MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[Sodboy13]

29 minutes ago, infrared41 said:

 

 

All the different uniforms they've had.

 

 

It is downright bonkers how they went from being a team that overhauled its uniforms every 3-5 seasons to one that has basically worn the same ones (excepting a few notable downgrades to the road set) for 33 years as of next month.

[Sport]

47 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said:

It is downright bonkers how they went from being a team that overhauled its uniforms every 3-5 seasons to one that has basically worn the same ones (excepting a few notable downgrades to the road set) for 33 years as of next month.

 

That they stopped wearing these pants is tragic. 

 

 

 

WHY

[LMU]

That and them replacing the sock patch with another SOX monogram.

[leopard88]

2 hours ago, infrared41 said:

 

I thought it was pretty solid. These days, it would probably sweep the Oscars - which says more about the current quality of movies than it does about the quality of About Last Night.

 

It would stand out just for not being about superheroes and/or including craptons of CGI . . . and the pre-breast enlargement shots of Demi Moore are nice (not that the after is bad).

[DCarp1231]

RE: White Sox in film

 

The Break-Up (2006)

[Sodboy13]

- The Stratton Story

- Eight Men Out

- Field of Dreams

 

Any others? Glimpse of the field in My Best Friend's Wedding?

[LMU]

Major League 2

 

[The_Admiral]

9 hours ago, RyanMcD29 said:

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.

 

I think of the Sox fanbase as primarily black, Irish, Jewish, and Hispanic. There are Jewish Cubs fans, but the Sox fans tend to be more like Basketball Jews. (This is not coterminous with religion/ethnicity. Chuck Klosterman is a gentile who is still a Basketball Jew.)

[TalktoChuck]

6 hours ago, Dilbert said:

Then there is this national treasure

 

The true star of that movie was a Met, though.

 

[B-Rich]

On 8/22/2023 at 8:03 PM, 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. 

 

On 8/22/2023 at 6:30 PM, pmoehrin said:

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.

It may be my age, but I disagree with pmoehrin's thesis, at least in terms of  NATIONAL popularity, which ties in to infrared's point. It happened nationwide much earlier than that, I'd say in the  early/mid 80s.

 

The main issue was the explosion of cable TV in the late 70s and early 1980s, and WGN (and Cubs games) being on cable nationwide. Cubs fandom  then popped up nationwide,  such as a group in New Orleans who hung out and caught WGN Cubs games at the Milan Lounge uptown, and even including casual fans like my teenage kid sister,  who didn't even know that Chicago had another baseball team (and certainly couldn't have named them) but as a Madonna-era fashion thing bought a Cubs jersey not only based on watching WGN and Harry Caray singing "Take me Out to the Ballgame", but also because she saw Richard Pryor wearing one in "Brewster's Millions" in 1985:

[FiddySicks]

On 8/22/2023 at 11:08 AM, 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?

Comiskey was somewhere in between old Yankee Stadium (a festering toilet by the end) and the Oakland Coliseum (second most dilapidated stadium of all time just a smidge behind Aloha Syadium in Hawaii) by the end, so I doubt it. 
 

 

The White Sox situation feels sort of like an alternative timeline A’s situation. Two AL teams that basically gave their market away to the NL team, which was also poorly run, and it boosted the profiles of both of those NL teams to the point that there probably isn’t any coming back from it. White Sox situation initially feels worse because they actually got a new park, but I’m pretty sure had the A’s erected some bull:censored: little yard right before the “ballpark renaissance” in, like, Emeryville or Vallejo or wherever, they’d probably have all of the same issues the Sox do. 

[Walk-Off]

Steering this thread back on topic ... especially with regard to an MLB franchise whose ownership, unlike that of the White Sox, is actually making an active and public pursuit of a relocation right now ... Raj Mathai of the Bay Area's NBC-owned-and-operated television station scored one of the least likely and most surprising feats that any journalist can garner these days: an interview with John Fisher.

 

Here is the transcript.

 

[Cujo]

3 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Comiskey was somewhere in between old Yankee Stadium (a festering toilet by the end) and the Oakland Coliseum

 

So what you're saying is it could still be played in today. 

[spartacat_12]

Shameless had a few nods to the Sox, which makes sense considering South Side pride was a main source of identity for a lot of the characters. Although I'm pretty sure the cast sang Take Me Out to the Ballgame at Wrigley at some point.

 

[OnWis97]

Anecdotally, a friend of mine is a Cubs fan because in the 1980s their games were so frequently day games that he'd watch with some frequency while babysitting his siblings in the summer. Twins games were not on during the day as much and between late starts on the west coast and even home games ending past bed time, he just attached himself to the Cubs. I'm sure he's not unique nationwide. On cable (which my parents would not get) in Minnesota (and I think much of the Country) TBS was also showing Braves games. And while they became beloved in the early 1990s, TBS didn't do much for them in the 1980s. Sure, part of it was because they kind of stunk, but they also didn't have as many day games as the Cubs (who stunk at times but won a couple of division titles in the 1980s). Given what happened starting in 1991, it's weird to think that in the 1980s the Braves were one of the least notable franchises in MLB (Maybe I would not see it that way if I was old enough to remember 715).

 

To what degree that helped bring the Sox to "un-favored sibling" I am not sure. I think Wrigley Field was always going to make that happen.

If MLB didn't exist and a new 30-team baseball league was going to be developed, I don't think anyone outside of New York and maybe LA/burbs would get multiple teams. The Cubs and Sox situation is kind of lingering from the the AL and NL were competing leagues. I hope it works out on the Southside, though. It would be nice for a city/region that size to have an MLB option with attainable tickets. (based on my 2007 experience, the Bay Area seems to be losing that...)

[Sodboy13]

2 hours ago, OnWis97 said:

TBS didn't do much for them in the 1980s. Sure, part of it was because they kind of stunk, but they also didn't have as many day games as the Cubs (who stunk at times but won a couple of division titles in the 1980s). 

 

I hadn't thought about this until right now, but up until 1993, MLB had that nonsensical alignment that put the Braves in the AL West. So all summer long, the kids are at home watching the Cubs at 2:20 ET, and the Braves are on another trip through California starting at 10:05 ET.

[WillLanigan]

21 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said:

up until 1993, MLB had that nonsensical alignment that put the Braves in the AL West

It was so stupid.  The Braves and the Reds were both in the West, because the Cubs and Cardinals got their way in being put in the East.  Also, the White Sox were in the West, while the Brewers were in the East.  And that's not even mentioning the NFL, with Dallas and Arizona in the East, and New Orleans and Atlanta in the West.

[Digby]

How did The Bear end up with its baseball team fandom being Boston, for some reason? Was that a plot point I missed in a show that otherwise written to not exist without Chicago as a main character?

[Digby]

On 2023-08-22 at 4:37 PM, Cujo said:

 

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.

 

By media market size, Nashville is barely 20% the size of Chicago, so it's not like perfect Cubs/Sox equilibrium or anything near it is even necessary to stay viable.

[Cujo]

53 minutes ago, Digby said:

By media market size, Nashville is barely 20% the size of Chicago, so it's not like perfect Cubs/Sox equilibrium or anything near it is even necessary to stay viable.

 

Which is better for the White Sox, or any franchise for that matter? To play second fiddle to one of MLB's biggest brands in a large metropolis -or- play in a market that gives them an entire city, state, region to themselves?

 

Feels like a push, but then factor in that Nashville's going to get that new stadium which Chicago probably isn't.