Refighting Old Battles

I squared off against Harold Baines, he of the 1628 career rbi’s, in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday.  With Wrigley Field celebrating its 100^th anniversary, a Trib reporter thought it would be fun to offer a “what if” column, as in what if Comiskey Park had been renovated in the 1990s instead of being replaced by US Cellular Field, aka (very appropriately, I might add), the Cell?

I belonged to a group, Save Our Sox, that tried with all its tiny might to push the renovation option; my book, Baseball Palace of the World, recounts our struggles to be heard.  The White Sox did a very good job of controlling the issue by threatening to move (to Orlando’s Tropicana Field, of all places), if they didn’t get a new, publicly funded facility, and they employed a Chicken-Little attack strategy:  Eek! The park is falling down!  Run, because we sure as all hell will!

Baines was making pretty much the same argument a quarter-century later.  “The playing surface was fine,” Baines said Sunday, “but when I played in the outfield, bricks in right field would fall down.”  Liar, liar, pants on fire, Harold.  Why would city building inspectors risk injury to fans and players alike?  How did the White Sox manage to get liability and property insurance coverage, I mean, if the park was falling down and all?

The first time I took Clare to Wrigley Field, I told her to take it all in, how easy it was to walk in off the street to our seats, how close we were to the field and everyone else, how the park exuded personality from the outfield wells to the Deco scoreboard and clock.  This is a ballpark, I told her.

A renovated ballpark with an eye to 21^st century revenue streams is better than a ballpark turned into a parking lot, as at 35^th and Shields.  But the constant need to offer entertainment in addition to the game itself and the constant price gouging for everything from hotdogs to beer, I hate it.  Thank heaven for a daughter who played softball for so long and so well.

Games at Morton and Elmhurst were simplicity itself, and I was able to see my very own Babe Ruth.  If only I could have taken her to the ballpark my father took me….