kba

Interesting details in the Crain's article about how far along this project is. Ishbia's team has already met with the mayor's office, filed "an intent to submit an application" for a federal loan of $383 million through a program designed to finance railroad infrastructure, and has hired three lobbyists to lobby Congress to pass the "All Aboard America Act" to provide more railroad funding. Either Ishbia really likes trains, or he's putting his political muscle into helping move the rail yards off of this property.

The Amtrak land could be an aesthetically better site for a ballpark. The view of downtown is more aligned with left-center field, rather than down the third base line. They might even be able to design it so that home runs to right field land in the river.

The Tribune says the soccer stadium will be 101 feet tall. At modern ballparks, the top row of the upper deck is usually about 100 feet above the field. So assuming that the baseball park is built on the same grade as the soccer stadium, they shouldn't block each other. In the architectural drawings, it looks like they've already decided to sacrifice the left field view in favor of the double deck seating and the scoreboard -- which almost certainly will be bigger in real life because it will be surrounded by ad panels (and hopefully topped by pinwheels if they have the good sense to put them atop the scoreboard where they belong.) The main view will be behind center field toward the lakefront South Loop high rises.

There will still be space for a ballpark, but I'm not sure how extensive the "ballpark village" could be.

First Black batting champion in team history. First two-time MVP.

This is way over my head, but it's the former Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which is now partnering with FanDuel to sell legally-murkey "sports event contracts." Apparently a way to get around state sports betting laws?? https://casinobeats.com/2025/10/21/fanduel-cme-group-sports-prediction-markets/

Second-to-last. The Rays are now the only team without a uniform ad patch.

When Carl Everertt dies, it can double as his memorial patch.

1n 1972, he started 49 games in a strike-shortened 154 game season.

The legal question is whether a future sale would be "compelled" or "a virtual certainty" at the time JR hands over control. Since there's already paperwork that gives both parties options to complete the sale - and since Ishbia is already referring to himself as the future owner - that would probably be an easy case for the IRS to make. That's likely the reason that every statement from the team and every interview from Ishbia has included a sentence that Jerry is still in charge.

The IRS would almost certainly see that as a transparent attempt to avoid capital gains taxes. If the IRS finds that delaying the sale until after JR's death serves no business purpose other than to avoid taxes, the law allows the government to treat the sale as having taken place the day JR turned over control.

The Phillies, Mets, and Rangers, but they're all trying to build entertainment districts on their parking lots. l can think of a few parks that aren't necessarily surrounded by parking lots, but still aren't really walkable to a downtown or to an entertainment district - Miami, Toronto, Yankee Stadium. Houston used to be like that, but it looks like that part of downtown has grown up since I was there last.

In August 2024, Paul Sullivan wrote that Schiffren had two years left on his deal. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/08/12/chicago-white-sox-john-schriffen-steve-stone/

Jeff Agrest is absolutely right about Schiffren's lack of preparation. Baseball is a slow sport, and an announcer has to come prepared each day with new things to fill the time - or be such a good communicator that they can just pull interesting things out of their head. Hawk could tell old-time stories, Benetti has his corny jokes and is fluent with advanced stats, Kasper seems to bring something novel to every broadcast, like a recent game when he and D.J. spent a half inning chatting about how today's players have dozens of pairs of spikes, while players in D.J.'s day wore the same couple of pairs for months. Kasper had talked with the clubhouse manager before the game to get some actual numbers on how many shoes the team had gone through. Schiffren has gotten better, but he still doesn't seem to bring much to the broadcast except some predictable quotes from the previous day's postgame press conference.

Looks like the immediate plan is just to build the Fire stadium and some surface parking lots. The other proposed buildings would come much later. https://x.com/BuildingChi/status/1968745733521092961 https:/https://x.com/BuildingChi/status/1968745733521092961/x.com/BuildingChi/status/1968745733521092961s://x.com/BuildingChi/status/1968745733521092961