

Even if the exemption applied to the sidewalks ordinance and cleared the way for the sale of newspapers just outside Wrigley Field, he continued, it would not change his ruling.

“Assuming the adjacent-sidewalks ordinance is a restriction on speech and not merely a regulation of conduct, it does not draw any distinctions based on the meaning of speech, the topic discussed or any message expressed,” Alonso wrote. “The newspaper exemption distinguishes between forms of publications, not their content.”

The case is Left Field Media LLC v. City of Chicago, et al., No. 15 C 3115.