77 Hitmen

Good summary. Despite my posts in this thread criticizing the current park and supporting the idea of a new Sox stadium at the 78, I actually don't hate the current park, have had many fond memories there, and agree that there are positives about the place. The lower deck is very good and there really isn't a bad seat in the lower level, but IMO there are better lower decks in MLB. The upper deck is the park's albatross made worse by the team's policy of banning 500 level ticket holders from the lower concourse. I've enjoyed going to Grandstand and Connie's. It's great that Cork & Kerry is nearby and that the ChiSox Bar & Grill is attached to the ballpark, but even so, the number of places surrounding the ballpark for fans to go to before and after a game is severely lacking. And unfortunately, that does matter in today's economics for getting enough people to come to games. And by the way, Connie's is actually closer to the 78 than to Rate Field Quite frankly, there just isn't much of anything remarkable at Rate Field. "There's nothing wrong with the stadium" is a pretty crappy motto for a ballpark to be perfectly honest. If all that is needed is for teams to just field a winning team and the ballpark doesn't matter, then why have so many other teams gone to such great lengths to make sure their ballparks have a ton of character and are surrounded by other points of interest? I used to be like many other Sox fans in thinking that our ballpark gets a bad rap because the world is against Sox fans, the Cubs-loving media is brainwashing everyone, critics probably haven't even been to the stadium, everyone else is wrong and we die-hard Sox fans are right, etc., etc. Over time, I've come to realize that just isn't reality. But we'll see, it's not my $1B that would need to be spent for a new ballpark. If the new owners decide that it isn't practical or feasible to build a privately-financed new ballpark at the 78, then I'll continue to support this team and hope for a better product on the field. I just hope they put a lot of money into improving the ballpark and surrounding area if the team is going to stay there for another 3 or 4 decades.

MLB is more and more becoming a sport for the mega metropolises where teams bring in big bucks. Mid-market and small market teams can no longer sustain success and fan support/fan interest will suffer outside of the biggest cities. It looks like the Cardinals are sliding into mediocrity as part of this trend. Same with the Twins - a team that has long put together competitive teams. Now they're deeply in debt and have blown everything up at the trade deadline. Fan support used to be strong in the Twin Cities and it's been sliding in recent years. Milwaukee has been a total outlier and shouldn't be used as "proof" that there isn't a competitive balance issue in the league. Cleveland and Tampa Bay are good at fielding winning teams, but then every couple of years they have to start all over again when most of their good players "graduate" to one of the big market teams. The latest example of this is Shane Bieber.

That still doesn't answer to me whether any of the local politicians said they'd oppose spending any public money on infrastructure for huge developments at Arlington Park or the 78 for whatever gets built there. They can easily say they held the line on no public money for any of the new stadiums even if in reality there will be public money spent on infrastructure. I still have not seen anything that suggests that local officials are saying no to infrastructure money. And I agree about the issue of the $525M in public debt remaining for the Soldier Field renovations. To me, I'm more outraged about that than the idea of public money being used for infrastructure. Who is going to pay that off? The state also has $50M in debt for Rate Field, but that ~1/10th the amount of what is owed for Soldier Field. If the new Sox owners really want to pay $1B for a new privately-funded stadium, paying off that $50M debt sounds like relative chump change. That's basically Luis Roberts's contract.

I don't know if that's accurate. I have seen several interviews with the Governor, who has been VERY vocal in opposing public funding for new sports stadiums, where he specifically said he was OPEN to the possibility of infrastructure spending for such projects. Do you have any links where a group of lawmakers said they wouldn't spend a dime on infrastructure to develop the Arlington Park or 78 properties? And right or wrong, I seriously doubt any local elected officials are going down in defeat because they approved spending for things like enhancements to the 2 nearby expressway exit ramps and an upgrade to the existing Arlington Park Metra station. It would be one thing if there was a hike in sales tax or property tax directly linked to work on the project, but that's not the case here. Heck, Arlington Heights just elected a new mayor who is totally gung ho about getting the Bears project approved and constructed. That doesn't exactly sound like locals storming village hall with pitchforks to me.

That's because many people don't want to pay money to see a historically bad team play in a forgettable stadium in an area without much else to do. People don't always equate "cheaper" for a good value on their entertainment dollar. The Bulls and Blackhawks are bad too, but have half as many home games and half as many seats per game to fill in a climate controlled facility. The Bears are the NFL and will sell out their 10 home dates a year no matter what (just like most other NFL teams). And we all know all the factors of why the Cubs always draw fans.

Let's say hypothetically that the Bears are indeed offering to spend up to $3B in private money for the new stadium development but the IL elected officials tell the McCaskeys that they can go to hell unless they pay for infrastructure improvements themselves and pretty much kill the deal. Would it be that far-fetched to think Indiana officials could then work out a deal to let the Bears build their stadium complex somewhere along the Borman X-way? That would be a huge black eye to Illinois and Cook County, but at least they got to tell off the McCaskeys! And Lip does have a point that these expenditures benefit billionaires and the net benefit to the local economy for stadium projects is questionable, but at some point the whole idea that Chicago is a decay, crumbling, dying city/metro area becomes a self-fulling prophecy if there's no public expenditures for things like Millennium Park, new terminals at O'Hare, or infrastructure investments in mega projects. I get that there's a limit to this. The whole Lincoln Yards debacle is an example and I'm certainly no fan of enriching people like the McCaskeys or Reinsdorf. But, I don't expect the Bears to stay as tenants to the Chicago Park District at a stadium with limited seat capacity and cramped concourses forever.

You mean "people are saying!!!...." and "I keep hearing!......" shouldn't be passed off as fact? You don't say. And no offense to other posters, but it seems to me that some of the more vocal proponents of moving the Sox out to the suburbs (because they think Chicago is so dangerous that nobody goes into the city for events and nightlife anymore and nobody in their right mind would go to a Sox game unless they can drive up to a stadium right off the expressway, see the game, and then get the hell out of the city) are people who don't even live in Illinois.

Too many bad owners in MLB. If we Sox fans think we have it bad with Jerry, I can't imagine being a Pirates fan since their terrible team owner is only in his early 60s and could be around for another quarter century or more. And it's hard for me to feel sorry for Manfred crying about how bad it is for the owners when I read this: During one of the Pirates’ “sell” chants this season, the team broadcast cut the crowd noise until the chanting ceased. And the A’s “reverse boycott” game has been scrubbed from MLB.TV’s June 2023 archives.

I totally agree. The Fire and the 400k fans max that they'll draw if they sell out all of their home games is nothing compared to what the Sox could bring in to the site - which has been 1.3M fans at the worst over the last 30 years and could be well over 2M fans per year with a good team at the better location. If the Ishbias decide that they want to bankroll a privately-funded new ballpark at the 78 as part of their investment into this team, I find it hard to believe the city and state would refuse to pay for infrastructure improvements even though they won't be cheap. This includes not only the necessary infrastructure work, but also the possibly transformative extension of the riverwalk down to the site and perhaps a new Red Line stop at the site too.

Wow, reading some of the posts here, you'd think Chicago has become a crime-ridden, nightmarish hellhole where people are afraid to venture outdoors even downtown. I guess someone forgot to tell the 55 million tourist who visited Chicago last year. All those people pictured crowding the lakefront path in this article don't exactly look like they're running for their lives to me. https://chicago.suntimes.com/money/2025/05/16/chicago-visitors-tourists-2024-prepandemic And it looks like no one is flying into Chicago anymore, either, since this city is going down the toilet: https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/ohare-close-to-dethroning-atlanta-as-americas-busiest-airport/ All snark aside, I know Chicago certainly has its problems, but let's not get carried away here with making it out like it's the Beirut of the Midwest.

So, if the Bears are serious about committing something like $2-3B in private funding to the development of a stadium and the rest of the Arlington Park property, you'll tell them to go f$#@ themselves when it comes to infrastructure improvements to the area? What about the Fire building a privately-financed soccer stadium at the 78, should the city and state tell them to the same thing when it comes to infrastructure improvements to the site, which won't be cheap? Same if Ishbia says he'd commit $1B in private money to a new Sox stadium there. In that case, what should be done with the Arlington Park land, just turn all that land it into a bunch of ugly suburban strip malls, Costcos, warehouses, and townhouses? What about the 78, just let it sit vacant for another 50 years? And I'm certainly no fan of the McCaskeys, but owning a team that is worth $8B doesn't mean they have $8B sitting around in the bank or some other liquid investments. My biggest problem with the Bears deal is that the taxpayers are still on the hook for over $500M for the botched 2002 Soldier Field rebuild. All that money for a stadium that quickly became functionally obsolete.

Good question about how to rank them. I would find it difficult to actually rank them because each uniform design had its unique faults. The Veeck-era old-fashioned jerseys were the first unis that I remember the Sox having when I was a kid and started following baseball. At the time, it just felt to me that all the other teams in the league had real, professional-looking uniforms and the Sox had these homemade-looking ones that looked like they belonged in some local 16" softball league. It really made them look like a second-rate team. The block letter SOX caps just looked boring while other teams' caps sported some sort of logo. The 1982-86 jerseys were tacky from the get-go, but certainly haven't aged well. I don't think they came off quite as tack in 1982, but they obviously weren't well like since they only lasted 5 years. The interesting thing about these unis is that there was a contest to design the new Sox uniforms and this was one of 5(?) finalists and then I believe it was put up to a vote for the fans. I don't know if anyone has access to what the other options looked like, but I seem to recall they all looked pretty cheesy or tacky. The 1987-90 jerseys were the least weird and tacky of the group. But they were pretty bland, generic, and forgettable (kind of like New Comiskey). It really didn't do much to help with White Sox branding. The cap logo was terrible. It was widely mocked as either being a Campbell Soup logo or an Eddie Einhorn logo.

The article only mentions that the Bears are waiting for a "megadevelopment" bill to pass in the fall legislative session that would freeze property tax assessments for big projects like this and would allow them to negotiate payments with local taxing bodies. I don't see any mention of them asking for money for the stadium itself. And yes, @Kyyle23, I'd imagine that there would be a need for road and transit improvements for such a huge project and I don't see the infrastructure costs as being a roadblock to getting this project approved.

The timeframe of the Ishbia purchase deal is very telling. JR's option to sell doesn't kick in until the year the current ballpark lease ends (2029) and then Ishbia's option to buy kicks in 2034 when Jerry is 98. This does suggest to me that Reinsdorf still plans to own the team until he dies but with the possibility of ownership transfer sooner to coincide with the Ishbias perhaps privately financing a new stadium. I also noted that they made the Reinsdorf-Ishbia ownership transfer announcement within a very short time after the Fire announced their new stadium plans at the 78. Was that just a coincidence or did the Fire announcing they're breaking ground this fall push JR and Ishbia to go public with their ownership deal now?

I have my doubts that he backed out of buying the Twins so that he can buy the White Sox and move them to....where? Salt Lake City? It doesn't sound like Nashville is ready to hand out another $1B in stadium funding after what they've spent for the Titans. As far as any public announcement about the Sox stadium situation. I'd be thrilled if Ishbia announced tomorrow that he's going to privately fund a new Sox stadium at the 78. But I don't think that's a reasonable expectation. It's not going to be as simple as him writing a one billion dollar check. I'd imagine there's a lot of leg work involved in lining up investors for such a massive project not to mention some cost-benefit analysis to determine if investing $1B or so in a new stadium is worth it. Less than 6 months ago, he was about to buy the Twins before suddenly backing out, so it's only been a few months since he became heir-apparent to Jerry Reinsdorf. Or he might intent to keep the Sox at the current ballpark with a new long-term lease. If that's the case, we're not going to hear anything public about that effort now - 4 years before the current lease is up.

I found a youtube video that does a pretty good job explaining why the Braves left Turner Field after only 20 years. Interesting stuff. The same guy also did a video about the whole "Ballpark at Arlington" situation and why it didn't last as the ballpark for the Rangers. Obviously because it was an open air stadium in an area that gets intense summer heat.

Whoever he is (someone who covers sports in the Bay Area), his YouTube video actually says Nashville is just an empty threat and the Sox are almost certainly not moving there.

Portland has more people than Las Vegas...and Nashville for that matter. If MLB does indeed expand to 32 teams some day, I'd imagine they'd want one of the teams to be somewhere west, so Portland is probably on that list. SLC would be the smallest MLB market BY FAR. It's only being mentioned because politicians there want to throw something like $900M in public money toward a new stadium. As you said, I can't imagine they could support a club for 81 games.

I just checked out his video and he said he's pretty certain the Sox are NOT moving out of state. He gave the same reasons a lot of people here have pointed out: Ishbia has strong ties to Chicago, even as the "second" baseball team Chicago is a huge market for the Sox, Nashville isn't spending a ton of public money for a baseball stadium any time soon after they spent a fortune for the new Titans stadium, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR42xeh2g7k He does mention that SLC and Portland seem to be open to funding for a MLB stadium, but he wasn't suggesting he thought the Sox would move to either of those cities. I also saw that he posted a video a few days ago where he practically gushes about how he loves Chicago (except for the weather).

I remember the days when the Cubs would close off the entire upper deck at Wrigley on days when there weren't that many people there. We as kids also just showed up the day of the game to buy bleacher tickets for something like $5. To anyone under age 40, that'd probably blow their minds. I'm talking about early 80s when this was happening, not way back in the 60s.

I've been to Citi Field and had a great time there. Since I like to get some food from the concessions that seem appropriate to the area I'm visiting, I got an arancini when I was there. I also remembered that they played (and the crowed sang along with) The Piano Man during the 7th inning stretch after Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

Yeah, we just had 2 or 3 pages of discussion about this in this very thread. I don't feel the need to rehash the same explanation again about all the factors that go into a successful MLB stadium these days.

MM, here are my thoughts: If Ishbia wants a new stadium he will have to pay for it. That's pretty much understood at this point. We have no idea what Ishbia has planned. It could very well be that he isn't going to foot the bill for a new stadium, but the idea that he'd pay for a new stadium isn't outlandish. There are several franchise owners in the major sports leagues that are committing something like $1B in private money toward a new stadium. In my uneducated guess, I'd say it's a coin flip as to whether the new owner decides to pay up for a new stadium as he takes control of this team. I don’t go to ballgames to see skylines and furthermore I don’t care if the neighborhood has tons of bars and restaurants around it, easy parking like at the Rate is more important. You don't. But you're a Boomer and I'm an older Gen Xer. Maybe that's what appeals to our age demographic groups, but it's been shown time and again that this isn't what people want these days when they decide how to spend their entertainment dollar. Fun (scary) fact: the oldest Millennials will start turning 50 two years after the Sox current lease ends. The oldest of Gen Z are turning 30 in a couple of years from now. Guess which generational age groups Sox ownership will have in mind when they decide where they want the Sox to play after the current lease ends? Back in the day I was a huge Blackhawks fan and attended 200 or so games at the old Madhouse on Madison, horrible neighborhood with maybe a couple of seedy bars that no one frequented, but it had good parking, the Blackhawks were the hottest ticket in town in those days. I'm sure that's 100% correct, but there are a lot of things that worked in the 1960s that are no longer the case today. We also had leaded gas and nobody wore seatbelts back then either. The Dodgers have played in a stadium for 65 years with not a restaurant anywhere close to it and surrounded by huge parking lots, True, but they're the LA Freaking Dodgers. They're in a metro area that has 18M people and they've won 13 pennants and 7 WS titles since moving out west. Meanwhile, we Sox fans want to think 2005 was yesterday and are still waxing nostalgic about 1959. Aside from the Yankees, the Dodgers are arguably the most elite, premier team brand in MLB. Right now I believe the biggest problem is what JR with his miserly ways has done to franchise and the fan base, Amen, Mighty Mite. You are 100% correct with no argument for me.

It's not the existence of parking lots that's a problem, it's the NON-existence of pretty much anything else in the immediate vicinity that's been a problem in bringing people to the park over the years.

Absolutely this. Working for the White Sox has definitely been a career killer for anyone involved in the train wreck that has been the White Sox organization over the last 15 years....except to get promoted within by Jerry, of course. What MLB team in their right minds would hire RH or KW? What about any of the post-Ozzie Sox managers?