A Traditional Fourth, By and Bye

No old-fashioned, Fourth-of-July doubleheaders on the MLB schedule today, not in this century. White Sox host the Jays in a night game, with Oscar Colas rumored to be on the bench if not back in the starting lineup. And no Sox story in today’s print Tribune; all the news that fits to print, right? I went online at 8:12 AM to check for anything hiding on the website, but nothing there. Plus Alden Global Capital is jacking up the subscription price. Not that they’re going to expand news and sports’ coverage. No, Alden needs to show a tidy quarterly profit. Sort of like John Sherman, majority owner of the Royals. Unless you’re a Royals’ fan or follow stadium issues, you wouldn’t know that one of the worst teams in baseball wants to build a new stadium, with public help, of course. Sherman proposes to ante up half the projected $2 billion cost, which must be the going rate these days for a stadium plus the obligatory surrounding entertainment district. I almost wonder if Sherman and the McCaskeys are trading emails on the subject. Lucky for the Bears they don’t play in Missouri. There’s a sales-tax that helps fund Kauffman Stadium (we love it, but it’s at the end of its useful life, blah-blah-blah). Sherman wants it transferred to his new project, pending approval by voters in whichever Missouri county the Royals can extort the better deal from. Can you imagine anything attached to the McCaskeys put up to a vote in a referendum here in Illinois? How do you say No, in a landslide?