Brick by Brick

As a rule, I hate stupid and lazy.  Too bad those seem to be the two chief qualities of most anyone writing a sports column these days.  This week, the Cubs started their renovation of Wrigley Field by taking down the outfield bleachers.  Of course, television loved the pictures; the slightest hint of thought is beyond your typical sportscaster.  But print journalism is supposed to be different, the real thing, like Woodward and Bernstein or Red Smith at least.

But, No, I wake up this morning to a column celebrating the piles of debris while taking more potshots at Cubs’ president Theo Epstein, who has committed the mortal sin of not sucking up to Chicago sportswriters.  The writer in question even gave himself credit for writing that the ballpark was a dump back as far back as 2003.  You see, to this guy Wrigley is “crumbling and uncomfortable” in need of a fix up that does “without the rust, grime and leaks.”

Why you stupid, lazy so-and-so.  The engineering problems at this one-hundred year old ballpark don’t add up to $575 million, but you don’t care because it’s not your money, and you didn’t care when the Ricketts family wanted $300 million in public funds, because you didn’t figure any of that would be coming out of your pocket either.  Right?  Did you bother to ask any architects how much it would cost to make the park structurally sound with better washrooms, especially for female fans, and how much was going to create the bells and whistles needed to make fans forget how much they’re paying for a ticket?

I want a ballpark that’s first of all safe, then clean and relatively easy to navigate.  Keep your video boards and kiss-cams.  As for state-of-the-art clubhouse facilities, every ballplayer today should get down and his knees and thank God that Yankee Stadium in 1927didn’t have the amenities found in today’s clubhouse.  If it did, Babe Ruth might have hit 120 homeruns.