caulfield12

"The year 2008 marked the end of the organization’s 18-year rent-free agreement with Illinois. The team would only pay a standard clear-cut $1.5 million in property taxes. Reinsdorf was allowed to keep all money grossed in concessions, parking, tickets and so on. This new deal negotiated the terms that the White Sox would begin to pay a base rent to the state of Illinois. The amount they would pay was agreed to be based on annual attendance number. If 1.9 million fans or more attended, Reinsdorf would have to pay somewhere between $3-9 per ticket sold that year. "According to Shia Kapos of chicagobusiness.com, “the paid attendance (in 2010) was 2,074,011, exceeding the trigger by 149,011. So Mr. Reinsdorf paid $455,974, or about $3 per ticket.”" Adding that to the $1.5 million, it barely seems like anything. Most of the 40-man-roster if not the eternity was paid more than $2 million that year. The last time the White Sox hosted more than 1.9 million fans was 2013. Reinsdorf has not paid a ticket fee in six years. Meanwhile, he keeps all the money grossed in concessions, merchandise, parking, and even tickets. Most teams pay anywhere between $10 to 20 million for their lease, but not smart businessman Reinsdorf. He can save a couple million by not allowing the team to essentially get better. Because the better the team gets, the more tickets they sell. The more tickets they sell means a higher attendance rate, higher than 1.9 million. That means Reinsdorf has to go into his own pocket to pay the state of Illinois for his franchise to play on the south side of Chicago. This is why it took so long for the team to finally strip down and start over in 2016." https://southsideshowdown.com/2019/02/22/white-sox-exposing-jerry-reinsdorf/

It was a ridiculously low number though....something like either 800,000 or 1.2 million. Would have to look it up again. "According to a 2017 financial report, ISFA’s combined fund deficits stand at $207.5 million. And taxpayers are still on the hook for debt repayments following a series of renovations at Guaranteed Rate Field and an overhaul of Soldier Field completed in 2003. Through Chicago hotel tax revenue and a combined $10 million in annual state and local subsidies, taxpayers can expect to continue shouldering these costs for decades. More recently, a cancelled concert at Guaranteed Rate Field cost taxpayers more than $1 million in 2017, when ISFA failed to obtain a full refund for the $1.6 million spent on the event. Chicago taxpayers are also picking up the tab for stadiums outside ISFA’s purview. For example, the recent construction of Wintrust Arena, home to DePaul University’s basketball teams and WNBA’s Chicago Sky, cost taxpayers $82.5 million." https://www.illinoispolicy.org/30-years-later-taxpayers-still-on-the-hook-for-white-sox-stadium/

Trolling much? Fathom? I don't think any born and bred Sox fan is every going to CHEER for the Cubs...maybe if they were in the World Series against the Yankees or Red Sox, but not even then. At any rate, the ONLY reason to support the Cubs (especially financially) is to exert some type of pressure on JR/Hahn to get their collective heads out of their asses. Highly unlikely to make much of a difference with the media rights money becoming increasingly more important than ticket sales/walk-ups. This thread would be more germane were/if the Sox to ever leave the city of Chicago for somewhere well BEYOND the immediate suburbs...and the franchise name was changed from White Sox.

Expected Greg to have written this...

I'm from Bettendorf, haha. Will be back again this July/August for Bix weekend and my mother's memorial mass at St. John Vianney. Small world. A lot of my students here in China that do CS want to go into Data Science, like Carnegie Mellon... My best IB student went there two years ago, and it's becoming an increasingly common choice compared to Econ/Finance (due to all the global economic uncertainty and crackdown on tech companies here in China). Of course, many are chasing anything related to game design/coding/animation...along with all those "quant" types that still want stock market/investing careers. EEE is a very common choice as well, anything Engineering-related. Health care/medicine is not lucrative unless you're a surgeon and don't work for a public hospital or clinic.

Here's mine 1993-94 Graduate with MS Sports Admin, two go with BA English (Iowa) minors in history and political science 1994-95 Director of Stadium Operations and Public Relations, Augusta GreenJackets (turned down $500 internship from Red Sox per month to make more money doing sales in offseason, big big mistake but I was just a middle class kid from Iowa, also had job with Cardinals but made a bad joke about selling free/comp tickets for profit, lol, because interns are so poor) 1996 Director of Quest Foundation, USA, non-profit co-founded with Arthur Marshall, Jr., of Denver Broncos/NY Giants (look up what happened to him during the mortgage crisis, it's a crazy story of an NFL footballer ending up in Federal Prison in Miami and even cheating his father's Foreign Legion/VFW post out of hundreds of thousands of dollars) 1997 Looking at PR jobs in Kansas City. Driving a snowplow doing blue collar work for girlfriend's dad. Corporate Communications group...drove a Mercedes 600 S and was aide/assistant to David Westbrook, one of the biggest PR leaders in KC at the time (also blind) 1998 AmeriCorps (National Service Volunteer), Kansas City KS (probably more dangerous than East St. Louis at the time) 1999-2002 Program Director of Youth Volunteer Corps, Greater Kansas City MO area...was privileged to work with two billionaires on their civic projects, Tom Bloch (H&R Bloch founder's son, see his work with inner city charter schools, University Academy as well as books on national service/volunteer teaching at St. Francis Xavier) and Adele Hall, Hallmark Cards founder Don Hall's wife Adele Hall (well, technically Lawrence, KS) 2005-2006 Teaching at an international high school in Colombia (Armenia/Quindio, between Cali and Medellin, perfect weather there, in mountains/finca/coffee growing area) 2002-2007 Teaching English and Social Studies through Teach for America program, Paseo and Northeast in KCMOSD (rough rough rough) Same as Texsox's story....only a 29 ACT but never studied for any tests like AP or ACT (24 on English, my university major (Haha) and 29/30/31 on three other subjects, never took twice because knew I was going to Univ of Iowa and had a girlfriend in hometown one hour away), 3.4-3.6 student entire life but never studied except Sunday nights, all my friends went to Northwestern Univ. from high school but I ended up saving a lot of money going to a public university for low-paying humanities programs (International Writer's Workshop/Creative Writing, etc.) Have now taught 12 years (Economics, English and History/Social Studies) in 3 different cities in China (went through Covid origins here in Wuhan of all places from 2020-2023), 2 years in Thailand, 3 months in Indonesia and South Korea (two long stories there, one involving working for wife's brother's business), one year in Colombia, another 4-6 months in the Philippines working and teaching...another Master's degree in Curriculum & Instruction (waste of time!) but I had to do that since teaching without a license (Teach for America) and also coaching volleyball/basketball/soccer and baseball at the same time, lol...certification in American Humanics/non-profit management at Rockhurst Univ. So roughly 20 years of teaching and traveling....gave up pension and will have $1000 per month at 70 from my accumulated units of SS, ha Basically my favorite thing to do now is working with graduating students on US and UK applications essays, CAL system essays, individual supplemental essays...but that's now being threatened by CHAT GPT-4) another year or two and I will be obsolete/retired by 54-55...wife 38 and still working for at least 20 more years, just bought a house and son just finished 2nd grade in our primary (all my friends growing up, their kids have graduated from university or are in the process of doing so, but I traveled all around the world in 00's and 10's (first wife from Russia, second wife from here in Wuhan, China)...too late to do a 3rd Master's and do guidance/career counseling, so I basically do it as my second job in school along with teaching so I can maintain my vacation time for traveling (Thailand/Japan/USA this summer) Want to get back involved with non-profit work and maybe pickleball, haha...collecting baseball cards and autographed memorabilia again has been fun again Now, mostly play badminton, ultimate frisbee, soccer, walking...to try to stay in shape at this point in my life If I was a billionaire family member, probably would have been a lawyer or run for political office as a Dem, lol

Preller's too far into this to reverse course, and the Dodgers aren't taking advantage of this 20 game stretch without Tatis to run away with the division early. Bottom line, LA and SD still 2 out of the top 8 teams in MLB in terms of odds to win the World Series. That said, Snell has been total garbage, Darvish not as reliable as usual and Musgrove had a setback in his injury rehab. So they're already using the likes of Martinez, Weathers, Seth Lugo and Wacha to fill out that rotation. Soto and Machado just aren't hitting. Bogaerts the only one to hit the ground running, and Cronenworth has been fine.

It was about PLAYER HEALTH. Crede and Rowand not being allowed to play/start their first 2-3 seasons because of KW and how hard it was to break into the starting line-up at that time didn't have much if anything at all to do with their health. (Maybe Rowand's motorcycle accident, one of those offseasons. There's one exception, but I'm too tired to look up when/where that happened in his career.) We might as well include Moncada coming up for the 2017 postseason and playing in less than 10 games for Boston while we're at it.

Crazy. The Wise catch (one) is the the one that everyone will still remember 25 years from now...and Harrelson's call.

https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds 7 teams already below 10% odds. LOL at Rockies/Nationals/A's Twins bailed out the Red Sox in extras tonight...and Guardians faltering on the pitching front with two rookies in the rotation and not scoring enough (2022 Oscar Gonzalez has disappeared.)

We have seen it previously with Josh Fields, Dayan Viciedo, Mark Teahen...just off the top of my head. (Then there was KW from CF to 3B, lol.) Don't do it. Leave him at 1B/DH. Jimenez one way or the other is going to prove that he can stay healthy ANY TIME he steps on the diamond. Just really don't know HOW bad things will get returning to Sheets/Jimenez in the OF. Probably should just leave Benintendi alone in LF. No matter what, they're going to be running like wild on the outfield arms if Colas is out of the equation. Can't afford a sub 600 hitter at a corner outfield spot, that much is obvious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IItCXslQnJA

https://www.mlb.com/news/jake-burger-hits-hardest-white-sox-homer-tracked-by-statcast The YERMINATOR BURGER...HE/IT GONE FROM THE MENU!!! "That exit velocity gave Burger the hardest-hit White Sox home run since Statcast began tracking in 2015, and it ranks second in Major League Baseball this season, trailing only Atlanta’s Matt Olson, whose home run on April 11 off Cincinnati's Luis Cessa had an exit velocity of 118.6 mph. Burger also has the sixth-highest exit velocity at 116.5 mph, on his double against the Giants’ Alex Wood on April 6. There appears to be a new celebratory handshake with shortstop Elvis Andrus added into the home run equation, which ends with the two taking a bite of an imaginary hamburger."

Yeah, Jake's better looking than those two. Dennis Quaid too old now. Also, let's not start the Burger to RF for Colas because "he has an average MLB 3B arm" train quite yet... We have to injure Jimenez or Sheets out there first. Sheets almost permanently corkscrewed himself into the turf in Houston trying to turn around on a dime after misreading a fly ball and attempting to adjust his route (reminiscent of the broken ankles resulting in the NBA from trying to guard Chef Curry.) Can't imagine how many bases will be surrendered with Leury and/or Benintendi playing RF with those two arms.

12,542 announced attendance

You know Burger to RF will be suggested because "he has a 3B arm."

Twins going to Jhoan Duran on the road in a 2-2 tie, bottom of the 9th. 100.1 splitter lol.

How long until Jimenez or Sheets in RF for Colas burns the Sox injury or missplay-wise?

99.8 to end the game...

Big quandary whether to extend or trade Reynaldo... that would be quite a punch with Hendriks at the back of the pen. KW would trade and then try to re-sign again in offseason.

Two errors and FC give the Red Sox a 2-2 tie game going into Top of 9 at Fenway.

Pache then top of order next inning...

From 99 to 86.6 slide piece.

Did he high step back to the dugout?