I'll be honest, I didn't know that Ken Williams was still around. I assumed he was gone years ago.
View: https://twitter.com/BNightengale/status/1694120906531242377
Someone suggested the idea that he would sell the majority stake (but not all) to someone who would then move the team to Nashville.
What if nobody in the city has really cared about that team for over 100 years and they will always be #2? If Nashville can get 30k every night, why not?
Jerry Reinsdorf may as well make himself owner/GM and manager
Well, four years ago the rebuild was looking good. They didn’t totally botch it, exactly, but just one division title has to be viewed as something of a disappointment.
I'm very interested in the job.
My friend Dayn Perry wrote a great article about this a few years ago. Definitely a long read that provides a thorough history of Jerry’s various bluffs and negotiating ploys, but well worth it. Dayn’s a great writer and this piece gave me new insight into the new-stadium-sausage-making process.
Best farm system in baseball not that long ago, plus oodles of young talent like Kopech, Moncada, Robert, Madrigal, Vaughn, etc. Sometimes things don’t work out.
The team is weirdly less than the sum of its parts. On paper, there's a lot of talent there, but, with the exception of Luis Robert and a couple of the pitchers, basically everyone is hurt or underperforming or both.
Totally agree. When so many guys are underperforming, I think you also have to wonder what’s going on, especially with rumors about how terrible the culture is. Imagine they will have another new manager next year.
Yup, and once Nashville/Charlotte has a team, it’ll be Montreal and Portland.
I come closer to @Bob Montgomerys Helmet Hat than @Sad Sam Jones on this, but the stadium is an inverted pyramid of quality. On the one hand, Wrigley is in a nice, walkable neighborhood in Chicago, with lots to do around the ballpark, and access to the L at Addison. On the other hand, New Comiskey is a decent stadium at the seats (I was there for a Twins-ChiSox game in 2017, and I’m aware they’ve done some work in the LF stands and the batters’ eye to make the ballpark a little less sterile), a bland one at the concessions and immediate area around the stadium, and desolate in the neighborhood. Part of that is just turning the area of old Comiskey into a parking lot, part of it is just the kind of neighborhood the Southside is, but you’re not going there for a game and filling the rest of the day with pub crawls, shopping, and other fun things.
What's that? A ballpark for ants?
Who woulda thunk LaRussa couldn't shepherd this young talent into a winner. To be clear, I am not sure whether it was Williams' or Reinsdorf's call to hire him as manager. Probably both, since these guys have worked together over 30 years. And Reinsdorf can't fire himself.
The new bachelorette party capital of the US. 'Good news White Sox fans, it is once again Drunken Late Twenty-somethings Wearing Cowboy Hats Night at the ballpark!'
Omfg I just looked at the aerial map for the first time in awhile, and imagine what any other franchise could do with this much damn real estate around the ballpark. How many Landsdowne Streets, Yawkey Ways, Patriot Places, etc. (or even more parkland that those in the dense communities nearby would enjoy!) could the White Sox open up if they just built a few fucking garages to make the parking more vertical than horizontal.
As Alice Cooper taught me, Millioke means "The Good Land".
Yeah, this would be white flight akin to moving Atlanta's stadium (and not a lot different than Oakland's move) -- get it out of the "urban area." A league that cared about appearances would not let this happen, but that's not MLB's style.
HoK designed both New Comiskey *and* Camden Yards. Lucchino and Janet Marie Smith wielded considerable influence in the Camden Yards design.
Why is Vegas off the table? Did I miss something?
Hahn has had that gig since 2012. Kenny Williams been employed even longer. This team has been a colossal failure for over a decade. That these guys lasted this long is malpractice.
That’s Jerry. Look at the Bulls - he kept the fabulously inept Paxson & Foreman duo in charge for 11 years. Jerry’s like 5 years behind the popular consensus, never mind the expert insight.
You might see more of it, which sucks. I think that in the last two years owners have seen what the Braves have done with the Battery and how it's a 365-day perpetual money-making machine and want the same thing. There are six teams that have made noise about moving in the last few months: Royals, White Sox, Orioles, Brewers, A's (of course) and the forever-threatening-for-greener-pastures Rays. I thought that I read somewhere that Anaheim was making noise about letting the Angels leave town, but I'm not 100% positive about that.
I think they should be careful. The Braves benefit from the fact that a) there's a shit ton of people in the Atlanta Metro and b) the new park opening coincided with the Braves being really good. Maybe building shopping malls in the suburbs is the next big thing, but I'll believe that it's genuinely a big breadwinner when I see it, aside from the "getting free money" from a state/city part.
I definitely think that you're right about this being extortion. And I also think that you're 100% correct about how the Braves' project may be an anomaly based on the factors that you laid out, but that sort of rational thinking is not what motivates a sports owner. I'm curious as to how profitable Patriot Place is for the Kraft family. I thought for sure that the reason he's been holding the Revs hostage in that stadium is because he wants an extra 20 dates so people can mill around his mall, but recently he mentioned that he was open to building a soccer stadium in the metro-Boston area, so who knows if that means PP doesn't need the Revs.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2023/08/23/white-sox-changes-gm-chris-getz-dayton-moore/70656755007/
you would never know it from the photos, but the park actually does have a pretty great community vibe in some ways. Every time I have gone, we have borrowed a street parking pass from friends who live in Bridgeport and walked to the stadium. Its almost all small residential buildings up until you hit the stadium and its cool to see the crowds on the street get bigger and bigger as you get closer. Of course, if you approach it from the highway or the El, its all depressing concrete sprawl.
With the RSN model teetering on implosion, I’m not convinced that it makes economic sense for any team to move to a new market and attempt to build a new fan base from scratch.
Yeah. I mean there is a short-term gain to moving because everyone loves the new team in town (except for the Raiders and Vegas, I suppose), but I think that after the shine wears off, I think that you're right. There's nothing really keeping the fans from leaving if the team isn't very good.
You really can, though. It won't be as fratty as Wrigleyville, either.
Or what Pilgrim said. It's not the ballpark that's depressing so much as the Dan Ryan.
