Bricks and Ivy

Why is the Ricketts family acting like the Keystone Cops?  I take that back.  The Cops would have gotten Wrigley Field’s renovation started by now.

Late last month, Cub management announced plans to move the bullpens from foul territory down either line to a spot under the outfield bleachers.  This would require knocking holes into the outfield walls for pitchers to look out through, and that would mean getting rid of some landmark protected bricks, to say nothing of ivy.

The only problem is, the Cubs don’t have the authority to do any of that, as they learned when city hall told them as much, and I couldn’t be happier.  The ballpark is an official landmark that its owners can’t gut as they please.  I’m sure the Cubs would love to pull off what the White Sox did nearly twenty years ago by claiming, it ain’t original.  The bleachers and ivy date to the late 1930s.

When the White Sox were hell-bent on getting a new facility for free in the 1980s, they had to go through the motions of submitting to a report on the historic nature of Comiskey Park, this strictly from an engineering standpoint.  Talk about stacking the deck.  The report came back that very little of the original facility from 1910 was still around, ergo, there was nothing historic to save.  Case closed, the White Sox feed from the public trough.  Indeed, the late ’80s were very different times.

People tend to think of landmarks—if they do at all—as places frozen in time, like the birthplace of someone famous.  Call it log-cabin syndrome.  But by this definition, hardly anything qualifies as a landmark.  Do you think the White House has remained unchanged since its opening in 1801?  My god, Obama has electricity.  Tear it down!

Well, that’s how my White Sox would do it.