What You See is What You Get

Yesterday was the first decent day in, oh, months, with a temperature that actually hit 60 degrees and sun into the late afternoon.  That translated into a crowd of 10,401 fans at Guaranteed Rate Whatever for the White Sox 2-1 win over the Rays.

By evening, the clouds had rolled in to produce sprinkles, at least in our speck of Cook County.  That didn’t keep 35,596 people from crowding into Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs beat the Pirates, 13-5.  The disparity in attendance figures should give the Sox “brain trust” pause.

There’s everything to do in Wrigleyville, even go to a ballgame.  At Guaranteed Rate, all you can do is watch fair-to-middling baseball.  Food?  Only if you want to pay for overpriced ballpark fare.  Entertainment?  On the field, not onstage down the street.  A hotel room across from the park?  The Sox never bothered to replace McCuddy’s saloon, let alone think of building a boutique hotel to anchor neighborhood development.

The Cubs will be opening up the “1914 Club” soon—$32,400 buys you a season’s pass, and the 700 or so memberships have been sold out.  This kind of thing gives me the willies, baseball for the one-percent.  But give the devil, or the Ricketts, their due.  The new owners of the Cubs have turned their team and ballpark into a virtual gold mine.  No free agent or extra scout or extra coach should ever be out of their price range.

Meanwhile, the owner of my team sits in his ball mall, reminiscing yet again about how Jackie Robinson impacted his Brooklyn youth.  Jerry Reinsdorf is very respectful of history, except when it came in the form of a ballpark where Larry Doby broke the color line in the American League, Joe Louis won the heavyweight title and Minnie Minoso won over the hearts of a white fan base.  That bit of history he couldn’t wait to tear down.

But all those empty blue seats in the mall really do show up plain as day on TV.