Searching for Clues

I participate in what you might call the new normal, which today included going to church and the mall while wearing a mask, of course.

 

Oak Brook is one of the more upscale malls in and around Chicago; if you can’t find it there, you won’t find it anywhere.  Once upon a time, when the White Sox built their own mall to replace Comiskey Park, they opened a store in Oak Brook.  They probably were as interested in buying as selling.

 

What they wanted was the people who shopped at Oak Brook to become Sox fans; call it mall reciprocity, if you will.  We went to the Sox store a few times; Clare may or may not have been old enough to walk when we did.  The place has been gone for a good ten to fifteen years now.

 

I see that the season’s opener will be Yankees-Nationals, with Gerrit Cole facing off against Matt Scherzer.  I wonder why they aren’t going with Orioles-Marlins.  What we have here, my friends, is baseball desperately trying to make itself relevant again.

 

With the White Sox and every other team that opted for a new stadium since 1990, that meant going upscale, hiding the mall with old-timey trappings a la Camden Yards, or in the case of what went up at 35^th and Shields, not hiding the mall at all.  The results of the upscale strategy aren’t quite what owners would like.  Is it ever for these guys?  So, now we’re going to go real old school with a matchup worthy of Koufax-Marichal or Jenkins-Gibson.  Good luck with that.

 

I bet it’s killing all the bean counters that there won’t be any fans allowed into Nationals Park for the opener.  Truly, there’s nothing sadder than an empty mall.