White Sox Remember They Play in Bridgeport

The White Sox have spent the last eighteen months or so in a competition with the Bears for public dollars for a new stadium. One of the major hurdles in that competition is the reality of the prize only seems to exist in the minds of Jerry Reinsdorf, the McCaskey family, and Bears president Kevin Warren. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, along with a sizable number of state reps, has rebuked the idea of building a stadium with the use of tax payer dollars. The manner in which the two teams have responded to this has been stark to say the least.

The Bears, mainly Kevin Warren, have remained positive, if not delusional, about the prospects of getting the funding they need to build a stadium on the lakefront. They have at least come to the table with some of their own solutions about why it would be good for the city and the state. In an over-the-top presentation with the support of Mayor Brandon Johnson the Bears unveiled plans for a stadium along with a lakefront redesign in the spot where Soldier Field currently stands. It included public park space and they trumpeted the number of jobs that would be created from the project. They even came to the table with $2 billion in private funding for the project (never mind that some have estimated that wouldn’t even cover half the cost).

The White Sox playbook for securing funding for a new stadium in “The 78” near the South Loop has included the following:

• Saying there probably would be some private financing, but not giving an idea of how much
• Building a field on the lot to invite state reps to play catch with old men
• Vague threats of moving the team to Nashville if they don’t secure the funding because…… the team can not remain competitive financially because they play in Bridgeport.

This last excuse has been a favorite of the White Sox. It allows them to blame their geography and the fans for the team’s misfortune for the lack of spending in the on field product instead of their own mishandling of the business of the organization. If the team had better attendance they could spend more money. Part of the reason the team doesn’t have good attendance is because of the neighborhood. They love to blame neighborhood for two reasons. They like to let other people talk about how unsafe it is even though it’s not true, and they like to talk about how there isn’t anything around Guaranteed Rate Field that will draw people to the area naturally.

It is very much the team’s own fault there’s nothing around the building but parking lots. It’s what Jerry wanted when he got the deal to build Comiskey II in the first place. In a short-sighted business move, all he could think about was how much parking revenue he could collect without spending any money outside of the hourly rates for parking attendants. It needed no infrastructure or planning. The only real attempt at making revenue around the ballpark was a half measure that only someone with White Sox Brain could think of as a stroke of genius. It was the construction of the Chi Sox Bar & Grill, a restaurant in the parking lot you need to pay to park in that has ballpark style food for more money than you would pay in the stadium and you get to tip a server for it. What a winning idea. How do they not sell 35,000 tickets a night? What more could they possibly be expected to do?

Jerry Reinsdorf can’t on his own dispel the narrative about the neighborhood being unsafe. It’s a conversation that goes beyond baseball and it’s a conversation that is usually brought up in bad faith by bad actors. In a time where creating false realities gets people elected it feels like a huge mountain to change people’s minds about Chicago when they don’t want to listen to real facts. But that doesn’t mean the organization shouldn’t try to do that. The problem is Jerry Reinsdorf lacks the vision, desire, or both to find ways for himself to make more money around 35th and Shields and so he wants to start over at the vacant lot in the South Loop. Instead of speaking up over the last few years for the neighborhood his franchise has called home for over a century he’s allowed the narrative to live. What’s worse is he is now using it himself to try and get what he wants under the threat of a new owner moving the team to Nashville if the team has to stay in Bridgeport any longer. It’s a new low for a man who has hit an alarming number of new lows over the last decade.

This is what made some social media posts by the White Sox on Saturday interesting if not hypocritical. While trying to get some positive press and goodwill over the hiring of Will Venable as manager the social media team posted photos of him at Stockyard Coffeehouse on 37th Street and touring the Romova Theater on 35th and Halsted. It’s nice to see the White Sox actually supporting and spotlighting businesses in their own neighborhood because it’s what they should always be doing. It is surprising though given how they have talked about and allowed Bridgeport to be talked about in the conversation about the stadium.

The optimist in me wants to believe the White Sox actually care about the neighborhood and their history there. The cynic in me believes they know their popularity is at an all time low and are doing whatever they can to engender goodwill with community again for as long as they feel like they have to put up with them. There’s likely a middle ground. Jerry and the Sox know their fanbase is the South Side of Chicago and he, and the organization have done a lot of charitable work for the South Side. Jerry also doesn’t speak for the entire business and ticket sales departments who work in the building and visit these businesses on their lunch hours and in their own free time. That said, if they’re going to signal how much they care about the South Side and the Bridgeport neighborhood then they need to stop talking out both sides of their mouths and stop blaming the neighborhood for problems that are entirely of their own making.

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