Curious Hair wrote:
USA wrote:
My entire life the Sox have been among, if not the, cheapest ticket in baseball. That’s an interesting way of sticking it to the fans.
I don't think that's out of any sort of goodwill so much as just a lack of demand.
Reinsdorf--and Eddie Einhorn, patron saint of myopic television contracts--bought the team and were immediately disgusted by everything they saw. It wasn't just Harry and Jimmy, it was Andy the Clown, it was Comiskey Park, it was everything that made the White Sox edgy and different and weird. They wanted the Sox to be some antiseptic Yankee-Dodger hybrid for suburban families but they could never quite pull it off: they didn't make it out to the suburbs, the pay TV crippled them in relation to the free-TV Cubs, everyone bitched about New Comiskey for like 15 years and they still kind of do, and the fanbase never truly gentrified. I really believe Reinsdorf hates Sox fans in a way that goes beyond the baseline contempt that all billionaire sports team owners necessarily have for their customers. And that's how you end up with this bitter, decrepit old man who sits up in his office with Tony La Russa playing Let's Remember Some Guys and smoking while everything falls apart.
This was going to die no matter what. The Sox actually stayed weird and goofy a lot longer than anybody did, except the A’s, who are now Officially Dead. This half-hearted attempt to cater to the suburbs is kinda dumb, realistically they are still going right for the core audience with Polish Heritage Night and Union Night (which I swear used to be called Teamsters Night, but maybe I’m misremembering).
But realistically the Sox are keeping the dream alive more than anyone. There’s just only so much you can do these days with ninnies on Xitter and Soxtalk complaining about the perceived injustice of just about anything. I dare anyone to find a franchise still as rooted in its local community as the Sox still are, maybe the Packers but that’s it. It is a fucking miracle they kept Harrelson around as long as they did, he was well into cancellation territory for about a decade but they let him keep trucking on. What can you do when these guys get old and the only people you’ve got replace them are loser nerds like Benetti who they thankfully jettisoned?
It’s not like there’s a big crop of boisterous weird personalities to plug into the broadcast booth. White guys who show an ounce of character are non-starters, the threat of them saying the word burrito or doing a “hero me a sooo chineeezz” accent are just too high. The Sox could put a brother or even a pollock in the booth but Pierzynski doesn’t want it and none of the black former players are interested.
The pay-for cable TV is whatever. The AM radio dial was always free and the games have always been accessible to even the poorest Chicago families. If you want to watch the game “for free” there has been a lot of ways to do it.