Ten Times Worse Than Stated

The announced attendance for last Monday’s Rays-White Sox game at Guaranteed Rate Whatever was 10,377.  But somebody from the Tampa Bay Times with nothing else to do came up with a corrected figure of 974 souls in the ball-mall.  Sad to say, I have to agree with that second total.  Television cameras don’t lie, right?

Saturday was another absolutely miserable day in Chicago, temperature in the forties, a nasty wind to go with the afternoon drizzle that followed early AM showers.  And still the Cubs played to an announced crowd of more than 36,000 people.  Again, judging by the TV cameras, there was nowhere near that number of people shivering in their seats, but I’d guess the crowd started out in the neighborhood of 15,000 or so.  These numbers could double as canaries for their respective coal mines cum ballparks.

The White Sox are betting that fans will come out in force once the weather changes and the rebuild progresses.  But what if the temperature heats up and the Sox don’t?  We didn’t trade Chris Sale to get Yoan Moncada in order for him to start the season fanning 24 times in 49 at-bats.  At least, I hope we didn’t. 

The notion of a rebuild needs to be applied to the area around 35^th and Shields.  For the past quarter-century, the Sox have been content to fiddle with the design mistakes of their stadium.  Only a total rebuild in that regard would suffice.  Until it happens, someone in that organization needs to wake up and see the need to create a neighborhood around the team.

A “Soxville” doesn’t need to be a clone of Wrigleyville.  What it needs to do is give fans a reason to come early and stay late, whatever the state of the current rebuild.  Anything less is just whistling past the graveyard.