77 Hitmen

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.

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.