Dick Allen

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 10:16 AM) Agree. As long as they still upgrade the team from now until Spring Training. Yes, just not the "we'll see where we are at and adjust near the deadline". Get as good as you can get right now, and adjust at the deadline if needed. The other way hasn't worked.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 10:12 AM) I think the really depressing part of it is the fact that from the start the Sox were widely considered to be one of the favorites to land one of the big 3. The fans put a lot of stock in that and followed these stories extremely closely just to wind up with none of them in the end. It may wind up being a HUGE PR hit on the Sox whether its warranted or not. That would be my disappointment, but if they move on to the next tier, I'm fine with that.

QUOTE (SoCalSox @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 10:08 AM) Mirosi RT'd Rosenthal's Nationals/Cespedes tweet from last night just now. Could be nothing but sure seems like the national media is starting to push this. Morosi retweets just about anything Rosenthal tweets.

QUOTE (Baron @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 10:04 AM) Seriously if they dont sign him...maybe Rick Hahn and Robin should stay away from Soxfest for their own safety. Which, while true, is silly. The meatheads will be out in full force embarrassing themselves. I'm going to Soxfest. I hope it doesn't turn into what it could turn into. I am not an autograph guy, I just go to the seminars. I really enjoyed all the fluff last year. Its the time of year you really could use some. All the idiots who complain about not being able to sit right behind the dugout after purchasing a $5 upper deck seat calling people cheap is a trip. But I just don't want to deal with it.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 09:57 AM) I bet Theo skips leg day. He was doing stretches the day I saw him.

QUOTE (Sockin @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 09:53 AM) Not legit until its at a Starbucks. That was funny that Theo was in the Starbucks. I actually had seen him at my health club that day.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 09:29 AM) Yeah Mully has just been upset with the team the past few years to the point where he's more pessimistic about the team. Same with Goff. I don't know if either Boers or Bernstein are/were Sox fans before. Mully is the one though that is totally legit. He hates the Cubs, and enjoys when the Sox are winning. The others are like WSI members, if they aren't going to win the WS, they want them to be as bad as possible, not for the draft picks, but for the complaints.

The Cubs drew more fans per game the next 14 seasons after Harry died than they ever did when he was alive.

QUOTE (shipps @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 09:20 AM) What was pissing me off this morning was the negative talk on the radio with Mully and Hanley. It all stemmed from what Dave Cameron from fangraphs said about the Sox next year. He said that the Sox are pretty much a bad team no matter what they do with Cesepedes because the back end of the rotation "sucks", they have no shortstop and that the lower end of their roster is terrible. While he may be correct the radio guys were jumping on it and riding into their Cubs land joy. The Cubs are great at everything and the Sox are terrible and hopeless with everything. Mully is actually a huge Sox fan.

QUOTE (TheCut87 @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 09:13 AM) yeah, I agree, after a month of the "big 3" talk, I am kind of over it.....just ready for it to be over and for the season to start Yeah, it's gone from fun to a more than a little old.

One thing that really killed the Sox last year was the defense at the beginning with Gillaspie, Alexei being horrid the first couple of months, Micah, and Abreu being lost initially. Opening Day to Opening Day, it should be much better. The Sox did a great job of fixing the infield defense on the fly last year with Saladino, Sanchez and Alexei getting his head on straight, to the point where no one really could complain about the infield defense the second half of the season. It was pretty stellar.

QUOTE (Thad Bosley @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 08:41 AM) Well this is precisely my point when I talk about the mega impact the coming together of Harry Caray and his extraordinary salesmanship and the exposure that came along with superstation WGN. It was a match made in heaven. That guy absolutely sold the Wrigley Field experience like no other. Remember, the Cubs were not the national fixation they are today before Harry arrived there. In fact, in his first season, '82, that game when Lee Elia went off the rails, there were only 3,000 fans in the stands that day. When was the last time you could say there were only 3,000 fans at Wrigley? Now granted, it took Caray a couple of years to take hold on the north side. Cubs fans had to get used to his style after decades of the Jack Brickhouse style. But in '84 he really started to take off, and the Cubs franchise has not looked back ever since. They were a terrible team for most of Harry's time there, with the exception of '84 & '89, but starting in '84, that place was packed to the rafters almost every day and has been ever since. And it's all because of Caray's years of selling Wrigley Field to the gazillions of people across the nation who got WGN in their homes. As for the Sox in the 70s, they absolutely got a bounce from his presence. In fact, that's why the Sox brought him to Chicago in the first place, hoping he would help with what was a disastrous attendance problem back in those days. The Sox drew under 500,000 in 1970, and so Harry's contract starting in 1971 included an attendance clause. The Sox improved their attendance in each of the years he was broadcasting and he received the maximum bonus as per the agreement, to the point that attendance improved so much after a few years that they simply couldn't afford to pay him that bonus any longer. And that was with no where near the exposure he got when he was on WGN. So that was his specialty, selling the experience for whichever team he was employed for. I just wish he would have continued to have done so for the Sox on WGN, like he did for the one year when he had the chance to do so. Unfortunately the owners' egos got in the way of that happening. He had the attendance clause not because he anticipated bringing people into the park, but that would mean the team had more money, so he should be paid more. Think about it, if he is so important, why did the team almost move after 1975 when they didn't even average 10k a game? The attendance was clearly tied to wins and losses. It peaked in 1977 and went down from there until Reinsdorf bought the team and they signed some free agents. The White Sox biggest problem nationally is being on the Southside, always sterotyped as a dangerous place to be. Now you get to hear about how many people get shot on the Southside, and despite it being nowhere near the park, it is still in minds.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 08:33 AM) What are the marketing department's three top talking points for today's efforts to drum up season ticket interest? Why are you so fascinated with season ticket sales? I will tell you one thing, I have a small weekend package right now and yesterday was upgrade day. There wasn't a lot of upgrades available. The people with the good seats kept them.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 08:17 AM) So do Desmond and Jackson. Your point? Once again, where did I equate signing Fowler with 90 losses? Please find the quote. Gordon Beckham, John Danks and Ubaldo Jimenez are Golden Gods. Never said you did, but you mentioned the buzzkill and the hopelessness.You did state with #6 in your Royals manifesto how Fowler could be a good signing for them. Of course, now he would be a horrible idea. Ralph Garr, BB Richard, Alan Bannister, Jim Spencer.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 08:16 AM) Yes, but that's perhaps the only thing on the marketing department's side right now...claiming the Royals were lucky two seasons in a row is getting to be a more difficult sell. Can you show me one marketing department in sports who has ever tried to use fangraphs projections as a means to sell anything? Just stop.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 08:08 AM) I'll quote Cali. You can have $1.6 billion if you can pull the quote where I ever stated/claimed/asserted signing Dexter Fowler equals 90 losses? C'mon, you're supposed to be better than that. Nobody ever said sign Cespedes for $150 million. It was always something like $85-110 million. And yes, if signing Upton made the Tigers World Series contenders, why wouldn't signing Cespedes accomplish the same if the White Sox were the better team last season and also upgraded three other offensive positions? Aren't we 2 games ahead of the Royals for fangraphs projections? Cespedes would put us ahead of Detroit. Signing Fowler also improves the team WAR. The catastrophe of not getting Cespedes is way overblown. He's clearly the better player, but there are other ways to win. There is probably an 8.7852%-15.464 % chacnce Fowler is actually better the next 3 years. And it sets the White Sox up a player for the big free agent class of 2018 if he would take 3 years. Jim Essian, Kirk McCaskill, Kevin Bell, Todd Cruz (wanna buy a watch), Tex Wortham.

QUOTE (Coach @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 07:20 AM) IMO, a huge factor is the location. Nothing to do after the game. Don't want to be around there after dark. Also, who wants to pay good money to see a lousy team who can't run the bases properly, move runners over, get runners in, or even score runs. I will not spend my hard earned money on any inferior product. Bottom line. That has described the Cubs product for a good portion of their attendance dominance. So apparently, playing well has nothing to do with it. Ricketts actually said something interesting last week. He said the Cubs neighborhood was actually pretty s***ty for a lot of their fans. He said it was great for meeting your college buddies and going to a game, but that was about it. He has a point. What is in that neighborhood for kids? They don't have the kids' days and family days like the White Sox do. If anything, it shows getting to the younger generation as quickly as possible doesn't really mean much.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 07:21 AM) Can I trademark that? Because the White Sox are skinflints/JR is cheap/franchise is doomed and Nero is playing his fiddle storyline is more fun to banter about than convincing ourselves how great an addition Dexter Fowler will be and how we've gotten temporary amnesia about rebuilding the farm system. Sox sign Cespedes...possible WS team. Sox sign Fowler, probably the worst team in the division. Will lose at least 90 games. Sometimes if you look at it actually written out, you MAY see how silly it really is. Shawn Abner, Luis Alvarado, Mike Andrews, Ed Herrmann.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jan 21, 2016 -> 12:10 AM) gmab. you know what i meant. i was talking teams. of course if we're going individuals it would be michael. followed by kobe and hakeem. that's just out of guys i've seen play in real time. And tthe warriors still aren't as socially significant as the Jordan/Pippen/Rodman Bulls. That was as Rock Star as an NBA team has ever been. And Hakeem individually wasn't nearly Magic or Bird at the box office.

It would be hysterical if the Sox signed him to a 3 year contract.

QUOTE (captain54 @ Jan 20, 2016 -> 10:26 PM) Wow . I guess you told ME.. I couldn't possibly have a comeback for that.. For a guy who claims he wasn't offended or disgusted, you sure keep making a big deal out of this when the vast majority you have presented this to doesn't care in the very least.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jan 20, 2016 -> 09:18 PM) From a box office/entertainment perspective, I don't think we've seen anything like the Warriors. These guys are so f***ing fun to watch. Only team that comes close to me are the SSOL Suns. For the love of God, there was no box office draw like Michael Jordan. He sold out every arena he played. Miami retired his freaking number.He makes more money selling shoes almost 20 years later a year than he made playing basketball. But they are a lot of fun to watch. If they win the West, there really is no need to play the Finals. They should save the East champ the embarrassment,

QUOTE (captain54 @ Jan 20, 2016 -> 10:16 PM) Difference is, I"m not a high ranking member of the Sox organization, with the potential to further damage an already shaky relationship with the fans.. Get your Facebook friends to protest at USCF. Block the entrances on Opening Day, there should be enough people outraged like you, and call for Cooper's head.

QUOTE (captain54 @ Jan 20, 2016 -> 10:02 PM) never once in the thread did I explicitly state I was offended or disgusted.. I brought it up on WSI as a topic of discussion, and thats all she wrote, pal. But feel free to paint it whatever color or shade you'd care to.. I posted what you wrote at WSI. If it didn't offend you, it wouldn't have been worthy of all the attention you have given it. And your use of "pal" speaks volumes. There is no way a guy who gets so irritated on a message board using pal, doesn't blow a gasket when a customer tells him his service blows. It is funny, Cooper's passion in life gets ripped, he defends it and rips people , that is wrong, but you doing the same thing, no problem. Nobody cares here about it, and only a select few even care about it at a place they freak out when stripes on the road pants get changed.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 20, 2016 -> 08:51 PM) So you suspect Fowler is going to pull in something in the neighborhood of 3/$50? I think it will be less than that. I don't think he will get more than $40 million, if that.