77 Hitmen

Caution fellow Sox fans who have a fragile ego, are easily angered, and/or have a huge chip on their shoulder about ballpark "best to worst" rankings, do NOT click on the link in this article that says "*Rankings listed based on USA Today's rankings". Reality hurts. Here's a more complete list of ballpark seating capacity rankings. Dodger Stadium is the highest by far. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2025/05/23/mlb-stadiums-ranked-by-capacity-biggest-smallest/83815207007/ Yes, the new A's stadium would be the lowest capacity. Though the Rays have artificially lowered the seating capacity at Tropicana Field (which was not on the list) in recent years to about 25k by putting a tarp over the upper deck and closing it off to fans. Otherwise, the 2nd lowest after Las Vegas will be the 3 you mentioned with Cleveland the lowest of the three at 34,830. "Jacobs Field" used to seat 42k and they actually had 455 consecutive sellouts there up until 2001. But those days are long gone and they've lowered seating capacity after a couple of renovations. Rate Field is #19 as far as seating capacity goes.

It'll be very interesting to see how that glass dome view of the Vegas strip looks when this place opens. I noted some interesting items from this article: - The ballpark will sit on only 9 acres of the 36-acre property. The same amount of acreage of the proposed Fire stadium at the 78. - Fisher is paying $1.4B in private financing toward the stadium. Did you hear that, Jerry? - The A's will go from the largest foul area (in Oakland) to the smallest foul area in the majors - Seating capacity is only 33,000.

Interesting, that was before my time and I don't remember hearing about them. I do remember that the Sting played at both Comiskey and Wrigley and won the NASL championship at Comiskey Park in 1981 - the first Chicago pro sports championship since the 1963 Bears. I also remember that their big star was Karl Heinz Granitza.

I remember Lillian. She was posting here when I was lurking and before I officially signed up. Looks like her last post was almost 2 years ago (Aug. 2023). Sorry to see that she's no longer here. And Steff - LOL - same name and same description of someone who was on WSI maybe 20 years ago. She was often angry at other posters there too. Not a very pleasant person from what I remember. I'm pretty sure she got banned from that site- probably an example of where it was actually justified.

Some bans were justified IMO. There were a few bad apples back in the day who were pretty obnoxious or constantly hijacking thread after thread derailing lots of discussions who deserved to get the boot, but they definitely took it too far. And you're right about the weird invisible line. I remember several times where posters were legitimately puzzled as to why they were banned. I also remember them having some strange issue with people talking about their post counts and accusing people of being "armchair mods". I know being a mod is a thankless task on any site, but it seemed like a power trip to some of those guys.

And an expert crossbow hunter - therefore no posters better piss him off!

JR and EE certainly made bad PR moves almost right off the bat - the first being insulting and alienating Bill Veeck. Bill Veeck certainly had his faults, but this got them off on the wrong foot with the Sox fan base and with Chicagoans in general not long after the ink dried on their team purchase. Not long after that was the whole SportsVision debacle and letting Harry Caray get away to the Cubs. And again, Harry certainly had his faults, but there was no denying that he was a fan favorite on the South Side and that he quickly became a Cubs legend after he left. And then a whole string of PR disasters that we all know too well and don't need repeating. At least they did quickly breathe new life into the team by bringing in Fisk, Luzinski, Bannister and almost winning the pennant in 1983 after being a laughingstock team in Veeck's final couple of years. Then it was quickly downhill for the rest of the 80s bottoming out with the near-move to St. Pete in 1988.

I'll add MarySwiss to one of the great posters there in addition to those already mentioned. She was always kind, friendly, and had interesting things to say. Sadly, I saw that Fenway posted on a Facebook site a couple of years ago that she has passed away. I have no idea why Fenway was permanently banned. He was always courteous and insightful. He was a huge BoSox fan and talked about them often, so maybe that's why the mods hated him so much and ultimately banned him. Kind of par for the course for that site, unfortunately. Doublem23 sure was opinionated. I have no idea what happened to him. He was perhaps the most prolific poster there and then suddenly one day......poof - his posts came to a sudden stop and no one ever mentioned him again. Voodoo, Dumpjerry, and Nellie Fox are good guys and good mods. There were some other good mods, too. They weren't the problem. I'd say FarWest and Daver were a big part of the problem. West never failed to remind everyone that he was smarter than everyone else and Daver never failed to remind everyone that he was tougher than everyone else. And yes, I realize West was the one who keep the board running until his untimely death. I thought Brian26 was a total d-bag and was part of the problem after he became a mod. I cut back on my participation there after he became a mod and continued being a total condescending smartass to people. What a jerk.

The guy who owns it is the problem with this org.

Terry Bevington must be thrilled that Grifol came along.

Dear Sox fans, if we weren't fielding a shitty team, you'd love our shitty announcer. White Sox Fever.....CATCH IT!

They moved to a totally new server shortly after FarWest died since he was the one who was maintaining the old server and no one else could keep it going. Unfortunately, I don't think any of the old stuff was archived. The current site is wsiforumstoo.com, but it doesn't have any of the old posts from its glory days. Yeah, it would have been great if the old posts were archived somehow, but I don't think they were.

I want to say that Phil Rogers from the Trib posted there too for a time. It's a shame that Grobstein died suddenly a few years ago.

We already had our PCA. We traded him on June 4, 2016 for some magic beans.

I do not doubt this at all. This level of delusion is why this team is on pace for 112 losses this year and why that number of losses would actually mean a 9 game improvement.

And Hawk did have some credibility of actually knowing what he was talking about. Not that I bought every line of BS that Hawk fed to us, but he did have some insight into the league being a former player and having a track record as an announcer before coming to the White Sox. Also, later-years Hawk is what we all probably remember. He was much better as an announcer in his earlier years with the team. The Hawk and Wimpy era was great - no comparison to Schriffen and Stone. I think a more appropriate comparison is between Schriffen and Bennetti....the guy JR didn't like and helped send out of town. I'll take Jason any day of the week - and it's not even close.

I remember that site's heyday. I think they even had some local sports reporters posting on the site. The number of members they had was impressive. Yes, there long had been a dispute between the person managing the website and the people managing the message boards and that was an ongoing problem for them. But I think their downfall was overzealous mods who seemed to dare people to get banned. It got to the point where they seemed disdainful of posters in general. It wasn't a community of Sox fans sharing their passion for their favorite team anymore, it was (in the view of the mods IMO) a group of utterly disposable knuckleheaded fans who better not cross any lines with ignorant posts. Sure, there needed to be some moderation against some of the more obnoxious posters and some people needed to be banned, but they really took it too far and it ultimately killed* the site. And it wasn't just the outright banning, people who dared criticize the direction the team were mocked as a pants-pissing dark cloud. And this was post-2008 when it was obvious that the Sox organization was starting to rot from within. *The site is still there, but it's a shell of its former self.

Schriffen symbolizes all that is wrong with this franchise and how it's being run into the ground by Jerry Reinsdorf. No, he doesn't affect on the field performance and I could live with a bad announcer if the team were on their way to winning 95 games, but he is a perfect reflection of how Uncle Jerry has run this team over the last 15-20 years.

Eddie was even worse than Jerry Reinsdorf. If I'm not mistaken, he was the one who was really pushing for the Sox to move to St. Pete saying that playing at Tropicana Field would be a gold mine.

Part of what the Bears want in AH is a revenue stream from the development around the football stadium. If Justin Ishbia said he wants into build his own stadium with his own money on the land, I'd be shocked if the Bears would say no to a facility that would bring 81 additional events to the property every year just because they don't like the current Sox owner, who won't be the Sox owner going forward. At any rate, take a deep breath everyone and repeat after me, the SOX ARE NOT MOVING TO ARLINGTON HEIGHTS. Neither team has even hinted at such an option. The only official I heard mention it was the incoming mayor of AH who was just dreaming out loud about it. Until I hear someone in a position of power or some reporter say there is serious discussion about this possibility, I see it as nothing more than fan fiction. I just can't imagine that the Ishbias want to sink $1B+ and the future of a franchise they spent something like $2B to purchase into a Sox stadium way out in the NW suburbs, where a large majority of people are Cubs fans and that is far from the die hard Sox fan base of the South Side and S/SW suburbs.

This would be my guess, too. I try to imagine what the Ishbias (it's not just Justin, but his brother and father are part of the Sox ownership bid) think is the best way to assure success of a team they are spending something close to $2B to purchase. Over the last 35 years, this team has had trouble consistently drawing fans to the current park. A lot of that is due to JR's series of PR blunders (including terrible decisions in designing the stadium) and, of course, the lack of winning. IMHO, aside from that fleeting moment of success in 2005, Reinsdorf has sucked the life out of this franchise and has handed more and more market share to the Cubs. Of course, they can just decide to keep the park and surrounding area as is and they'll fill the park if they win a bunch of pennants, but easier said than done and it's really tough to keep a successful core going as you're going up against all the other wealthy owners who have the exact same game plan. And yeah, the franchise is in a very weird position. They have an owner who is insular and out of touch with how to field a competitive team in today's MLB. They're being buried by the Cubs in the market as Ricketts poured money into successfully upgrading Wrigley and is again fielding a team that looks like a pennant contender that is capturing the city's hearts and minds. The new owners really need to do something dramatic to change the dynamics of this team's market share. The Sox have a fiercely loyal fan base who has a huge chip on their shoulders about how people disrespect their team and their ballpark, but that won't be enough to drive this team forward for the next 3 or 4 decades.

What is your basis for this conclusion? Do you have a link to an article that says the Bears don't want the Sox at AH? Why would a deal have happened already if they did want the Sox there? Are the McCaskeys going to give Jerry Reinsdorf $1B to build a baseball stadium? Because the state sure ain't. Heck, the Bears don't even have a deal for their own stadium at AH yet. The reason why there is no deal anywhere for a Sox stadium is that JR is only willing to commit something like $200M in private money to a new ballpark and it's crystal clear that this is a non-starter. So, it'll be up to the Ishbias to decide if they want to bankroll a new stadium for the team they are (eventually) buying. IMO, if the 78 doesn't work out for the Sox then their best option is to remain at 35th and Shields and massively renovate The Rate and do a major redevelopment of much of the parking lots around the park in an attempt to create some sort of entertainment district there.

I came across this Sox Machine article from last fall that discussed how Related Midwest wants both the Fire and the White Sox at the 78 with the departure of U of I for the quantum campus on the south side. https://soxmachine.com/2024/10/related-midwest-wants-both-the-white-sox-and-fire-for-project-78

Do you not think soccer is more popular now in the US than it was 30 years ago? I'm not sure if MLS even existed 30 years ago. This isn't the 1970s where the NASL and the Chicago Sting went defunct due to lack of support. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/05/mls-sponsorships-spike-as-us-soccer-gains-popularity.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/vitascarosella/2024/09/17/soccer-fandom-is-booming-in-america-according-to-new-report/

Some more interesting details about the proposed new Fire stadium: https://chicagoyimby.com/2025/06/additional-renderings-and-details-revealed-for-chicago-fire-fc-stadium.html It sounds like they're planning to build an extension of LaSalle St from Roosevelt Rd to avoid a more expensive project to realign the Metra tracks.