What If?

A story in today’s Sun-Times indicates Chicago-area voters aren’t keen on the idea of subsidizing a Bears’ stadium in Arlington Heights, not that the Munsters have asked, not yet anyway. How times have changed. The White Sox got a free stadium in 1991—they pay rent, though no one seems to know exactly how much—by threatening to move to Florida; before that, they thought they could get a nice subsidy because, as a team brochure from the time put it, “This is an economic reality of baseball today!” today being 1986. I bet you the Bears wish it was still 1986. Fresh off a Super Bowl win, they could’ve had the facility of their dreams. And if the Sox had gotten their way and built in west-suburban Cook County? My guess, based off the god-awful concept drawing in that brochure showing a series of exterior ramps straight out of a parking garage, is they would’ve been hollering for a new stadium by now. And they would’ve wanted back into the city, and they would’ve taken a stadium on the land that once housed Comiskey Park. The more things change…