77 Hitmen

In other ballpark news: Goodbye Comerica Park, hello Fifth Third Park.

Especially when they're 30th in the league in revenue. That'll certainly bump up after this season, but it's not like they'll shoot up to the top half of the league in revenue generated.

When Jerry and Eddie bought the Sox, within a year, they moved a vast majority of Sox games to Pay TV with a monthly subscription fee of between $15-$21. That's in 1982 dollars - that would be between $50-$70/month in today's dollars. When Jerry got New Comiskey built, he saw to it that the design focused on premium/corporate customers as he had three levels of luxury seats/suites inserted between the lower and upper deck with the 500 level upper deck comprising of about 45% of the stadium's seats. As you said, the reason why Sox tickets have been a relative bargain in the last few years is because the team has been so bad that they couldn't get enough people to want to come to the games. The upper deck seats, with the exception of perhaps the upper deck box (which aren't that bad), are affordable because they're lousy seats and a tough sell.

Yeah, but he's from Michigan and lives in Winnetka. His money is no good here. MLB should decree that the Sox can only be sold to someone who was born on the South Side and who currently resides on the South Side. ....though I guess it's okay that Reinsdorf lives in Highland Park with a winter home in Scottsdale.

Ishbia putting so much private money into a stadium means he has a lot riding on its success. Taxpayers paid for New Comiskey and when attendance faltered, Jerry wasn't the one on the hook for the cost of paying off the stadium other than the rent he owed to ISFA. Given all that's at stake in privately-financing a new ballpark, there will absolutely be detailed analysis involved to determine whether spending $1B+ to move to the South Loop and build a new stadium is worth it over just signing a long-term lease at Rate Field. On the whole, I would think most taxpayers would be happy to see the state of Illinois get out of the stadium financing and maintenance business.

There are plenty of people in KC and Nevada who are not pleased with the amount of public money being given to those MLB stadiums. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/poll-more-than-half-of-las-vegas-voters-oppose-public-funding-for-new-as-stadium/

Played by Phyllis from The Office.

1) Jerry claimed the current location is not economically viable and wanted to move the team to the 78 closing in on 3 years ago (January 2024) - long before Ishbia entered the picture as a possible successor to him. His ask was ~$1B in taxpayer money for the ballpark. 2) Amtrak identified the Bridgeport railyard parcels as their desired location for a modernized maintenance yard several years ago - again, long before Ishbia entered the picture. 3) Ishbia was working on buying the Twins and not part of the Sox future ownership plans while the first two items were happening. I mean, those are actual facts of what happened. The only thing that is opinion here is JR's assertion that the Sox cannot compete at the current site. That's open to debate, but the rest is just plain and simple facts of what has transpired. All the meltdowns, lashing out, manufactured motives, and laugh emojis can't change reality. I suspect the singular, irrational hatred of Ishbia stems from the fact that he is the one guy who has the wealth to provide enough private investment to make this happen. Ishbia’s wealth enabling this to happen is probably true. If this were up to the Reinsdorfs, as rich as they are, they don't have the personal liquidity to make this happen, so the South Loop stadium would probably remain a pipe dream. Almost all other new stadiums include hundreds of millions in public money to build the thing (including for the A's, Rays, and Royals). Here, Ishbia is suggesting that he'll privately finance the ballpark. I'd imaging that is welcome news to most fans and most taxpayers. Are residents suppose to be outraged because he'd also benefit from such an enormous private investment? What do residents of Nevada, Tampa, and KC think about a stadium being proposed in Chicago where the only public funding is for infrastructure?

I haven't really heard of others being upset about this. The local media has been all over this because a bunch of people shouting at officials at a public hearing makes for a good news story, but I haven't seen any indications that people outside of that neighborhood are mad about this. Quigley and Mendoza are running for mayor and say they'd block this. Other politicians (the current mayor, the Gov, the 2 Senators, at least one other mayoral candidate) have only said that Amtrak needs to be transparent and should work with the residents to address their concerns. FWIW, many people commenting on YouTube and Facebook in reaction to this news story point out that this facility will be on an existing railyard. But that's a very unscientific read. I don't know if others here have a better read on the general reaction to this.

which goes to show you how many idiots there are on social media.

Only 16.8% of voters wanted her to be reelected mayor. If she thinks pandering to a relatively small group of local NIMBYs is going to propel her back into elected office, then she shouldn't give up her day job.

Oh, it's not that hard to imagine that. Just look at the last 20 years of White Sox history. They've been very adept at pissing away a chance for the division title in September.

Schriff-buddy needs to find another catch phrase. Or how about not trying to come up with a catch phrase?

This was one of those days where having a retractable roof would have come in handy. But they did get the game played in the end. Now we've got to win big against KC and Colorado and hope Cleveland falters.

That'll never happen in Green Bay and Buffalo just opened a brand new $2B stadium that has no roof.

Fixed roof with ETFE panels to let sunlight in like US Bank Stadium and SoFi. I hope they can find a way to have the playing surface be natural grass.

The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals had an 83-78 record and won the World Series while the 90-win Sox watched the post-season on TV.

Looking back at Sox teams post-2005 this collapse is nothing new when the Sox had a first place lead in mid-Sept: 2020: Sept 19: in 1st by 3.0 games w/ 8 games remaining. Season end: 1 game back, 3rd place, made playoffs as wild card. 2012: Sept 18: in 1st by 3.0 games. Season end: 3 games back and out of the playoffs 2008: Sept 21: in 1st by 2.5 games. Then lost 5 in a row before winning games 161, 162, and 163 to salvage the season The only exception is the 2021 season when they held a huge division lead through the entire 2nd half. But even there, they played .600 ball in the first half and then were a .500 team in the second half - so that was more about them being in a weak division. Getz is just the latest in a succession of incompetent front office staff. As I said earlier, I don't see this changing under the current ownership. If they actually fired Getz, who is confident that his replacement wouldn't be even worse?

I'm also curious as to why Lightfoot thinks the community will win this fight. Amtrak has a federal exemption, they're building an indoor maintenance facility on a railyard that's been there for 100 years and saw activity as recently as 2019, they need to modernize their Chicago operations. Unless it comes out that Amtrak is doing something illegal here or is falsifying data or something like that, what's the basis for stopping this project? Because people in the neighborhood are shouting loud enough into TV cameras?

The former mayor is against huge private investments in the city because billionaires will benefit from it and because of NIMBY outrage against building a facility on an existing railyard. It is no wonder this city saw an exodus of businesses under her watch and no wonder she didn't even make it to the runoff in her reelection bid.

Patrick Fazio of NBC 5 posted this on Facebook. It makes sense that he didn't attend the meeting. This was about Amtrak's proposed facility, which they had been planning since before Ishbia got involved, and not about any of the redevelopment plans of the 14th St. the railyard. The attendees were already there to shout down Amtrak. I don't see where having Ishbia as a lightning rod for their anger would have accomplished anything other than to make for good local news clips. UPDATE: Ishbia’s rep tells us: “Justin Ishbia is not attending tonight’s meeting. I am not sure where that came from initially, but it was not us” Ald. Nicole Lee had posted on Facebook: “I am told that Shore Capital founder & White Sox minority owner Justin Ishbia plans to attend… ORIGINAL POST: White Sox minority owner Justin Ishbia is expected to answer questions tonight about his new stadium plan along the Chicago River in the South Loop. It would be at the Amtrak maintenance facility which is moving near the Sox current home Rate Field in Bridgeport. A community meeting tonight at 6:30 will be held at 2121 South Union Avenue for concerned neighbors

This organization has definitely take some big steps forward this year after the last three seasons. But, at the end of the day, it's still a 2nd rate organization where people who have questionable qualifications get put into key leadership positions. Unfortunately, this isn't going to change until at least when Jerry Reinsdorf is no longer in control of this franchise.

And that's even before we see if Boston Smith can get any success in the majors

The public meeting got a lot of coverage in the local news, but I don't see how that changes Amtrak's ability to move forward on this project. It's all on railroad property, impacts will be less than when it operated as a freight yard, and they don't need city approval. I know the loudest opponents get the most attention, but I bet more people in Chicago than not are in favor of improved Amtrak service thanks to a huge federal grant, a privately-financed new Sox ballpark, and a new Northwestern Medical campus.

The FAQ slides talk about the maintenance building's height. When combined with the existing viaduct height, it'll be about half the height of Rate Field. The slide about traffic and access says employee and contractor parking will be "on site within the yard's existing allocations. No permanent off-site parking needed". Does that mean that they will not be needing to take over part of Lots C and G other than during construction? The slide also says "Amtrak is coordinating with the ballpark's stakeholders so construction preserves access and parking." https://mwmaintenancefacility.com/viewer.html?d=faq-supplement&y=1200