Curious Hair wrote:
In the years that I have watched the Cubs I have given almost zero thought to these dreaded ballhawks. Okay, so some losers hang out in the street waiting for home run balls. Yeah, and a homeless black man walks around in a complete uniform saying "woo" over and over. And Murph used to hang out in the bleachers and play a bugle. You get some weird characters on the periphery, but it's hardly worth dwelling upon.
As for the rooftops, yeah, more than 17% of their revenue should go to the Cubs since they're effectively selling skyboxes to Cubs games, but it doesn't really chap my ass. The Cubs would just squander the money anyway like they always do.
I don't care that Wrigley Field isn't a perfectly fare-controlled engine of team-owned commerce. So some weirdos make a buck and some people take in some free baseball. Big fucking deal. If the Wrigleys or Tribune had ever deigned to build competent scouting and development departments, nobody would be blaming the Cubs' drought on fucking day baseball or rooftop clubs. Such ridiculousness.
The thing is people make movies about the "ballhawks". It all feeds in to the Cubs/Wrigley aura. If dan or Terry or anyone else really believes that the Cubs without Wrigley are some special franchise, they're kidding themselves. They're just a bad losing team.
The whole ballgame is that antique park. You can start taking away pieces of the puzzle and see what happens. Block the rooftops. They don't mean shit. Close the streets and move the ballhawks. Who cares? Why waste a good advertising wall on ivy? That space needs to be monetized. I'm not sure when it stops being Wrigley Field, but if you keep fucking with it, you'll eventually get there.
It's sort of like when you stop being you. If I cut off your pinky, you're still you. If I take off both your legs, you're still you. What if I remove your head or your heart? Are you still you? They won't know that they've destroyed the "Wrigley Experience" until they've done it and then it will be too late. Nobody is going to care about watching a shitty ballclub in a modern stadium. We can find those in a lot of places.