Posted on 05/20/2005 10:20:51 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
Every time I stand outside U.S. Cellular Field, I wonder. I look at the massive cement wall to the west, the rampart that supports the railroad tracks that hold the freight trains that rumble past, and I feel as though I am in West Berlin, circa 1980.
To the east there is the equivalent of a gigantic moat, the sunken Dan Ryan Expressway, a concrete trench I often have envisioned filled with water and alligators, an impenetrable obstacle protecting Jerry Reinsdorf and his troops from assault by, say, the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The south is remote, on the other side of the main entrance, a nest of parking lots and chain-link fencing.
It is to the north I turn.
And this is what I wonder.
What if the blank expanse of parking lots framed between the forbidding railroad, expressway and the Cell itself could be turned into something ... fun?
What if there were restaurants and shops and bars and patches of green with trees and sidewalks and promenades right on up to Armour Square Park?
Where would the current parking lot go?
I don't know.
Maybe you build a bigger parking garage next to the arena. Maybe you don't worry about it at all, Cub-style.
But would such a real-estate development end the disparity between the massive Cub Nation and the feisty Sox Platoon?
As the White Sox fans with tickets come north this weekend for the crosstown rivalry at Clark and Addison, I wonder if they will notice the neighborhood more than anything.
No doubt Sox have better park
The place known as Wrigleyville is basically an amusement park with a decrepit, ivy-laced ballfield in the center.
The irony Sox fans should be aware of is that as far as comfort goes, the eternally sold-out Wrigley Field scores maybe a 2 on a 10-point scale, while U.S. Cellular gets about a 7.
It's not about the American League or the National League.
It's not ultimately about the success of either club, since neither has won a World Series in a combined 183 years.
No, the second-class status of the Sox is about subtleties such as Tuscany Restaurant being a foul ball from Wrigley's north end, and Bernie's being a mere stagger away, and the Cubby Bear and Murphy's and Gingerman Tavern and on and on.
And it's about the closest Sox haunt, Jimbo's, being a scary night-time walk past that massive parking lot.
It is also about demographics of neighborhoods, publicity and ownership, with Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf still being perceived as a New York carpetbagger nearly a quarter-century after he bought the team, and Tribune Co. chairman, president and CEO Dennis FitzSimons being perceived as ...
Hmm, who the heck is Dennis FitzSimons?
Indeed, the corporate stewardship of the Cubs makes the club a sort of blob with no discernible head, so that punching the outfit means going after lower workers such as Neifi Perez, Dusty Baker, Jim Hendry and even team president Andy McPhail, when the real bosses are somewhere in an oak-paneled boardroom, moving monopoly-style holdings about.
Since the intracity series began in 1997, the Cubs have won 20 games and the Sox 22.
It is likely that if the clubs play long enough, each will average a 50 percent winning margin.
That's baseball.
What's more notable about these series is the disparity in the fan base and enthusiasm for each team. Call it the sizzle.
If the Cubs sweep the first-place Sox, the South Side team will lose luster.
However, if the Sox sweep the sub-.500 Cubs, it won't matter a pea to the multitudinous Cub nuts.
Party at Sluggers!
The stars of the '05 Cubs-Sox edition are not players, oddly, but managers.
Ozzie Guillen and Dusty Baker have more personality and history than any of the guys such as Greg Maddux or Derrek Lee or John Garland or Mark Buehrle (the latter two won't even be pitching this weekend), and they will be the ones who could get the crowd roaring.
Who knows, before the weekend is through, home-field guy Baker could be roundly booed, and the visiting Guillen could get many cheers.
Sox and Cubs are no Marlins
Underlying this event is the dark lining that every Sox and Cubs fan senses but barely can acknowledge: Both teams are losers.
Lord, the Florida Marlins have won two World Series in the last decade.
This makes the Cubs-Sox rivalry more of a brotherhood, no matter how contentious the participants.
The fascinating thing to me is the view from the weekend-vacant U.S. Cellular Field.
Could scenery and food and drink ever turn the Sox into the Cubs? I wonder.
CHICAGOLAND PING
Agreed. Everything Telander is talking about was already there, and was destroyed when they built the new park. The Two Jerries have sucked pretty much everything out of what was the character (good and bad) of a Sox game, and made it into a generic Sox-Mart. It's doubly sad because the team itself has been genuinely entertaining much of the time.
It is and always shall be comisky park, no matter what the city calls it.
Are you aware that there are more corruption investigations of the daley administration than any other in the country, including New Fallujah?
Go White Sox!
Just another thing for White Sox fans to complain about. It's no wonder Cubs fans can't stand you guys...
White Sox fans of the past: humorist Jean Shepherd and blues great Muddy Waters.
I have been to both Comiskey (new) and Wrigley. Comiskey is modern but seemed to lack the charm of a Wrigley or a Fenway.
(Been there a couple times, upper deck--saw my Red Sox,
with Pedro Martinez, beat the pale hose). Wrigley reminded me of Fenway, complete with horse-trough urinals in the men's room (and one guy throwing up in one). The last time I was there, then-Cub Sammy Sooser, er, Sosa, hit 3 HRs in the game.
"Dying Cub Fan's Last Request"--Steve Goodman. ("give me a doubleheader funeral on a bright sunny winter day--no lights. Have the organist play the National Anthem--then a little na na na na ,hey hey, GOODBYE...have Keith Moreland drop a routine fly...The dying man's friends told him to
cut it out. They say, 'Don't cry, we'll meet by and by.
In the heavenly Hall of Fame. I've got season tickets to watch the 'angels' now...but you the living, you're stuck with the Cubs. So it's me that feels sorry for you."
oops, HE said "Don't cry"...
GO GO WHITE SOX !!
My old neighborhood. Grew up there. Kenmore and Grace.
I especially like the personalized food and beverage service in the Club Level at the Cell. Open a tab on your credit card, order sandwiches off a menu, drinks lots of beer, eat a ton of peanuts -- and get one bill at the end of the game, Sure beats fumbling for change every time you get thirsty.
Whaddya mean "you guys" ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/~chitownchief/
Good guys and girls wear black! (I bleed black, but may not be good).
We tailgate at Comiskey, and have a great time with the barbeques, coolers, neighbors. The ballpark is big and very clean, and the hotdogs are fresh.
Too crowded and trendy at Wrigley.
Do they still have the ball dispenser that comes up out of the ground behind home plate in the new Comiskey Park or whatever they call it? When I was a kid, I was always fascinated by that!
Why are you blaming Daley for the change of the name of Comiskey Park? That was Reinsdorf's deal, not Daley's.
Ha, yeah. There's plenty of other stuff that can be rightly pinned on Daley.
Yes, and Sen. Peter Fitzgerald's legacy is closing in on that. But Daley doesn't wear the jacket for this one.
Sorry, that wasn't directed specifically at you, just at all Sox fans.
BTW don't you get tried of the chicago media giving daley a passw whether it is millennium park miegs or the runways at ohare.
If it was pubbie mayor it would be front page stuff all the time.
Chicago press is such lapdogs that when he takes time them nasty they think its a bone and roll over and wait for their stomachs to be patted.
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