77 Hitmen

To make the playoffs? 2030 at the earliest even with the expanded wild card format. Ain't gonna happen next year for sure. Getz hasn't proven anything to me that he has what it takes to put together a winning team. Barring any huge scandal or the sudden passing of Jerry Reinsdorf, I figure he has the GM job locked up until at least until 2029. Until 2029, Jerry will be in full control. In the meantime, Ishbia's infusion of cash will be used to pay down the team's debts and shore up operational needs. He's not handing money to JR to land free agents and will not be involved in the day to day operations of this franchise.

It makes me wonder how many teams are that deep in debt. I believe it's been reported that the Sox have something like $200M in debt. I'm guessing they're not the only two teams with 9-figure debts. Covid was a huge, but one-off event. On the other hand, the collapse of the RSN money stream is having a huge impact on the economics in MLB. For example, the Cardinals old RSN deal with Fox Sports Midwest was for something like $1B before that network filed for bankruptcy.

but how many games up on Marcia and Jan?😉

They can go 37-3 from here on out to end the year at .500!

What is the future of Soldier Field if the Bears move to Arlington Heights? https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears-stadium/2025/08/15/soldier-field-future-chicago-bears-arlington-heights-stadium-brandon-johnson

I wonder what residents would think about 2 stadiums at the site...especially with a baseball stadium with 81 home dates. Of course, we don't know if the Ishbias would actually pay to have such a thing built there. I'm not sure how they're going to address pedestrian access at the south end of the site unless they at least lower the Metra tracks to below grade. The Red Line station at 15th and Clark is probably not necessary or worth the expense if they're only going to build a soccer stadium with 17 home dates and develop the rest of the property as residential since there are other L stops a few blocks away. But if the Sox and their additional 81 games decide to build there, it would be great to have a subway stop right at the site.

Burying Sunday Night Baseball on a streaming service that most people don't have. That would be such a Manfred move. And I realize that not everyone has ESPN, but until cord-cutting took off, a vast majority of households did.

Bring back Courtney Hawkins!

I don't think Sox fans from 1970, when the team lost a franchise record 106 games, could imagine in a million years that 55 years later, there'd actually be any hint of accolades for a front office that is in the process of giving us a 103-loss season and 3 years in a row of 100+ losses.

The 3 most recently posted threads on this forum all go back to the same thing - Chris Getz hasn't been very good at his jobs in the Sox organization. Wake me up when we have a new owner who hires people based on merit instead of loyalty. I'll set my alarm clock for 2029.

...oh and for all you Simpsons fans out there, I see that 3 of the players in this montage ended up on Mr. Burns's softball team: Strawberry, Mattingly, and Ozzie Smith. 🤣

Interesting. I'm only old enough to remember the booming ABC World News Tonight theme, which apparently started in 1978 and they still use a variant of it today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsVFZ0F8Gmc&t=7s

The Twins are no longer for sale by the Pohlad family. They are working on adding 2 new investors instead. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/45965947/twins-no-longer-sale-pohlad-family-eyes-new-investors

....and don't get me wrong, I'm not rooting for our stadium to be ranked so low and I'm not telling anyone they have to dislike the place. If someone thinks it's #21 (or even higher), more power to them and I'm not going to argue with anyone for liking our stadium and having a good time there. That being said, being 21st out of 28 isn't exactly something to brag about IMO. If the new owners say no to paying for a new stadium and end up signing a long-term lease at Rate Field, I will continue to enjoy my visits there and hope they make improvements to the park and the surrounding area. I just think it's a cold, hard reality that Rate Field is not very well regarded outside the rabid Sox fan base and I simply don't think it's because everyone else in the world is ill-informed. Since we're talking about sites that rank MLB ballparks. I found that this site gives very thorough reviews of all the ballparks. Here's what they think of Rate Field: https://ballparkratings.com/ballparks/u-s-cellular-field/ What are people's reaction to it? It's a rather positive write up and even he's surprised that it ends up #26 in his ranking system. This guy obviously has put a lot of thought into his analysis of all the MLB stadiums. I think the only thing he's way off the mark on is a complaint about the statues (huh?), though he still gives the park a high score for them.

I loved the ending music and slow motion montage at the end of TWIB. Some memorable players in this particular video: Tony Gwynn, Kirby Puckett, Ozzie Smith, Don Mattingly (before Mr. Burns had him shave his sideburns).

Chat GPT has been brainwashed by Cubs fans!

To each their own on other parks' aesthetics, of course. But that warehouse building at Petco is a real turn of the century historic landmark building that was already there. And the Padres have turned into a functional part of the stadium with party suites, a bar, and a team store. This doesn't strike me as phony quirkiness, but that's just my opinion. I Googled MLB ballpark rankings right now.....I don't think Sox fans are going to like the results. Almost all have the park very near the bottom of the 28 parks (excluding Oakland and Tampa Bay). I found only one so far that ranked it at 21, but that appears to be an outlier. It ranks Rate Field ahead of Truist Park.

One thing I remember about the 77 season was the homemade banners that fans would bring to games. It looked like some must have been on bed sheets or something. "Pitch at Risk to Richie Zisk", "Don't Gamble on Oscar", "Come on Spence, Over the Fence", "Send it Flyin' to the Ryan". Good times. I was a little kid at the time and it was a blast watching that team that year (until the last 6 weeks).

Do you have a link to any reviews that rank Rate Field middle of the pack or higher than say 24th? I haven't seen any and would be interested in reading/seeing them. Yes, I've seen it ranked higher than Angel Stadium, Chase Field, or maybe the Rogers Centre, but that isn't exactly great company and would still put them at 25th out of 29. Tropicana Field is always dead last now that Oakland is gone, but it's on its way out one way or another in a few years. I agree that I don't like the phony, gimmicky quirkiness. The hill and flagpole they used to have in play in Houston was pretty ridiculous IMO and I'm glad they removed it. I haven't been to every new ballpark, but at least the ones in Seattle, New York (Citi Field), SF, and SD didn't come off as phony to me. And most recent reviews that I've seen that rank Rate Field very near the bottom aren't taking cheap shots or making ignorant comments about the stadium either. Many actually say something to the effect that there's "nothing wrong with it" and point out some of its positives. But in the end, they conclude that the park is pretty boring and forgettable and that there's very little to do around the stadium.

This is absolutely yet another thing that makes Rate Field feel removed from its surroundings. You have to take an escalator or walk up a series of ramps just to get to the 100 level concourse and the BEST seats. Right off the bat, fans get the feeling of everything being high up and the park being "mall like". If you want to get to the 500 level, you need to take THREE escalators up. If you're entering at Gate 2 and have upper deck tickets in the 20th row, I hope you brought some good walking shoes and decent stamina. I see several examples have been posted about other ballparks where you can enter at street level. When I went to Nationals Park, we entered into the outfield concourse right from street level. At Petco Park, they have a freaking city square that's just beyond their OF concourse and is gated off as part of ticketed entry while a game is going on.

...and this rep's (Kam Buckner) district includes Soldier Field. Not a surprise that he's very opposed to the Bears leaving Soldier Field for Arlington Heights. That doesn't necessarily mean most of his colleagues in the General Assembly feel the same way.

Excellent news. I know it was imposed after the Ligue and another incident of a moron running onto the field, but bad upper deck and restrictive policy wasn't exactly helping the ballpark's image.

My username shows my total bias here, but there was just something electric about the 1977 team and Comiskey Park that year even though they faded badly in Aug and Sept and finished 3rd. I think that's why people remember that team so fondly as opposed to other 90-win teams that failed to make the playoffs. That is when the whole Na Na Hey Hey tradition began....and it really got under the skin of some opponents. Zisk, Gamble, Soderholm, Harry and Jimmy, Nancy on the organ, Veeck's gimmicks.....Comiskey Park was really rockin' that year. What can I say, it just felt like a magical summer until they faded toward the end. Both the Sox and Cubs were in first place in July that summer and it was the talk of the town at the time. I remember a CTA ad at Narragansett and Addison that said fans could catch a bus to the Subway Series from that stop.

IMO, the upper deck seats between 1st and 3rd and maybe about 8 or 10 rows up in that area are pretty good. After that, they're not so great. Worst of all is (unless there's a small crowd), anyone with an UD ticket is prohibited from entering the lower deck concourse. That alone is a HUGE demerit for EVERY SINGLE upper deck seat. When you say "no worse than a lot of other new retro parks", remember that most new parks have multiple levels of generally-available seating above the lower deck. See the photo below of Truist Park to see how their seating levels are staggered (without a ton of luxury suites in between). So yeah, there are other bad upper decks elsewhere, but they're also a smaller portion of that stadium's overall seats. Are there many other parks where, after the lower deck, all that is available is a very small (maybe about 1,500 seats??) mid-level (300 club) and then the next available seats are literally 5 levels up? I also wonder how many other ballparks have upper deck seats that are 21 rows from the concourse entrance.

Incredible. Such a Reinsdorfian move. And am I remembering correctly that the 300 Club Level was originally an exclusive "members only" section similar to the Stadium Club (and don't get me started about that monstrosity)? I want to say that it was later opened up to general ticket sales after about a year or two because they weren't getting enough people to pay for access to it. That would explain why it's a very small seating area (only 5 rows deep) So, Jerry actually saw to it that the upper deck was pushed above THREE levels for suites/exclusive seating. This is why the UD is the "500 level", it really is that many levels up. Check out photos of the seating levels at other MLB parks, I doubt you can find many (if any) with so many exclusive levels before you get to the SECOND level of seating for the general public. This site offers a ton of views of all the MLB parks: https://ballparkratings.com/ The original design of the ballpark was so flawed that it's mind-boggling.