Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[Sodboy13]

The funniest thing about Jerry casually planting this "gosh it'd be a shame to leave but" story in Crain's is not only that it drops in this back-alley abortion of a season, but comes in a stretch where the Sox have lost three of four and given up more than ten runs in each of the losses. Add that on to everything over the last few years, and the majority of the past seventeen. Then consider that you don't have to be that old to be old enough to remember the one-two punch of Jerry at the forefront of the strike, gleefully scrapping the best season of baseball the team had played in 35 years, combined with the White Flag trade not long after. Any Sox fan who experiences the team on any level above an abstract concept should be volunteering the services of a guy they know who can get Reinsdorf a pretty sweet deal on moving trucks.

[Dilbert]

I get that the Sox have a history in Chicago and on the South Side, but no matter how bad the Cubs have been , the Sox have always played second fiddle to the Cubs in Chicago. From a business standpoint, I could understand Jerry and the Sox wanting a market for themselves. From a historic and nostalgic standpoint the Sox belong in Chicago and belong on the South Side.  I could honestly go either way here.

[LMU]

A big issue is that New Comiskey/Guaranteed Rate pretty much opened immediately obsolete due to the Camden Yards renaissance and that stadium has been repeatedly tweaked for thirty years just to cling to being a top 25 ballpark.  So, I could see why there's interest in cutting bait at this point.

[DustDevil61]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe if the Brewers do bolt for Nashville, we could wind up with the Milwaukee White Sox after all. 

[Cujo]

Going back 35 years... Would the White Sox have been better off/could they have renovated Old Comiskey into a landmark-type relic, ala Fenway or Wrigley?

[Sodboy13]

21 minutes ago, Cujo said:

Going back 35 years... Would the White Sox have been better off/could they have renovated Old Comiskey into a landmark-type relic, ala Fenway or Wrigley?

 

They would have because there was a proposal to put more of an old-fashioned stadium into a smaller space to the north of Old Comiskey, with the view from behind home plate showcasing the Chicago skyline, and a proto-"ballpark village" around it with neighborhood businesses attempting to create something a bit like what Wrigleyville was becoming at the time.

 

They absolutely could not do that, though, because Jerry Reinsdorf more or less plopped his failed proposal for a ballpark in Addison onto Bridgeport instead, and wanted his new park surrounded by nothing but parking lots to ensure that every dime that got spent in the immediate area was being spent inside the gates of that stadium.

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, Dilbert said:

I get that the Sox have a history in Chicago and on the South Side, but no matter how bad the Cubs have been , the Sox have always played second fiddle to the Cubs in Chicago. From a business standpoint, I could understand Jerry and the Sox wanting a market for themselves. From a historic and nostalgic standpoint the Sox belong in Chicago and belong on the South Side.  I could honestly go either way here.

There's no either way. The Sox have been here for nearly 125 years and they still have one of the best sweetheart stadium deals any team has.

 

14 minutes ago, Cujo said:

Going back 35 years... Would the White Sox have been better off/could they have renovated Old Comiskey into a landmark-type relic, ala Fenway or Wrigley?

I'm not entirely sure, but I would lean toward no. I guess the question is "when would they have made that decision?" Bill Veeck was pretty much broke, and Reinsdorf and Einhorn intentionally let the building rot out to build their case for a publicly funded replacement (among others, the Bucks would later do this with the Bradley Center), so it was in pretty poor shape. I think by the time Illinois stopped time to approve the new Comiskey, the old Comiskey was too far gone to save anyway. 

 

But let's say for the sake of argument that Reinsdorf didn't neglect the building. Even then, I'm not sure embracing Comiskey was ever in the cards. Everything about Reinsdorf/Einhorn's early ownership of the team was about trying to gentrify the team, from getting rid of Harry and Jimmy's broadcast to putting the games on pay TV to not letting a random dude dressed as a clown mill around the joint as an unofficial self-proclaimed mascot. (It wasn't Gacy.) And getting off 35th Street was the biggest part of that. They didn't want to be in the city anymore and designed New Comiskey to fit suburban sensibilities. Then that plan fell through and they built their suburban stadium on 35th anyway. But it's hard to lay out an alternate history where the Sox leaned into Old Comiskey's mystique. Compared with Wrigley and Fenway, I'm not sure it ever really had it.

 

[Cujo]

4 hours ago, Dilbert said:

From a business standpoint, I could understand Jerry and the Sox wanting a market for themselves. 

 

The White Sox would be a much bigger deal in city of Nashville than they could ever be as "little brother" in Chicago. I don't even think a Jordan-esque dynasty could catapult the Sox over the Cubs in the longrun.

 

However, do I think the White Sox leave Chicago? Absolutely not. But business and popularity-wise, Nashville would be the right call. And fwiw, Nashville also keeps them in the AL Central, so they can continue their rivalries with Cleveland, Minnesota, etc.

[The_Admiral]

Then why double up on any media market? Move the Mets to Raleigh. Move the Angels to Salt Lake City. Only game in town, baby! What if Nashville just sucks for hosting and televising a Major League Baseball schedule, especially for a team that moved in from somewhere else like everyone else did?

[GDAWG]

 

[Sodboy13]

"Here's Brodie Brazil" was as far as I got and as far as I needed to in that video.

[pmoehrin]

4 hours ago, Cujo said:

Going back 35 years... Would the White Sox have been better off/could they have renovated Old Comiskey into a landmark-type relic, ala Fenway or Wrigley?

 

The baseball fan in me would love it if Comiskey, Tiger, and Old Yankee Stadium were all still standing, but I don't think that's the main issue with the White Sox. The main issue is their owner.

 

Before Reinsdorf took over the team, there wasn't much of a difference in terms of popularity between the Cubs and White Sox. The dynamic of the Cubs being the clear-cut #1 team in Chicago and the White Sox being the #2 doesn't start until the late 90s. The last year the White Sox outdrew the Cubs was 1994, and there were several years in the 90s and 80s when the Sox outdrew the Cubs for the year as well. But we're coming up on 30 years since that last happened. And what's been the only consistent during that time span? It's Jerry Reinsdorf owning the White Sox.

 

Do you know how I know Jerry Reinsdorf sucks as an owner? Because he makes the Cubs ownership group look good by comparison. His greatest accomplishment as a sports owner was lucking into Michael Jordan in the draft.

 

If he owned the Cubs, I have no doubt they would be playing in Rosemont right now, drawing around 20k a game, and probably doing the same fiddling with .500 act the White Sox have been doing for the past 30 years. Just competitive enough to maintain fan interest but not so good that you have to start paying big bucks for star players.

 

They've only gotten to the LCS round three times in the 40+ years Reinsdorf has owned the club and hasn't gotten that far in nearly 20 years. And that's because for the White Sox to make the playoffs in any given year, everything has to break just right for them because when it comes to spending money in free agency or making a big deadline deal, Reisndorf doesn't go for spit. They've only had one player (James Shields) have a season where they made at least $20 million a year. Do you know how many players the Milwaukee Brewers have had? Two.

 

And the fans know it because they've been watching this act play out for over 40 years now. What have the Bulls done since Jordan left? Aside from their little run when Derrick Rose was healthy, the answer is notta.

 

I feel for White Sox fans. They say only the good die young, and by my count, Reinsdorf is one of only four owners in MLB history to own a club for at least 40 years. The other three are Horace Stoneham, Tom Yawkey, and Phillip K. Wrigley. Between the four of them, it's over 170 years of ownership experience and two World Series rings.

[infrared41]

1 hour ago, pmoehrin said:

The dynamic of the Cubs being the clear-cut #1 team in Chicago and the White Sox being the #2 doesn't start until the late 90s.

 

It didn't hurt that every other movie in the 80s and early 90s was set in Chicago and the Cubs were in all of them. Rob Lowe (or something just like him) made being a Cubs fan look cool.

[The_Admiral]

That the Sox fanbase is as geographically limited as it is makes them admittedly a neat oddity of baseball. The only other team that that's the case for is the Islanders. (Topic for another day and another thread, but the Bears really punch below their weight as a national fanbase on both the "Chicago team" and "major-market NFL team" axes.)

 

Anyway, Jerry Reinsdorf just fired his adopted son and a Jewish guy (not an adopted son) from the top of the org chart, so crap, maybe he is cashing out.

 

 

 

[McCall]

9 hours ago, infrared41 said:

 

It didn't hurt that every other movie in the 80s and early 90s was set in Chicago and the Cubs were in all of them. Rob Lowe (or something just like him) made being a Cubs fan look cool.

John Hughes.

[BBTV]

10 hours ago, infrared41 said:

 

It didn't hurt that every other movie in the 80s and early 90s was set in Chicago and the Cubs were in all of them. Rob Lowe (or something just like him) made being a Cubs fan look cool.

[Brian in Boston]

2 hours ago, McCall said:

John Hughes.

“Heeeeey… batta, batta, batta, batta, sssss-wing batta! He can’t hit, he can’t hit, he can’t hit, he can’t hit, he can’t hit… sssss-wing batta!”

[Sodboy13]

2 hours ago, McCall said:

John Hughes.

 

It is here that I feel obligated to point out "Only The Lonely" is a forgotten little film that perfectly captures a certain slice of South Side Irish, down to the baked-in bigotry, the absurdist Catholic guilt tripping, and the ability to Know A Guy in seemingly any situation that arises within the city limits.

[Brian in Boston]

18 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said:

 

It is here that I feel obligated to point out "Only The Lonely" is a forgotten little film that perfectly captures a certain slice of South Side Irish, down to the baked-in bigotry, the absurdist Catholic guilt tripping, and the ability to Know A Guy in seemingly any situation that arises within the city limits.

Maureen O’Hara’s final  theatrical release. And, man… how I miss John Candy. Terrific cast overall, really: Ally Sheedy, Anthony Quinn, Kevin Dunn, Jim Belushi, Milo O’Shea, Bert Remsen.

[RyanMcD29]

9 hours ago, the admiral said:

That the Sox fanbase is as geographically limited as it is makes them admittedly a neat oddity of baseball. The only other team that that's the case for is the Islanders. (Topic for another day and another thread, but the Bears really punch below their weight as a national fanbase on both the "Chicago team" and "major-market NFL team" axes.)

Are the White Sox kind of like the Mets in terms of the geographic and demographic split we have in New York? So like the Mets fanbase is mainly Irish and Jewish or you're from Queens or some of Long Island if you're not in a majority Italian neighborhood (and unsurprisingly the two demographics has a lot of the old Brooklyn Dodger fanbase) while the Yankees pretty much have everyone and everywhere else. Then for the White Sox's case replace Jewish with Black and Queens with the Southside.