NHL Anti-Thread: Bad Business Decision Aggregator

[IceCap]

A second team in Toronto was never going to work, anyways. If Toronto were to have a second team, you'd have an NHL version of the Clippers. Toronto isn't a hockey market, it's a Leafs market.

I don't like that comparison.

Don't like it all you want, it's accurate. The Clippers don't represent a portion of the LA metro area the Lakers neglect. They play in the same arena, they try to appeal to the same core the Lakers do. Much like a second NHL team in Toronto would. There's no real division in Toronto for a second team to exploit, much like how the Clippers fail to exploit the LA-proper and OC division that exists within the LA metro market.

The White Sox and Cubs actually appeal to two distinct sections of Chicago. Much like how the Yankees and Mets appeal to different parts of New York City. That's what you've got to do to make it as a two team market. A second Toronto team just can't pull that off.

[NJTank]

A second team in the TO market would be better off in Hamilton so it can be in the big market but have its own indentity ala Anaheim.

[TheOldRoman]

How about an NHL version of the White Sox?

No.

The White Sox and Cubs actually appeal to two distinct sections of Chicago.

^This. Also, the White Sox and Cubs have coexisted in the city for 113 years. The Sox had a few ownership scares and "build me a new stadium or I'm leaving" moments, but they have never lacked fan support to the point where they'd have to move. And the situations aren't even comparable. The Lakers were an established, landmark franchise for the NBA, winning bunched of titles when the Clippers came in and said "Hey you guys, go Lakers! But if you can't get tickets to the Forum, come see the NBA stars at a discount here!" The Cubs are certainly a popular team now, but they are not at the level of the Lakers in LA, and the Sox didn't come to the city in the middle of the Cubs being a perenial winner (LOL). Besides, the whole "Chicago is and has always been a Cubs town" thing is a misnomer. Up until 1984, the more popular team was the one who was winning. And the Cubs' bumbling ways are well noted, but the White Sox have made several colossal mistakes that ceded the market to the Cubs and then refused to challenge to take it back.

I would say the situation would be similar to Chicago getting a second NFL team, but I don't think that is even the case. Chicago is ridiculously saturated for the Bears, with the only non-Bears fans being small bunches of Packers douchecanoes who were likely descendants of Cardinals fans that vowed to never root for the Bears after Halas forced the team out. Anyway, Chicago is crazy about the Bears, but with the nature of the NFL, I think it could care about a second team short-term. Everybody would want to see the shiny new toy, and if the Bears were bad, Chicago2 would be able to steal some market temporarily. However, the Bears are too entrenched, and whenever they got good again, that market would evaporate. Still, with teams only playing once a week and all, Chicago2 would have a better chance to succeed as an alternative team than a GTA hockey team.

[BBTV]

I always wondered why the Cubs seemed to be the team that most people both locally and nationally had a romantic infatuation with as opposed to the White Sox. Up until 1990 or 91, they both had really old stadiums (though I don't know if Comisky had the same kind of appeal that Wrigley did / does), were really old teams, and were both perennial losers. It just seemed like the Cubs were always on NBC or CBS, always in the movies (Ferris Buhler for example), and Wrigley was always the stadium that everyone wanted to go see. Is it just that the White Sox play in a less-attractive / rougher part of the city? Is it that the Cubs have maintained a consistent identity while the White Sox have changed their colors and uniforms up seemingly hundreds of times?

[TheOldRoman]

First off, on Ferris Buehler. Director John Hughes was actually a diehard Sox fan. He wanted to have that scene at Comiskey, but the Sox weren't at home during the days they had set to film that scene. Instead of keeping the crew around another few days to just to get shots at Comiskey, he decided to use Wrigley. That scene helped immortalize the park and added to the growing sunshine-and-rainbows aura that was started the year before when Ryne Sandberg became a superstar, the Cubs won the division, and Harry Caray became a national icon broadcasting the games on WGN.

I am not old enough to speak definitively on Comiskey vs. Wrigley, but I can say that Wrigley wasn't always the crowned jewel it is now. The Cubs had tried a few times to get a new park, and Wrigley stands today only because they failed. In the late '70s and early '80s, they closed the upperdeck when the Cardinals weren't in town. Lakeview was a shady area at the time, as well. Gentrification happened, the Cubs got kinda good, Harry came, it was pretty much everything happening at once to turn Wrigleyville into the place to be. Then-owners WGN did a masterful job of marketing the park above the team, turning it into a place to go and be seen. It's a tourist destination even for people who aren't baseball fans. Before this wave, Wrigley was just another park and their attendance was tied to their record, like every other team. The Sox owned the city in the '50s, and things went in cycles.

One of the biggest things helping the Cubs is that they have had their games on WGN TV and radio for a real long time. In the mid '80s, WGNTV became a superstation and turned them into a national brand with loveable drunken uncle Harry Caray calling their games nationwide. I also think it helped that, unlike the TBS-showcased Braves, the Cubs played their home games during the day, when kids were home and there was nothing else to watch on TV. WGN radio was a huge part, too, as it has a huge broadcast radius. It helped turn the top 2/3 of Illinois and nearly all of Iowa into Cubs fans.

Meanwhile, the Sox had plenty of incompetent ownership groups. They bounced around from radio stations and TV stations. For a while, they didn't show home games. In the '70s, they aired games on an amateurish Channel 44, of which NOBODY received a clear signal. Then, the year before they won the division in 1983, they pulled their games from WGNTV, instead creating their own cable network (which was brilliant in hindsight, but 20 years before its time). The network was basically PPV at that time, as you had to have a special box from the cable company to get it. The night the Sox beat Seattle to win the division, an estimated 15,000 people in Chicagoland saw it on TV. The next year, the Cubs won the division and it was broadcasted across the nation.

Also, Harry Caray, having left the Cardinals after boning Busch's wife, spent several years on the south side and became an icon. Harry had disagreements with the new Reinsdorf/Einhorn ownership group, and the final straw to him was when he was informed the team was taking its games to PPV. He took less money to go to the Cubs, where he would have a much larger audience. His 7th inning stretch routine had started in Comiskey, when Bill Veeck put a microphone into the booth unbeknownst to Harry, thinking that if fans heard his terrible singing, they would sing along. He obviously took that with him to Wrigley, and it added to his charm.

The Sox were hurt in the '70s by bad teams, penniless owners threatening to move the team, and racial conflicts which gave the neighborhood a bad aura. After the Sox were sold to the Reinsdorf group, they had money and the teams got better, but the "aura" remained. This was largely due the the fact that the flames of subtle racism were fanned by the Chicago media. They wrote about how dreary, seedy and dangerous the southside was, in comparison to the happy fun place where white people in polo shirts go to watch America's pasttime. Today, Bridgeport has a considerably lower crime rate than Lakeview, but the "dangerous neighborhood" aura persists, due to perpetuation by the media and the fact that some black people live within walking distance. While Wrigleyville became a happening area, Bridgeport never went through that. There were ghettos nearby, but those are gone. To the north of the park is lots of two-flats which have stayed in the same families for years. North of that is Chinatown, which is never going to be hip. Mixed-income housing has been built where ghettos stood, and some million+ dollar homes went up, but the neighborhood isn't going to draw people other than for baseball games.

The most glaring error over the last two decades was the building of New Comiskey. The Sox were actually pitched the park that would become Camden Yards, but thought it was unncessarily orante and expensive. They opted to go with something that was similar to Kaufmann and other recent parks. It was a marvel in its first year. Then Camden Yards opened the next year, putting it to shame and leading a wave of retro parks. It was compounded by the fact that Comiskey II was an ugly shade of blue. Not only was it a cold, non-organic color, but every single empty seat stuck out like a sore thumb, which didn't look good on TV. After the new park smell wore off, the media ran with stories of the "dangerous" neighborhood (tales of bullet holes in seats) and spoke about the upper deck as if it was pitched at a 70 degree angle, despite the fact that it was no steeper than the upperdeck in Jacobs Field or Coors Field. The Sox had arguably the best team in baseball when the strike came in 1994. When the players came back in 1995, the team sucked and many fans blamed Reinsdorf, who was instrumental among hardline owners. The park has been renovated, and it was a night-and-day transformation. It's a great place to watch a game, but still, it will never be Camden Yards. Some jackasses pouted to themselves and boycotted the Sox even when they won the series in 2005, and others who came back into the fold that year again boycotted management afterwards when the team didn't go back-to-back. Reinsdorf has done a lot of good, but also a lot of bad things as an owner. Still, I think a lot of the animosity towards Reinsdorf is rooted in anti-semitism.

Other than that, Reisndorf hs more or less ran the team like a mom-and-pop business. Not just in terms of spending, because he has spent money when the fans came, and even these past few years when the fans didn't come. The team is just run as a small-time business. Whereas Arte Moreno was extremely proactive, coming into LA and taking on the Dodgers (a much more unwinnable situation), Sox ownership has been more content to say "Hey, here's an AL team for you guys who want to see the Yankees." The media puts out the image of the antiseptic, dangerous park and brutish fans who will smash whiskey bottles over your kid's head, and ownership has done nothing to combat that. They are content knowing they will get die-hards every year, while pulling in bigger crowds when the team is good.

Also, I think a part of it is that the Sox didn't have a heated rivalry with a nearby team. The Cubs where hated rivals with the NL's top franchise, the Cardinals. The Sox didn't have a natural rival until the Brewers came along, but that rivalry never built up that much because the Brewers were a newer franchise and the teams weren't good at the same time. When the Sox were really good in the '50s and early '60s, their key rival was the Yankees. Duh, get in line to hate them. The Sox were nothing to the Yankees. I think having a huge rivalry like that keeps the team at least somewhat relevant. "Throw the records out" and all that crap. The Cubs blew in the '70s, but I'm sure it was still a big deal when they played the Cards.

In summary, the Cubs, despite having incompetent baseball people, had really good marketing people. They had good fortune with the team getting competitive at the right time and WGNTV going national, along with day baseball and Harry Caray. The Sox had ownership that was at times outwardly hostile to the fanbase and didn't really care to create an image for itself.

[The_Admiral]

tl;dr, John McDonough is an evil genius. Witness him leaving the Cubs to turn the Blackhawks into a marketing behemoth while the Cubs run commercials with some tattooed simpleton mumbling "my favoritest thing is heckle the pitchers! they sure know when I'm there!"

Still, I think a lot of the animosity towards Reinsdorf is rooted in anti-semitism.

This is a pretty dangerous accusation to throw out. I mean, he's done a lot of bad things, and the grievances with expensive tickets, cheapness, dangerous public "investments," misguided loyalty, and crappy TV deals have all been similarly lodged against Chicago's other owners, the rest of whom are gentiles.

[cmm]

A second team in the TO market would be better off in Hamilton so it can be in the big market but have its own indentity ala Anaheim.

Stupid question: Is Toronto called TO because it's TOronto or because it's Toronto, Ontario?

[Magnus]

A second team in the TO market would be better off in Hamilton so it can be in the big market but have its own indentity ala Anaheim.

Stupid question: Is Toronto called TO because it's TOronto or because it's Toronto, Ontario?

Second one. (Toronto. Ontario.)

[TheOldRoman]

EDIT: Double post

[TheOldRoman]

tl;dr, John McDonough is an evil genius. Witness him leaving the Cubs to turn the Blackhawks into a marketing behemoth while the Cubs run commercials with some tattooed simpleton mumbling "my favoritest thing is heckle the pitchers! they sure know when I'm there!"

I think there's more to my post than that. Like I said, the Cubs did a lot right, while the Sox make blunder after blunder. Anyway, I laughed when I heard those new Cub commercials on the radio. That's the type of crap the Sox have been known to put out.

This is a pretty dangerous accusation to throw out. I mean, he's done a lot of bad things, and the grievances with expensive tickets, cheapness, dangerous public "investments," misguided loyalty, and crappy TV deals have all been similarly lodged against Chicago's other owners, the rest of whom are gentiles.

It is, and I have nothing to back that up, but it's just a feeling I get talking to other Sox and/or Bulls fans. For one, Reinsdorf is the chairman, but he owns less than 5% of the team and speaks for the board of trustees. It's not like he is personally hoarding money. He could be misguided, but his teams have spent money when the fans came out and when they had a chance to win. Some jackasses were going nuts about the Bulls not putting themselves into cap hell by loading up and paying luxury tax in a year Rose was out, but whatever. The Bulls were raking in money instead of giving max salary to random players in the Tim Floyd era, but no amount of money to marginal free agents was going to turn that dumpster fire around. I'm not holding that against them. If the team goes cheap the next few years, criticism will be legitimate, but I'm not going to say the team should pay the luxury tax every year regardless of their chances of winning or the quality of players available.

There isn't much defending things Reinsdorf did running the Sox from 1981-2003, but since then the team has increased its payroll to its expected market position, regardless of attendance. I know the Bears have a reputation for being cheap going back to Halas, and it's pretty silly in the age of the salary cap. Still, I don't see anything close to the level of hatred for any other owners as I do Reinsdorf. The "money grubbing" and "backstabber" comments seem to come out among fans when talking about him. The fact that this level of hatred has come for ownership which brought Chicago 7 championships is even more damning. Reinsdorf has made more than his fair share of mistakes, but he has obvious successes. Also, he has been extremely charitible in his time in Chicago, and that's not really spoken of. At this point, I would say his biggest fault is his loyalty, including when the loyalty hurts the bottom line.

[Gothamite]

I think there's more to my post than that. Like I said, the Cubs did a lot right, while the Sox make blunder after blunder.

I think your lengthy analysis is astute. The Cubs have carefully groomed their mystique, while the Sox have ham-handedly squandered whatever claim they might have had. Add to that the bandwagon aspect, including among the press, and the luck of timing, and you've got two franchises with in very different positions.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened had not torn down Comiskey. Sure, it was a dump, but so is Wrigley. Fenway is now sacred ground, but I remember a time when the Red Sox were desperate to torch the place, even trotting out Ted Williams In a wheelchair to make a public pitch for a new stadium. What would the Red Sox mystique be now without that place? The White Sox were just lucky/unlucky enough to have been able to go through with it.

And then a further hypothetical - having made the decision to build a new park, what if they hadn't turned down the plans that became Camden Yards? The Sox didn't have the vision to see what was around the corner when it was offered to them, so they built a stadium that was functionally outdated almost from the day it opened. There were years when the Orioles weren't worth seeing but the ballpark continued to resonate (and draw) - that could give been the White Sox.

[Sodboy13]

Apparently one of the plans was to put the new stadium in Armour Square park, north of the old park. The stadium would have faced northeast, giving it the Chicago skyline as a backdrop. The park would have been "old-time quirky" by necessity, due to the smaller parcel of land it would be built on.

Instead, they built south of 35th, oriented the ballpark so you looked out and saw the Robert Taylor Homes (until they got torn down in '05), and erected a ballmall. Not to fault utilitarian parks; I enjoy Miller Park quite a bit. But the front-office mismanagement, time and again, has soured the experience at the Cell even as the park's been vastly upgraded. My family and I had such a lousy experience there last year, we decided we'll never go back, short of being given free tickets.

[The_Admiral]

I liked the symmetrical layout of Comiskey better than the neo-retro contrivance with the FUNdamentals fan deck in left. Is this in any way a defensible stance or am I just going to be accused of circumlocutional Sox-hating?

So much more balanced this way, though I'll give you that blue was an odd choice (allegedly a tribute to the Brooklyn Dodgers).

[Gothamite]

The Dodgers? Never heard that one.

Pretty sure Armour Square Park was a fan concept only, never seriously considered by anyone involved in the project.

[The_Admiral]

http://whitesoxinteractive.com/FixComiskey/Bess/Conversation1.htm

It seems like a little more than a fan concept, though I can't tell how serious it got.

Not a fan of <300 down the lines and some of the weird angles to the seating.

[Sodboy13]

Ah, gotcha.

The symmetry was fine. The bullpen caverns in the outfield and the openness of the upper deck (which contributed a whole lot to that "holy hell this is high and steep" feeling, I think) were not.

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, the upper deck probably did have to be adjusted.

This phase of the renovation seems best. Should have kept at this point, converted the billboards to television screens, and put something other than green vines in the batter's eye, which is a little too north side. Grey seats instead of dark green would have been good, too, maybe silver scaffolding in the outfield instead of black or white.

[CubsFanBudMan]

I liked the symmetrical layout of Comiskey better than the neo-retro contrivance with the FUNdamentals fan deck in left. Is this in any way a defensible stance or am I just going to be accused of circumlocutional Sox-hating?

So much more balanced this way, though I'll give you that blue was an odd choice (allegedly a tribute to the Brooklyn Dodgers).

See, I always thought Comiskey II as pictured above was inspired by Yankee Stadium. Throw in the pinstripes and swap black for navy...

Just me?

Most of the White Sox history according to The Old Roman post seems accurate enough, but I'll tell anyone who listens that Sox Park is in a fine location. I'm not sure there was the intentional media bias for the Cubs that he suggests, although I know many Sox fans feel this way. Some even count words in the paper. From what I know of the Trib, they went out of their way to do the opposite.

And as admiral said, don't sell McDonough short. The Cubs-to-Blackhawks shift was real. Had he moved in 2005 or 2006 to the Sox, the Cell might be the place to be. The Blackhawks were all over the baseball stadiums that first summer and it paid off even before the first win. The Sox could have capitalized but didn't.

As rare as a World Series appearance is around here, let alone a title, I don't see how.

[The_Admiral]

There was idle speculation that McDonough could ascend to NHL commissioner when the Count finally goes away. I don't think that's likely; he doesn't have the requisite legal background. I do, however, think he could end up in the COO role that John Collins (the guy who pushed for the Winter Classic) has. He's absurdly good at what he does, and the NHL could do well to have him in a leadership position for the whole league. Or his hucksterism only works in Chicago and he could fail on a national level. I just wouldn't be surprised to see it happen, is all.

[DarkJourney]

I think the San Jose Sharks should relocate to the admiral's backyard.