Not A Crowded House<\/p>\n
Normally the annual \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Crosstown Classic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d series between Chicago\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cubs and White Sox are an automatic sellout at U.S. Cellular Field as Sox fans love nothing more than to see their team whip up on the Cubs and also impugn the testosterone of all Cubs fans who dare to wander down to the South Side.<\/p>\n
But this week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s series was not a sellout as the three crowds at the Cell were 36,005 in Monday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 6-3 victory for the Cubs, 35,155 on Tuesday when both teams endured a one hour 44 minute rain delay before the Sox won, 3-2 and then on Wednesday there was yet another below-capacity South Side crowd of 35,403 as the Sox took the rubber match, 4-3.<\/p>\n
All those who even peripherally follow Chicago baseball know that the White Sox normally don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pack them in and the reasons for that require more space and energy than presently available.\u00c2\u00a0 But an exception has always been either when the Sox are playing great (Sox fans are picky, discerning, cynical and cheap) or when the Cubs pay a visit.\u00c2\u00a0 So why not this year?\u00c2\u00a0 The speculation is rampant: two bad teams, (though the Sox are very, very, very slowly approaching .500 and respectability) bad weather, (but the games should have sold out long before the weather forecast became known) or perhaps a poor economy.<\/p>\n
The answer is probably in all these things and there must be other reasons as well.\u00c2\u00a0 Major League attendance has been down this year but MLB says baseball actually had its best weekend of attendance in nearly three years just last weekend as 1,646,000 fans pushed through the gates.\u00c2\u00a0 That attendance surge was boosted \u00e2\u20ac\u201c painfully if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a White Sox fan \u00e2\u20ac\u201c by the Yankees\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 visit to Wrigley Field which sold out all three games for a pretty entertaining series against the Cubs which leads us to another possible factor in the Crosstown\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relatively paltry attendance \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the games were played during the week.\u00c2\u00a0 The White Sox and Cubs normally meet for a weekend series and will do so when the series shifts north for the first weekend in July but the games at U.S. Cellular were on a Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 When I first saw this I thought it was likely done because the Sox wanted the games during the week when crowds are normally smaller so as not to waste a weekend payoff on a series that would draw no matter what days they were played.\u00c2\u00a0 If that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the case the gamble appears not to have paid off as the crowd \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as fervent and Sox-supportive as it was \u00e2\u20ac\u201c was also a bit embarrassing.\u00c2\u00a0 Can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even sellout for the Cubs?<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a tough call. \u00c2\u00a0And\u00c2\u00a0 – again painfully if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a Sox fan \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the Cubs and Yankees probably factor into this.\u00c2\u00a0 The South Side games are always dominated by Sox fans, of course, as were this week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s but there are also a healthy number of Cubs supporters and maybe too many of them spent their money to see the Yankees at Wrigley and so shied away from plucking down more big bucks for a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153premium game\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with the cheapest tickets, I believe, $50.\u00c2\u00a0 By game day, tickets were going much cheaper but the enthusiasm just didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to be there.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, Sox fans would rather have four thousand empty seats than have them filled by Cubs fans but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a shame that the Sox aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t drawing.\u00c2\u00a0 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t blame the fans.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m one of them and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve only been to one game so far this season and while I do have tickets in hand for a few more coming up I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pledge to go to the 15 or 20 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like each summer.<\/p>\n
The fans who stayed away and chose instead to watch Chicago\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ill-starred nines on TV or listen on radio would have been served well to be there in person as all three games proved entertaining and full of star power, (yes, Paul Konerko is generating Hall of Fame talk\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6at least by me he is, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s for another post \u00e2\u20ac\u201c coming soon) fireworks \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Ozzie Guillen getting tossed, Jake Peavy and A.J. Pierzynski nearly exchanging fists \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a South Sider, a modicum of hope.\u00c2\u00a0 The White Sox triumphed over the Cubs again and have now won 17 straight interleague series.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right, the White Sox are the best team in the National League.\u00c2\u00a0 But there are dark clouds in Chicago\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s normally roseate baseball skies.\u00c2\u00a0 The talk all over the South Side is that Ozzie will be a goner after the season, off to either manage the Florida Marlins or hold Jack McKeon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s catheter.\u00c2\u00a0 If Ozzie leaves, the Sox will survive but the Medias Blancas will be a team suddenly in search of identity \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and fans.<\/p>\n
Even in Wrigleyville the sunshine is often supplanted by cynicism these days as Cubs fans are tired of a bad team with a huge payroll and owners who seem more corporate than Maverick.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right.\u00c2\u00a0 Remember how many times we heard that Mark Cuban wanted to buy the Cubs but baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s owners didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want him in their club?\u00c2\u00a0 What have Cubs fans been thinking since seeing Cuban hoist the trophy for his NBA team?\u00c2\u00a0 Would that be the Cubs if Cuban held the deed to the Friendly Confines?\u00c2\u00a0 Probably not.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe if Ozzie leaves Chicago then Cuban can manage the White Sox.\u00c2\u00a0 People would love to see it.\u00c2\u00a0 They would pay.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not A Crowded House Normally the annual \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Crosstown Classic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d series between Chicago\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cubs and White Sox are an automatic sellout at U.S. Cellular Field as Sox fans love nothing more than to see their team whip up on the Cubs and also impugn the testosterone of all Cubs fans who dare to wander down to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":768,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1881,2910,15175,1207,1897,3509,121,15173,15171,15172,3848,2269,602,2915,14818,11008,1843,3508,4005,74,747],"class_list":["post-14748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-bad-weather","tag-chicago-baseball","tag-crowded-house","tag-crowds","tag-cubs","tag-june-23","tag-major-league","tag-match-4","tag-minute-rain-delay","tag-poor-economy","tag-respectability","tag-sellout","tag-sox-fan","tag-sox-fans","tag-speculation","tag-testosterone","tag-three-games","tag-u-s-cellular-field","tag-weather-forecast","tag-white-sox","tag-wrigley-field"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/768"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}