The Chicago Shite Sox

[CBStew]

I really don't wish the Sox ill (I think that rivalry matters a hell of a lot more if you know actual White Sox fans

Nvm. I take it back. Fuck these people. https://twitter.com/StartKyleOrton/status/628750846247833601

Damn fun indeed.

He started hounding me after I tweeted "Remember when the White Sox didn't trade Samardzija because they were contenders" while the Sox were getting shelled again for the 4th time in 5 games or whatever, and he responded with REMEMBER 1908 1908 WAS A LONG ASS TIME AGO.  It all went downhill from there. I have to assume you locals deal with guys like this in real life on a not infrequent basis, so I get it. I get it. The bastards can rot.

You still need to learn the simple pleasure in breaking Sox fans' balls while not caring about their team...if you get emotionally invested, you can't bask in the glow of their chapped asses.

It's true, I should never have engaged, but jesus.

I also don't get the mentality of denying that your team sucks, although I know that's how many fans operate. When my highly paid team of big free agent acquisitions plays like garbage and sits at 50-55 in August, I lead the charge to say they suck, I don't go around looking for people bashing them on the internet and screaming NUH UH UR TEAM SUX.

That guy's whole feed is about the Cubs. How many Cubs fans are tweeting about the Sox in any capacity?

Well I mean I had the gall to tweet an innocuous comment about how keeping Snork was dumb. I've also mocked the Padres hilariously fucked up deadline decisions but not gotten a bunch of YEAH!?!! 1984?!!111111 in response, oddly enough.

I don't know, he's not all bad.

https://twitter.com/Bears4Harbaugh/status/628922646885986304

Bears fans like me who blame everything on Jay Cutler really are the worst.

If he is not to blame, who is?

[SKO]

I really don't wish the Sox ill (I think that rivalry matters a hell of a lot more if you know actual White Sox fans

Nvm. I take it back. Fuck these people. https://twitter.com/StartKyleOrton/status/628750846247833601

Damn fun indeed.

He started hounding me after I tweeted "Remember when the White Sox didn't trade Samardzija because they were contenders" while the Sox were getting shelled again for the 4th time in 5 games or whatever, and he responded with REMEMBER 1908 1908 WAS A LONG ASS TIME AGO.  It all went downhill from there. I have to assume you locals deal with guys like this in real life on a not infrequent basis, so I get it. I get it. The bastards can rot.

You still need to learn the simple pleasure in breaking Sox fans' balls while not caring about their team...if you get emotionally invested, you can't bask in the glow of their chapped asses.

It's true, I should never have engaged, but jesus.

I also don't get the mentality of denying that your team sucks, although I know that's how many fans operate. When my highly paid team of big free agent acquisitions plays like garbage and sits at 50-55 in August, I lead the charge to say they suck, I don't go around looking for people bashing them on the internet and screaming NUH UH UR TEAM SUX.

That guy's whole feed is about the Cubs. How many Cubs fans are tweeting about the Sox in any capacity?

Well I mean I had the gall to tweet an innocuous comment about how keeping Snork was dumb. I've also mocked the Padres hilariously fucked up deadline decisions but not gotten a bunch of YEAH!?!! 1984?!!111111 in response, oddly enough.

I don't know, he's not all bad.

https://twitter.com/Bears4Harbaugh/status/628922646885986304

Bears fans like me who blame everything on Jay Cutler really are the worst.

If he is not to blame, who is?

well as that guy pointed out, clearly I am. I'm sorry. The Bears are my fault, people.

[Saul Goodman]

So when are the Bears getting Harbaugh?

[Brownie]

You still need to learn the simple pleasure in breaking Sox fans' balls while not caring about their team...if you get emotionally invested, you can't bask in the glow of their chapped asses.

You almost want to feel sorry for the Sox at times.

Those older than me can relate the White Sox unstable ownership situation from the late 60s until Reinsdorf bought them. They played home games at County Stadium in 1968 and 1969, and might very well have wound up there had Bud Selig not bought the Pilots out of BK at the end of Spring Training 1970. They exiled their team on Channel 32, back when not everyone had UHF attennas, and put them on low power radio stations (that they had a few suburban stations on their network because if you were driving from Waukegan to Evanston to Aurora to Joliet to Calumet City to Michigan City, you probably would have to change the station a half dozen times to listen to the Sox. They got a once-in-a-generation player like Dick Allen in 1972, only to learn that he's a bit of a head case, so his reign on the South Side was very short.

When Bill Veeck bought the team, he really had no resources to own a club, but he did it because the Sox surely were headed elsewhere if he didn't buy them. He instituted rent-a-player, which was good for a moderate run at the AL West title (the Bronx Zoo Yankees would have waxed them in the 1977 ALCS).

Despite having Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall providing the most provocative call in baseball history, no one watched Sox games and no one attended, unless tickets were $0.98 Steve Dahl was going to show up and blow up a bunch of records at second base between games of a doubleheader. Maybe it was how inaccessible the team was. As soon as everyone got used to Channel 32, the Sox then moved to Channel 44, before going back to Channel 32 and Pay TV. They had no resources, which explains why they replaced Bob Lemon with an over-the-hill Don Kessinger as Player-Manager and then replaced Kessinger with a guy who had no experience (Tony LaRussa), while teams like Detroit and Milwaukee and California and Oakland hired guys like Sparky Anderson, Buck Rodgers, Gene Mauch and Billy Martin.

When Veeck sold to Reinsdorf/Einhorn, the ballpark was decrepit (neglected for at least 20 years if not more), the team was devoid of stars (Harold Baines was just coming up and Chet Lemon was about as good as it got which explained the aggressive signings of Fisk and Niles native Greg Luzinski), the neighborhood was shit (thanks to many policies developed by Sox superfan No. 1 Richard J. Daley and his cadre of machine pols), and two of the most popular names associated with the team were Piersall and Caray, both of whom Reinsdord axed at the end of 1982.

So.... Harry Caray went 7 miles north and broadcast day games on a free TV station that was putting its signal over a satellite, showing scenes from a ballpark almost as old as Comiskey (but better cared for; ironically both ballparks have Veeck's fingerprints all over them), with a team that had better resources and a better plan to win. Seriously.

The White Sox' aggressiveness early on paid dividends. Ron Kittle was lightning in a bottle for a year, and LaMarr Hoyt, Britt Burns, Floyd Bannister and Richard Dotson were a nice rotation (too bad Burns, Bannister and Dotson had injury problems). Fisk, Luzinski and Baines combined with Kittle to form a nice middle of the lineup that they could afford to make Julio Cruz the highest-paid second baseman in baseball (to be a mediocre fielder who struggled to hit .200) and trot the Law brothers (Rudy and Vance) out every day.

The Sox won 99 games, but don't be fooled: the Orioles were a better team. Also, it was a down year for Kansas City and the Angels, and both teams certainly would be back, while the Twins were quietly rebuilding a nice nucleus. The Sox couldn't see that. Instead, they threw a ton of cash at Julio Cruz and signed Tom Seaver to bolster the rotation. World Series, they said. I was in third grade, and it was hard getting mocked by all the Johnny-come-lately Sox fans who were every bit the shtibird in third grade as they are in adulthood. But we all know what happened in 1984.

OK, the Sox buzz had worn off and the Cubs played in the daytime, and there's nothing better to do on a day off than go to Wrigley Field on a hot summer day and watch the likes of Sandberg, Durham, Sutcliffe and Lee Smith and walk around the ballpark and know you can follow the Cubs anywhere because they were ubiquitous on every cable system (and in most hotels). If you were a Sox fan, you were not paying to get ONTV or SportsVision (the precursor to SportsChannel, and SportsVision was a premium channel like HBO). Interestingly, the Hawks and the Sox chose that route, and it served neither team....

[Brownie]

...
And then the Sox core got old (as the Cubs core did), and they had to gut. Instead of keeping Roland Hemond in the job, Reinsdorf hired....




And thus a year of horrible mismanagement occured. The Genius: Fired! Carlton Fisk: told to play left field. Bobby Bonilla: dealt for Jose DeLeon. The Cubs were in the toilet, but the Mets were dominant anyway, and the Cubs had a farm system that nearly rivals today's: Dave Martinez, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark Grace, Jamie Moyer, Greg Maddux, Damon Berryhill, Joe Girardi, etc., etc. Plus, there was talk the Expos' Andre Dawson wanted to come here in 1987.

The Sox were rancid in 1987. The Cubs finished last, but they were not a bad last-place team, hanging in the race until after the All-Star Break. Wrigley was THE place to be in the summer, and there was talk that Harold Washington and Dallas Green were going to come to an agreement to put lights in the ballpark. The White Sox? Who were they? They were awful, they had replaced their garish early-80s uniforms with the most non-descript unis in baseball history, and they were playing hardball with the city and state, planning on moving to St. Pete by 1989. (CT discussed his memories of Clearwater, 1988, a few days ago). If not for Mike Madigan and Jim Thompson railroading the Illinois Sports Facility bill through the General Assmebly, the Sox could be the Rays (and maybe the AL expansion team in 1998 would have been in Chicago. Discuss that).

It was very easy to feel bad for Sox fans up to that point. They could have had the beautiful, historic ballpark, a team watched coast-to-coast by adoring fans, and just about everything the Cubs had. But the franchise had no clue. Reinsdorf brought stability, and as soon as he got his ballpark his organization improved. But still, who outside of Madison St. on the north, Rte. 59 on the West, US 30 to the South and US 421 to the east gives a fuck about the White Sox?

[Saul Goodman]

Serious question: Has anyone ever written the definitive "Hawk Runs the Sox" book, oral history, feature story? That should make for some fascinating reading.

[CT III]

Serious question: Has anyone ever written the definitive "Hawk Runs the Sox" book, oral history, feature story? That should make for some fascinating reading.

I'd settle for a psychology text that examined Jerry Reinsdorf's weird relationship with everyone he's ever hired.

[InternetApex]

Thanks, TJ. Most of that is brand new to me.

[Quality Start Machine]

Is this a good place to revisit in more depth the boondoggle that is New Comiskey? They turned down a ballpark design that would eventually become Camden Yards because it was "too much like Wrigley", then opened their brand-spanking-new ballpark with every possible inch decked out in royal blue...Cubs blue.

Then there was the upper deck debacle, where they had to remove part of the upper deck after determining that nobody would sit in the cheap seats without a Sherpa there to guide them. What a beautiful clusterfuck.

[Chuck to Chuck]

Is this a good place to revisit in more depth the boondoggle that is New Comiskey?

Then there's the part where the Sox basically pay no rent. For new additions.  And keep the revenue.

In 2010 Reinsdorf negotiated a deal with IFSA in which taxpayers paid about $6.9 million to build a restaurant for which the White Sox get to keep all the proceeds—which may be an even sweeter deal than the original one to build the ballpark.

When the Tribune asked why he'd agree to these terms, (former Governor Jim) Thompson replied, "We said to Jerry, 'Jerry, can we have part of the profits?' And he said, no. We said, OK. I've known Jerry for 52 years. He's tough. He's tough."

Corporate Welfare at its finest.

Watch out, Milwaukee. Your governor is trying to give the Bucks a similar deal.

[World's #1 Astros Fan]

It was pointed out, when this image came out (I believe it was on the cover of the Sox pocket schedules as well as various other bits of marketing flotsam), that home plate was upside down.  Too bad this is an apparently truncated image.

[World's #1 Astros Fan]

Is this a good place to revisit in more depth the boondoggle that is New Comiskey? They turned down a ballpark design that would eventually become Camden Yards because it was "too much like Wrigley", then opened their brand-spanking-new ballpark with every possible inch decked out in royal blue...Cubs blue.

Then there was the upper deck debacle, where they had to remove part of the upper deck after determining that nobody would sit in the cheap seats without a Sherpa there to guide them. What a beautiful clusterfuck.

Comiskey is considered the last of the "big bowl" cookie-cutter ballparks that were all the rage in the 1970's.  The next one built after it was Camden, then Jacobs (now Progressive) Field, the Ballpark in Arlington etc.  Way to be cutting edge, dipshits.

[Slaky]

Thanks, TJ. Most of that is brand new to me.

That was, extremely, extremely good. It completely explains in detail why we and everyone else give a shit about the Sox until one of their meth addled street soldiers is yapping about the Cubs in our ear. Even though I feel like we all knew why the Cubs have a big national profile and the Sox don't - that's about as definitive as it gets.

[CT III]

Is this a good place to revisit in more depth the boondoggle that is New Comiskey? They turned down a ballpark design that would eventually become Camden Yards because it was "too much like Wrigley", then opened their brand-spanking-new ballpark with every possible inch decked out in royal blue...Cubs blue.

Then there was the upper deck debacle, where they had to remove part of the upper deck after determining that nobody would sit in the cheap seats without a Sherpa there to guide them. What a beautiful clusterfuck.

Comiskey is considered the last of the "big bowl" cookie-cutter ballparks that were all the rage in the 1970's.  The next one built after it was Camden, then Jacobs (now Progressive) Field, the Ballpark in Arlington etc.  Way to be cutting edge, dipshits.

See that's the thing, Comiskey ISN'T one of the big bowl parks.  The cookie cutters were almost all baseball/football multi-use parks built during the 70s and 80s.  It's more an oddity than anything else.  The first of the wave of baseball-only parks to be built since Kauffman Stadium, but the only one that didn't embrace the retro-classic design.  It's just kind of an architectural freak, a weird one of a kind orphan of a baseball stadium.

[Brownie]

Is this a good place to revisit in more depth the boondoggle that is New Comiskey? They turned down a ballpark design that would eventually become Camden Yards because it was "too much like Wrigley", then opened their brand-spanking-new ballpark with every possible inch decked out in royal blue...Cubs blue.

Then there was the upper deck debacle, where they had to remove part of the upper deck after determining that nobody would sit in the cheap seats without a Sherpa there to guide them. What a beautiful clusterfuck.

Comiskey is considered the last of the "big bowl" cookie-cutter ballparks that were all the rage in the 1970's.  The next one built after it was Camden, then Jacobs (now Progressive) Field, the Ballpark in Arlington etc.  Way to be cutting edge, dipshits.

See that's the thing, Comiskey ISN'T one of the big bowl parks.  The cookie cutters were almost all baseball/football multi-use parks built during the 70s and 80s.  It's more an oddity than anything else.  The first of the wave of baseball-only parks to be built since Kauffman Stadium, but the only one that didn't embrace the retro-classic design.  It's just kind of an architectural freak, a weird one of a kind orphan of a baseball stadium.

To be fair, it's a hybrid. They took elements of Dodger Stadium and Kauffamn Stadium, but wanted to keep the stands' distance from the action a la the pre-Mt. Davis Oakland Coliseum.

During the Bears seemingly interminable stadium negotiations in the 90s (aside: I give it another 10 years before the Bears agitate for new digs), Mayor Daley suggested the Bears move into Sox Park.  I can't find the article but I recall reading just prior to the Soldier Field rehab passing in Springfield, that the Sox and city were entertaining a do-over baseball park in the South Loop with the Bears taking over Comiskular.