It's been a few days after reports of the White Sox's ballpark plans for Chicago's The 78 development surfaced, and nobody has thrown cold water on the idea.
The most positive comments about the plan came from an unlikely source -- Alderwoman Nicole Lee, whose 11th Ward includes Guaranteed Rate Field.
Lee was briefed Friday night by Related Midwest, as well as Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and Terry Savarise, the team’s head of stadium operations. And she had to admit it looked too good for the Sox to pass up.
“What I saw was a very well-thought-out plan,” Lee told the Chicago Sun-Times Friday night. “You’re talking about a modern stadium built into sort of a master plan for a community. … That’s not something that falls out of the sky. We don’t have that” in Bridgeport.
“It breaks my heart to think that the team could go anywhere but stay on 35th Street. But it’s their business, and they have to make their own decisions.”
There have been renderings posted and deleted across various social media sites, and unlike the Oakland A's designs for a Las Vegas ballpark on an improbably small square of land, the scale all looks theoretically possible here. It'd also give the plot a significant-enough project, an anchor tenant that would justify the massive outlay for infrastructure.
The finances for the project are still a mystery, and so I'm inclined to regard it as an elaborate tease. Given the way the White Sox struggle to present a respectable, MLB-caliber product in every other regard, it requires suspending disbelief to think the White Sox could smoothly roll out a responsibly funded ballpark that captures everything that has proven durable about recent ballpark construction.
It seems like more than a mere distraction from the current product, but the way it's being unveiled looks like it's designed to dangle for public support of public funds, because it truly is a beautiful idea, and any opposition can be seen as depriving the city of an aesthetically pleasing use of a vacant lot. The danger is that it turns into another Armour Field situation, where baseball fans have knowledge of the possibilities that could've been realized if Reinsdorf and the White Sox ownership group was willing to spend more of their own money, but they lacked the foresight to see the value.
Spare Parts
Speaking of Oakland and Las Vegas, the A's need a place to play for three years until that ballpark in Vegas is built, since their agreement with the Coliseum ends after 2024. Salt Lake City is a possibility, because they'll have a new ballpark intended for the Salt Lake Bees opening while their old one will still be tenable for Triple-A baseball.
Sports Illustrated as everybody remembers it hasn't existed for a while, but there remains a steady stream of worthwhile stories published under its masthead. But now that the entire editorial staff has received layoff notices because the convoluted leasing agreement for the brand has broken down, there are fewer and fewer places for the most talented reporters to go.
In other terrible news, Condé Nast announced that it's moving the editorial operations of the online music mag Pitchfork underneath its GQ brand banner. Seeing what happened to the A/V Club when its operations were moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, music journalism is having an even tougher time than sports.
I didn't realize that Craig Kimbrel's $13 million obligation makes him the highest-paid player on the Orioles. It's in the interest of White Sox fans for the Orioles to get overexcited about Dylan Cease, but their reluctance to trade any of tomorrow for today makes it a little too easy to envision a scenario where the present is squandered.
The Twins aren't spending either because they're in Bally Sports limbo, but they're also finding it difficult to make need-for-need trades involving decent players like Jorge Polanco or Max Kepler.
At least one of the big free agents found a home, as Josh Hader broke new ground with a relief deal with Houston. It comes up short of Edwin Diaz's five-year, $102 million deal, but Diaz had enough deferred money to knock down its present-day value to about $93 million or so.
I've always been intrigued by the idea of taking on Robert Caro's "The Power Broker," but a 1,300-page biography of Robert Moses seems like it could soak up reading time I could spread around to five other books. But my favorite podcast is doing a monthly book club episode covering 100 pages or so at a time, so if that doesn't get me to read it, nothing will. I'm on schedule so far.
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