The Mighty Mite

John Cangelosi, I thought he would be our best lead off man since Luis Aparicio.

Living in Florida I watch just about every Rays game. This past off-season the FO surprised everybody down here by trading or not re-signing a bunch of players who were damn good last year, Longoria, Dickerson, Morrison, Souza, Cobb and a few others. I thought that the FO was throwing in the towel on a new stadium and would piss off the fan base and attendance would be so bad that 5,000 would be an nice crowd and would pave the way for a move to another city. Well lo and behold the new guys are playing some really good ball with guys like Duffy, Ramos, Bauers and Snell leading the way. Swept the Yankees last week and just took 2 of 3 from the Astros. They are fun to watch and play sound fundamental ball, not like another team I happen to follow. They actually remind of the team of my youth, the GO-GO SOX OF THE 50s and 60s.

The franchise has become a laughingstock.

The Orioles pitching is worse than ours, if he can't help them, how is he going to help us.

What's the point of going down to Charlotte to rehab, let him rehab with the big club, it's not like he's going hurt the team, it can't get much worse.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 6, 2017 -> 01:03 PM) RR is the best....at losing He's managing a AAA team, maybe worse. When we lose today the Sox will be 4-23 since the All-Star break. I've been a fan since 1952, this is the low point, we are down there with whale ****.

QUOTE (harkness @ Aug 5, 2017 -> 07:23 PM) I'm not sure ive seen a team lose this much.... like 2 wins since the all star break? I can't remember anything like this. You can't expect much more, right now this is a AAA team but I guess that's how a rebuild works.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 5, 2017 -> 06:54 PM) Yes, but you probably planned your retirement with that amount. I am sure Shields has some sophisticated financial planners and such that have already worked the $23 million into his retirement. He might not ever need it, but you never know. Walking away from $23 million is something g not many would do. One thing we can be damn sure on is that his agent is telling him; don't you dare retire.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Aug 5, 2017 -> 06:33 PM) So you would retire in his situation? I highly doubt you would. You have no idea what I would do, everything is relative, back in 1993 I gave up quite a few years in pension time and took an early retirement so I could move to Florida and never put up with another winter in Chiago.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 5, 2017 -> 06:30 PM) I would take my lumps for $23 million. Is it that much? I thought he had a year left at 12 million. EDIT.....per Baseball Reference he gets 21 million in 2018 with the Padres picking up 11 million, 2019 there is a 2 million buyout.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 5, 2017 -> 06:19 PM) Maybe, but I think you are trying to say he should retire. If Shields was 30-0 with an ERA below 1.00, I doubt the Padres or the White Sox would say, you know what, you are outperforming the contract, lets rip it up, and pay you more. So why should he walk away from the money guaranteed to him just because either Father Time and or injury have taken their toll? I know it's hard to walk away from the $$$ but I go back to pride and greed. This guy has already made millions, how much better is he going to live if he hangs around until his contract is over.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 5, 2017 -> 06:12 PM) He is trying. He just doesn't have the stuff anymore. As Dirty Harry said; "a man has to know his limitations".

I have no respect for Shields, no pride. He's stealing a paycheck and should be ashamed of himself. He brings a whole new meaning to the word "greed". The only answer is to eat the rest of his contract.

Has to avoid injuries, easier said than done.

QUOTE (flavum @ Jul 31, 2017 -> 07:16 PM) The Sox would have to eat 12 mil for Shields to go away after this season. Worth it. Bingo, we have saved a lot of money in all these trades, eat the contract.

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ Jul 31, 2017 -> 02:14 PM) Attendance is flat or below 2016, when they sold 100k tix in one week thanks to that hot start in April. But they have played so few weekday games that the average isn't brought down. We can talk about all the problems with the stadium, traffic, pricies, location etc etc etc but when you come right down to it it's the size of the fan base. I don't know the exact figures but my guess is that in the metro area the Cubs rule with somewhere around 66% of the baseball fan base with the Sox picking the remaining 34%. At one time it was 50-50 but a lot of bad moves by ownership led to losing a couple generations of fans.

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ Jul 31, 2017 -> 08:42 AM) Kansas City plays in a parking lot. Look at thier numbers So do the Dodgers, Angels, Brewers and Rangers. Not much around Citi Field either.

QUOTE (steveno89 @ Jul 30, 2017 -> 05:13 PM) Realistically, how much longer are the Sox expected to remain in the existing stadium? I'll agree it has been upgraded and isn't a bad park, but are we looking at ten years? Twenty? Thirty? The current lease is up in 2029.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jul 30, 2017 -> 09:31 AM) Or maybe he moved to Phoenix since there significantly more teams there and it required much less travel for his players... If I'm not mistaken it's still 15 teams in Florida and 15 in Az. Just verified it with Wikipedia. 15-15.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 30, 2017 -> 07:57 AM) This is the first year since the 90's that there wasn't rainouts. So I guess you are right this year http://www.tcpalm.com/story/sports/mlb/spr...fans/100188498/ I've been a fan since the early 1950s and I don't remember ever reading about weather and rain being an issue in Spring Training in the Sunshine state. It all comes down to the owners holding out their greedy hands and saying "show me the money" if you don't build me a stadium in Orlando, Mesa said they will. You know that JR got Sarasota to build them a great facility in the early 90s then being the jerk that he is, he wanted out and got the Orioles to take over the lease and screwed over all the Sox fans that retired to Sarasota to watch their team in ST.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 30, 2017 -> 06:55 AM) 1) "I'm told". Lmao. I'm sure 2) You don't get rainouts in Arizona. You act like it's bad for a guy to want his team to play on land he owns. Oh the horror! Now the Sox share a fairly new facility with the Dodgers and don't have to worry about crappy Florida spring weather, weird. I've lived in Florida for almost 24 years, what is this crappy spring weather you're talking about? The rainy season doesn't start until June. There might be an very rare shower in Spring but most years Florida experiences draught like conditions from October to June. 2017 was one of the driest Winters and Springs in Florida's history, lots of water restrictions and fires breaking out everywhere. I golf 4-5 times a week and can't remember the last time I had to cancel a game because of rain. Even in the rainy season we very seldom get rain in the AM, we tee off at 8am and are done by 11:30 well before the t-storms that start around 2 or 3pm. As far as Arizona goes, it can get nasty out there with cold weather and some rain. I remember watching a PGA World Championship Match Play event out there in March and it was snowing.

QUOTE (WBWSF @ Jul 29, 2017 -> 07:32 AM) 1) I'm told that a new stadium could still be built in the South Loop at Roosevelt and Clark. Keep in mind that the City of Chicago offered to build a stadium at that site in the mid 1980s and JR stupidly rejected the offer. JR wanted to have a stadium built in Addison. Just by coincidence the stadium would have been built on land that he owned. 2) Nobody ever talks about this but for many years the White Sox did their spring training in Sarasota Florida. Out of nowhere JR announced that the team would be moving to Tuscon Arizona for their spring training games. It was somewhat of a head scratcher. Tuscon wasn't really close to the other teams that trained in Arizona. Turns out JR owned the land that the stadium was built on. More tax benefits for JR. Moved to Florida in 1993 and it just was another lousy move by JR in which he screwed Sox fans. I was really pissed as were many Sox fans who lived in Sarasota. Many retirees in Florida retire to towns where their favorite MLB team train. Naples - Ft. Myers has huge number of Red Sox fans as does Lakeland with the Tigers, Clearwater with the Phillies and Bradenton with the Pirates. IIRC the Tigers having been training in Lakeland since the late 1940s.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jul 28, 2017 -> 05:23 PM) Now that I'm a grown ass man and live in the west suburbs, I wish Reinsdorf would have pulled off the move to Addison. I can't even imagine living 10 minutes away from the Sox's stadium, would be so f***ing awesome. I lived in Wheaton at the time of the Addison deal and it would have been great.

QUOTE (mac9001 @ Jul 28, 2017 -> 06:00 PM) Your average Cub fan is not a baseball fan. They're just looking for some decent entertainment. You offer an competitive entertainment experience and people will show up. This is all kind of a moot point as the land they had available is now being developed. But there's no doubt in my mind it presented the best location in Chicagoland for building a huge entertainment focused development anchored with baseball stadium. That entire area, the western burbs and most of Northern Chicago is being heavily developed. If i'm going to build a new stadium it's definitely not on the south side of Chicago. If the south side is the only option I start to seriously considering other cities such as Vegas. Agree, either downtown or a near Western suburb, somewhere like Hillside which would put it smack dab in the middle of the Metro area.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jul 28, 2017 -> 02:02 PM) The fluctuations in attendance back then are crazy: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CH...le-scores.shtml May 28 vs. KC, Tuesday day game: 3,647 May 30 vs. CLE Thursday day doubleheader: 38,150 June 1 vs. DET : Saturday afternoon: 9,413 June 8 vs. BAL: Saturday afternoon: 5,642 June 11 vs. Yankees: Tuesday night: 49,114 June 12 vs. Yankees: Wednesday night: 40,033 Nobody went to games on Saturday afternoons back then? That's true and that was the norm for MLB in those years, usually big Friday night crowds, small Saturday crowds and big crowds on Sunday afternoons and usually a Double Header. I would bet that Saturday afternoons was the only day when the Cubs outdrew the Sox, why I don't know. No Saturday night games back then. My guess is that the work week was a lot different, most worked 9-5 jobs Monday through Friday, Saturday was the day that the old man would work around the house and do other chores but still listening to Bob Elson on the radio. As far as Sunday most everything was closed except drug stores and gas stations.