LVSoxFan

Man I feel sorry for those Houston fans. The shock of it all. Reminded me of a certain inning at Wrigley in '03 for its brutality. Man if they choke after that that's gonna be like the Bartman moment in Houston sports history, or the Buckner play. Ouch.

Well wait, though: again, even with season tix holders and all the other things I outlined--that eats up about 36,000 tix per game? That seems just so off to me, unless I'm missing something. BTW anybody who wants the photo in my avatar can PM me or, if there's a way to do it, I kind send it to the mods to make available. Great shot, ain't it?

I swear I saw something this morning and then my boss repeated it that, in reality, what went on sale today was about 4,000 tickets to each game. HUH? He said something like the others are accounted for; MLB has a huge chunk, the players get a bunch, etc, etc., plus season ticket holders. Even taking all that into account, that eats up 36,000 tix per game? So to put that in perspective, I'm guessing about a million people went online (or called) today for just a few thousand tix that were actually available? Does anybody know the back story/ticket breakout? Also, those of you who got tix: what did TM tack on in service fees?

We had five people here with at least 10 windows open apiece going for an hour and... zip.

It is funny how we have little to no celebrity fans. Oh well. Just adds to the working-class mythology I guess.

Yeah, what do these guys do now? I can't believe they wouldn't want to be at the park enjoying it live. Or maybe not.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Oct 17, 2005 -> 03:34 PM) You got something to the contrary? I've read him every day for years as a Sun-Times reader. Oh, let me guess: because he ripped on JR for years about his crappy payroll and also-ran teams. We don't think there was some truth to that? And I do recall most of the first half him railing at the city about how everybody's crying about the Cubs when we've got the best team in baseball right here on the South Side. And he sure ain't no Cub homer, I can guarantee you that. There were only a couple of times this year I thought he was being unfair: first, when he ripped KW during the September Slide for not trading for a bat. By all accounts, there wasn't a bat to be had and Griffey got ixnayed by the Reds, not by us. That was off-base. The second was when he called Ozzie out in public for saying inappropriate things in the clubhouse (i.e., referring to somebody in NY as a "child molester"). I don't know why that needed to go public. Look, my point is: I'd rather have a guy who says what he thinks even if it pisses off the team. Steve Stone wasn't 1/10th as critical of the Cubs as a Mariotti would be and look what happened to him.

I know Mariotti's public enemy #1 here and elsewhere in Sox land, but I personally like the fact he said he was wrong. He also infamously said that the Bulls would never get past Utah in that last championship--too old and tired, he said. Although sometimes I wonder if the scathing stuff he would write during the September Slide was some reverse psychology--like he was trying to incense the team into playing better. I've always gotten the sense that he's more of a Sox fan. And man oh man when he rips into the Cubs and their management it is a sight to see. But he's also pretty fearless about pissing off any owner/management here, whether it be the McCaskeys, JR, Wirtz or the Tribune Co. So I dunno: when I see him say in his column that the Sox have silenced their critics--including him--I like the fact that he'll admit that. Y'all can go back to stomping him now..

The Cubs could get 35,000 fans to Wrigley to watch Zambrano have sex with a pumpkin on top of the mound for 2 hours, as long as there was beer. Try running that by 'em...

I was around Wrigley at the bars during that '03 final week. And I can tell you that you could literally feel the electricity in the air--it was almost too much, like bad things would happen if they won. Tons and tons and tons of drunk young people were just going nuts; they had to seal off Clark between Addison and Newport because there was no way traffic was gonna get through. When you say what would happen with their fans and attendance? I think it would be just like the Red Sox: no change. They'll always be packing them in. But I'll tell you what: going to a Cubs game (which I do avoid whenever possible, sometimes have to go for work) is a crappy experience now. I remember when I was a kid enjoying the nice park and the relaxed atmosphere and environment--nothing better than spending a sunny day at this unique park jammed into a residential neighborhood. No more. The place is packed every time now. The lack of bathrooms becomes painfully obvious the first time you have to stand in line for 20 minutes. There's no empty spaces. It is a non-stop sensory assault, as you've got thousands upon thousands of yahoos who were drunk BEFORE the game even started--and the same afterwards. I realize the Sox get their drunk fans too--like on "Fight Club" Mondays--but nothing near the scale of this. Again: people go to watch baseball, not just to get hammered and be obnoxious. That said, if I were a parent, I'd rather take my kids to a Sox game and that park. You're right about the pride though. Winning the WS... ahh one can dream. Even now (wearing the jersey today) anybody who double-takes me I wait for them to say something--anything. But they can't. Because their team's on the golf course and we are playing until the end of October. Yeah baby!

Why in God's name would you sell your chance to see the Sox in the World Series? Amazing. I hope to go to one game here--that's all I ask. But yeah it is disheartening to have gone to 40 games this year and be shut out when our moment finally arrives. It's not that other Sox fans are ahead of me that burns--it's stories about Cubs fans buying seats and so forth. But then again: hello, reality. What else is new? Good reason to get season tickets I guess.

I think Lou is great. There's something about how unpolished he is that's refreshing. He says some funny s***, too. But yeah: what is it with the announcers--be it on ESPN or FOX--almost begrudingly announcing us? Maybe it's an ROC thing.

QUOTE(The Ginger Kid @ Oct 17, 2005 -> 01:40 PM) There are some great historical perspectives on the White Sox. Back in 1919 they were the most popular team in America -- in fact, the Yankees were nothing but a struggling franchise renting space at the polo grounds from the Giants. What a turn of events; a few months after the Sox "lost" to the Reds in the '19 series, Ruth was sold to the Yankees. One team went one direction, the other another. The Sox aren't cursed but winning a world series would go a long way toward finally, after all these years, overshadowing a disastrous turn of events in the history of the franchise. Keep in mind that in 1984 you could pick up season tickets to the Bulls for a song. Oh how winning can change a thing. Well yes and no. The Bulls analogy may be flawed because they're the only franchise in town for basketball. Of course winning can turn around franchises like the Bulls or--can you imagine?--the Hawks. I wouldn't hold my breath on them BTW as long as Wirtz is alive. Generally speaking winning changes everything but there's one team in town that can lose until the cows come home (or not come home! I'm confused!) and still sell out: the Cubs. Think about it: the genius of a ploy where the Cubs' losing seasons are the appeal of the team! It's absolutely win/win. If they come close like in '03, everybody gets delusional and thinks the Curse is finally on the way out. And when they collapse (like they did in the Bartman game and in less dramatic fashion last year)--well... that's just more fodder to the mythology! What I'm saying is that the Cubs transcend baseball. They are a rolling frat party. Their park is a beer garden. They're a tourist attraction. They have fans all over the country who watch them on WGN. When they lose you get to play martyr and when they win it's pandemonium. Sox fans, the argument goes, are actual "baseball" fans and I think that's accurate. One of my favorite retorts to Cub fans--who will often cite attendance as to why their club is superior--is that Sox fans don't reward failure with attendance. When the Sox suck, people don't go. Hell apparently even when they're #1 in September people don't go, LOL! But we're the kind of fans who will let KW know about it, in his face, at Soxfest, if we're not happy about the team. Whereas the whole North side has embraced this mythological mystique of The Curse and history and the goat and what have you. Plus, I love the Cell to death but I don't think too many tourists passing through town are thinking: I want to see Sox park! They want to see the place with the ivy, with the scenic lakefront high-rises in the background. To me they're a tourist attraction/entertainment, not unlike Great America or Sea World. The fact that they even came close in '03 seemed to me like an aberration--not like some logical progression, like they have to win it sometime. I could see them going another 100 years without a pennant. But that just continues to fill the seats there, apparently! Long gone are the days, if you're old enough, when back in the 70s you'd turn on a game and there'd be maybe 8,000 people there. And now that they're "redoing" the park and adding more bleacher seats... they'll be as popular as ever. So no, I am saying it: I highly doubt Chicago will ever become a "Sox" town. It's just not gonna happen. At least not to the level of the Cubs. The Cubs are Chicago what the Red Sox are to Boston--the fabled, mythical, cursed team. That's not a dig on us: I'm proud of the fact that I'm from Chicago and am 100% Sox and hate the Cubs. Hopefully after the WS we'll have even more elite status: world champions. And before next season the Cub fans can blow up baseballs, trot goats around their crumbling park, stick pins in Bartman voodoo dolls--whatever. We know who's the better team.

He's not retiring are you kidding? I do think Jerry's gonna give him a big, fat bonus though. As he should. Think about the miracle he and KW pulled off--they took a perpetual also-ran in the Comedy Central (my favorite reference: we are the Wile E. Coyote of the Central) and turned them not only into division champs (Minnesota who?) but now World Series players. In one freakin' off-season. That's pretty amazing.

I do have to say with quite a laugh though what's going on downtown. I'm on Michigan Ave. and I'd say, going either way on Michigan, there's probably five sports clothing stores nearby. I've been in all of them. Also, there's lots of "tourist" stores that feature all Chicago stuff, from mugs to prints to tacky stuffed animals. Believe me you when I say that year-round, these stores are loaded with Cubs merchandise. The few that do have a Sox jersey will usually have two at most--and a bunch of crappy Sox t-shirts. Otherwise 90% of the merchandise at these places is Cubs, Cubs, Cubs. Year 'round. The same obviously is true on the North Side, where you can buy any Cubs jersey imaginable at Sportmart but if they even have a Sox jersey I'd be surprised. Lo and behold, they've all seen the light! Now everybody's selling Sox stuff! Even the crappy-ass tourist store in Chicago place not only is displaying no Cubs merchandise, but ONLY Sox playoff stuff! LOL. I find it amusing because I highly doubt the tourists and casual Cub fans are itching to now buy this stuff simply because we won. Or maybe there are just tons of bandwagon jumpers out there--who knows?

Well true, but I'd say for the last decade at least.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Oct 17, 2005 -> 12:27 PM) My brother had the Fan Deck deal offered to him for a ALCS Game 7, for $400 including some buffet spread for pregame. That seemed just a littlesteep for the ALCS, but the deal was supposedly that if the ALCS didn't go 7 then the tix would roll over to WS Game. I don't know how they could have offered that guarantee, and my bro was dubious so he passed. He's kicking himself HARD right now. I am too. As I understand it you can roll the money over to apply to series tix but you weren't guaranteed them by buying ALCS tix.

If I can't through I'm just showing up Saturday too. Hell if worse comes to worse I'll watch the game at grimy Jimbo's. A friend of a co-worker got tix to the ALCS last week--I believe they were face value at $60. He turned around and sold three of them for $600 APIECE. Ticketing is literally a black market now in this country, wit the Internet and all the other scams. However, I could possibly see this backfiring--if so many people snatch up so many tickets hoping to get rich selling them, I'm thinking they'll bite off more than they can, well, sell and there'll be opportunities to make some eat them at face value or close to it.

Forget it. And I'll tell you why. We could win three World Series back-to-back and this will still be, and always will be, a Cubs town (I mean within the city limits). I'm sure there've been many threads here about why the Cubs outdraw the Sox every year; no need to rehash that. Of all the theories I've heard, the most sensible one to me was that we both have the same number of hardcore fans, but the amount of "casual" Cub fans absolutely dwarfs the Sox. While I think the Sox winning consistently would definitely boost the attendance somewhat, they are still the Sox and that is not Wrigley Field. The Cubs "experience" is a Chicago legend--the actual game is secondary. With the Sox, we've got the game but unless they rebuild the Cell on Lake Michigan's shores, the "experience" isn't the same. We go to games to watch baseball. Wrigley and the Cubs have made a goldmine off people who go just to... go. But let me tell you a little something about how, even as the Sox-crazy local media has been giving us our due finally, there's a reality here. I live on the North side--between Belmont and Diversey on the lake. All weekend I went to my local to watch the games, because there's a handful of Sox fans that are regulars there. Friday and Saturday night there was a pretty good turnout. Last night, to my amazement, there was maybe 1/2 the people or less. Here we are on the brink of the WORLD SERIES going for the clinch, and barely anybody's out. Granted it was a school night, but the difference between that and the '03 Cubs playoffs was like night and day. During that, every single place up and down Broadway by me was packed with people watching the game. Each and every game. In and around Wrigley those weeks, it was like Mardi Gras. There were news helicopters overhead for almost two weeks it seemed. Granted I'm in the heart of Cubland, but you'd think there were at least some casual fans or bandwagon jumpers out and about! So the Sox win and we go nuts--the champagne flows, we sing songs and high-five each other. After a while, it's time to take a stroll down Broadway. There was nobody. And I mean nobody. No firecrackers, car honking, people screaming--nada. It was like any other Sunday night at 11PM. This morning I ran into an old boss who lives right off Lincoln Ave. in the heart of Lincoln Park--so a bit removed from Wrigleyville. He's by Lincoln & Belden, where there's a stretch of bars usually packed with sports fans, including Barleycorn's and Kelsey's. FYI Barleycorn's was a huge hangout for people watching the Bulls back in the '90s. He said after they won he went out on his roof to listen to the pandemonium and... nothing. No fireworks, screaming, nada. He said on a regular Saturday night there's more noise than there was last night. I was shocked that even there it was a ghost town. And so it was on the North side: a huge, gaping void. No street celebrations, no Sox flags flying, barely any "GO SOX" materials to be seen. Had it been the Cubs, I guarantee you that party would STILL be going. By me, downtown, everywhere except the South side. Point being: last night cemented more than ever for me the reality that we are basically like a team in another city--the other city being the Southside. Sure people in Bridgeport and by Midway were all crazy (and by the Cell, LOL), but it just reinforces the idea that the Sox are very much a Southside allegiance, and have nowhere near the city (and suburban) wide fanbase that the Cubs have. I'm guessing that during the Series starting this weekend, even a four-game sweep will be met with a collective sigh around my 'hood. Sure, there's pockets of us here but again: to the average Chicagoan, they, quite simply, root for the Cubs. Look on the bright side though: when the Cubs almost did it in '03, that glimmer of hope drove their ticket demand through the ceiling. Even as recently as this summer, it is difficult to get Cubs tix for ANY game, much less marquee teams playing them. They are pretty much sold out every game. Do you want that at the Cell? I don't. I like our stepchild status and the fact that although they may have the celebrities, the fawning coverage, the stupid Jimmie Buffett concerts and the hearts of the majority of the city--we're better than them. This takes the sting off the split with them in the Crosstown (which is ultimately a meaningless series anyway): now no Cub fan can talk any smack about us: we're in the Big Dance! BTW I can also tell you that there is unbelievable bitterness among Cub fans that we've gotten this far. Even at the place last night, there was one a-hole who was rooting for the Angels. Because he's was a Cubs fan. So that, combined with Sox-hating (not that some here aren't above the opposite) means that you're not going to see a lot of casual or fence-rider fans now get behind the team for the good of Chicago or whatever. They don't consider us representative of Chicago. They feel it should be them. Check out a Cubs board if you want to see how bitter they are. Jesus!

Already on Craig's List somebody's offering up four tix in sec. 139. For the low, low bargain price of only $4,000 PER ticket. Amazing. I'll be curious to hear of success stories tomorrow trying to do it the legitimate way. However, here's another thing I can't wait to hear about, since we're on the subject of gouging: I wonder what the "service fee" per ticket that Ticketmaster will charge. As I recall from the regular season, my $30+ ticket usually got nailed with double-digit "fees" from TM for things like "handling." Even though these tix were simply emailed to me for me to print out. I'm guessing, but I'm going to venture that they'll charge at least $20 per ticket in fees. Let me know tomorrow!

QUOTE(3E8 @ Oct 17, 2005 -> 08:50 AM) LMAO! Perfect.

I think we can beat anybody, but I'd like to see St. Louis for an all-Midwest series with the teams having the two best records. Looks like Houston's gonna ice them, though.

AJ running to first base is exactly the type of thing... we hired AJ for. You're right: this has turned into an all-out whinefest. Enough already.

QUOTE(GreatScott82 @ Oct 14, 2005 -> 11:14 AM) If we can some how win 2 of 3 out in Anahiem and pull out a win in game 6 of game 7 to advance to the WS. I think the city would go more than crazy. Remember the '92 finals when the Bulls won it in Chicago? I think it would be 10 times more crazier than that. In '92 the fans overturned taxis. If we clinch the AL pennant this year fans will overturn the loop, the redline, buildings, cars, and more... It would be true pandamonium!! Chicago wants this bad! Sox fans have earned this! Tonites game is HUGE! Go get em Jon G. YOU CAN DO IT!!!!! I expect Pauly to have a HUGE game tonite. I agree that winniing it here would make everybody go bats***. But the worrier side of me of course would like to see us sweep them and wrap it up there. Just beat these clowns--it's all I ask. God, I hate Anaheim...

Jimbo's is two blocks directly across from the park. Somebody here posted the Mapquest map. It is, like they said, a dive. It's not a plasma-screen sports bar. I think they have two TVs. But it is Sox central. Redwood's is a few blocks away, but also not a sports bar. But like everybody said: any sports bar in Chicago is going to be showing the Sox right now, so take your pick. Even the Wrigleyville bars are showing the Sox games. So you can't go wrong.