With Friends Like These...

As recently as last week, baseball owners made it sound like conditions weren’t right to play the game, Now, all of a sudden, teams are clamoring to get fans back into the stands.

 

I imagine every city has someone like the Cubs’ Crane Kenney, team president of business operations.  Kenney was all over Chicago sports yesterday and today for saying on the radio that the Cubs were “very hopeful” they could safely get 8,000 fans into Wrigley Field for a ballgame.  Kenney came up with that number based on the 20 percent cap on seating capacity for outdoor sporting events included in Illinois’ stage-four COVID-19 reopening plan.

 

Again, these guys were willing to blow up the season last week and now they’re working with medical experts to find a way to “safely bring some portion of our fan base” back to games?  What gives?  Curious minds want to know.

 

At 20 percent, Wrigley Field is going to look like it did back in the early ’60s, when bad teams drove attendance ever downward.  Even if every person let in was a veteran of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, they wouldn’t be able to generate the concession sales anywhere near what the Cubs expect on a per-game basis in normal times.  So, again, what gives?

 

Optics is my guess.  No fans in the stands will look weird to all those fans watching from the couch.  A sprinkling of faces would add a touch of normality to things.  And this isn’t just for the Cubs and baseball.  You think the NFL isn’t concerned bigtime with the optics of how 90,000 empty seats will look on a Sunday afternoon in November?  Or, perish the thought, in February for Super Bowl LV in Tampa Bay?

 

Would I go to a game and be a prop for the show?  For the Cubs, you’d have to pay me.  But for the White Sox, probably.  Why?  For my sanity is why.

 

I’ve reached that point in life where I don’t want to burn through days, weeks or seasons.  If I turn my back on this baseball season, there’s no te;;ing how many more I have left.  So, I could go to a game, mumbling as South Siders always do, about powers that be and who’s batting leadoff.