"In sports, the only curses are those the owners cast upon themselves"
There are few bona fide enigmas on the Chicago sports scene. Nor are they to be confused with myths or logical fallacies—of which there are plenty. So-called curses, for example. The business about the curse of the “Black Sox” having been dispatched once and for all time on a Wednesday evening last October 26, with a 6-to-3 putout, Uribe to Konerko. “If there had been real justice after the scandal of 1919,” my fellow Chicagoan Studs Terkel wrote after the game, “Charlie Comiskey, the Sox owner, would have been the one kicked out of the game. That year, the star pitcher Eddie Ciccote had been promised a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games; as he neared the mark Comiskey had him benched for the remainder of the season rather than open his wallet. But,” Terkel added, “there was nothing the players could do. Most weren't very worldly—Shoeless Joe Jackson couldn't sign his own name—and they couldn't change teams. They were serfs of the owners.”
Ditto for the curse of a billy goat. The curse of lights versus the curse of no-lights. Or why, in 80-odd years of trying, this town’s pro-football team never fielded a quarterback who could pass for more than 14,686 yards in his career. (Believe it or not: Sid Luckman, 1939 – 1950. Things only got worse after World War II, I’m afraid. Including that injury-prone hipster of the mid-Eighties—the No. One reason the Bears never made it back to the Super Bowl after their 1985 season.—Oh, well. Maybe the current QB. Right? We shall see.)
One perennial enigma turns on White Sox and Cubs attendance figures. In 2005 and 2006, ponderous questions about whether Chicago really is a “Cubs’ town” made a dramatic reappearance, and the out-of-town news media didn’t missed this story.
As when the Wall Street Journal asked why Sox fans were so “blasé,” and reflected on the Sox’ super start to the young season: “hardly anybody seems to care.”
Or when the Rocky Mountain News noted that no matter what happens, the Sox’ “neighbors to the north will continue to draw better, regardless of how they play.”
Or when the Sacramento Bee observed that although the “Sox have had a better record than the Cubs 14 times in the past 21 seasons,” still, “The teams have totally different perceptions. The Cubs are the Loveable Losers. The White Sox? Pretty much irrelevant.”
The reason for stories such as these? Whereas in 2005, the Sox held first place in the A.L. Central from their Opening Day victory over the Cleveland Indians on April 4, through the 162nd and final game on October 2, the also-ran Cubs outdrew the Sox by some 757,000 fans (3,100,092 to 2,342,804 overall), despite playing one fewer home game than the Sox, and finished ahead of the Sox for the 13th season in a row and the 19th out of the past 25, dating back to 1981.
A similar attendance pattern repeated itself in 2006. And this despite all of the goodwill that the Sox’ victory in the 2005 World Series carrier into 2006. Over the course of 81 home games, the 2006 Sox drew 2,957,414 fans (or an average of 37,518 per game). For their part, though the Cubs again played one fewer home game than the Sox, the Cubs drew 3,123,295 fans (an average of 39,041 per game). That's almost 166,000 more fans than the Sox. Trumping the Sox for the 14th consecutive season. (I happen to be drawing these numbers from the SportsNetwork.com website. Specifically the webpages devoted to the Chicago Cubs Attendance and the Chicago White Sox Attendance.)
Ought not on-the-field performance and the number of fannies in the seats move (more or less) upward and downward together? If (a) being in first-place all season long in 2005, and (b) winning the 2005 World Series, while (c) the Cubs stunk in 2005, and (d) stunk even worse in 2006, still did not translate into box-office victories for the White Sox in either 2005 or 2006, then in all likelihood we are witnessing a long-term trend, and nothing that happens in 2007 will reverse it.
Exactly what explains Chicago’s baseball attendance figures?
In January 1981, a limited partnership headed by Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn bought the Sox from Bill Veeck. Some five months later, the Tribune Company, a media giant, bought the Cubs from the Wrigley clan.
After broadcasting some of their games over the then-incipient WGN “Super Station” during the 1981 season, the Reinsdorf-Einhorn regime made a fateful decision: To control Sox fans’ access to their new sports property by selling the telecasts of its games over an exclusive subscription TV channel known as SportsVision.
“One of Chicago White Sox President Eddie Einhorn's biggest complaints in his first year on the job was that Chicago sports fans had been spoiled by getting too many sporting events on television for free,” United Press International reported the very same day the SportsVision package was announced, in October 1981. “Why, Einhorn wondered, were the city's major franchise owners selling their television rights at the lowest price in the nation when they could be forcing fans to pay for them on subscription television?...Einhorn theorized that by forcing people to pay for what they are used to getting for free, attendance will rise.”
One month later, long-time White Sox TV and radio announcer, and Chicago sports legend, Harry Caray—none better—ever—switched from the South Side broadcasting booth to the North. “Harry Caray, giving up the Chicago White Sox because of their commitment to cable television, said…he has signed a contract to broadcast Chicago Cubs games,” United Press International reported at the time. ''I would lose my people—cab drivers, bartenders and others who can't afford cable TV,'' UPI quoted Caray as saying.
For anyone paying attention in the fall of 1981, Harry Caray’s words about “my people” said it all. In the 25 seasons since, it was the corporate media giant that marketed its sports property to the cab drivers and bartenders and people who can’t afford exclusive subscription TV that witnessed a surge in attendance—and a whole generation of baseball fans has grown up in the shadow of these changes. Before then, seasonal attendance very much was the product of each team’s on-the-field performance. But afterward, attendance figures have become (shall we say) structural—built-right-into the city’s fan base, season after season. These days, one team simply draws better than the other. On-the-field performance is largely (if not entirely) irrelevant. In 2005, the Cubs outdrew the Sox by one-third of the Sox’ regular-season attendance. Even in 2006, the World Champion Sox still failed to keep up with the Cubs. How the Sox’ and Cubs’ owners have presented each of their teams to their fans over the past 26 seasons is the decisive factor that explains their divergent fates.
Coupled with WGN-TV’s “Super Station” status and the Sox’ move to subscription TV, the loss of Harry Caray to the Cubs was pivotal in drumming up interest in Wrigley Field and the Cubs at the expense of the Sox. As a lifelong Sox fan, it pains me to have to say it, but the owners of the Sox are the heart of the problem. While the Cubs nurtured their fan base, the Reinsdorf-Einhorn regime starved and at times poisoned theirs.
The triumphalism of 2005 came and went. But like a failed state that is systematically incapable of nurturing its subjects, the Reinsdorf-Einhorn regime runs a failed franchise that is systematically incapable of nurturing Sox fans. In contrast to the single-year in-and-out of glory that we just witnessed in 2005, the only long-term solution for the Chicago White Sox organization remains what it has been from the very beginning: For everyone associated with the current regime to sell to new owners.
Wake up, sports fans.
Here’s my dollar, in case anybody is passing the hat.
There are few bona fide enigmas on the Chicago sports scene. Nor are they to be confused with myths or logical fallacies—of which there are plenty. So-called curses, for example. The business about the curse of the “Black Sox” having been dispatched once and for all time on a Wednesday evening last October 26, with a 6-to-3 putout, Uribe to Konerko. “If there had been real justice after the scandal of 1919,” my fellow Chicagoan Studs Terkel wrote after the game, “Charlie Comiskey, the Sox owner, would have been the one kicked out of the game. That year, the star pitcher Eddie Ciccote had been promised a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games; as he neared the mark Comiskey had him benched for the remainder of the season rather than open his wallet. But,” Terkel added, “there was nothing the players could do. Most weren't very worldly—Shoeless Joe Jackson couldn't sign his own name—and they couldn't change teams. They were serfs of the owners.”
Ditto for the curse of a billy goat. The curse of lights versus the curse of no-lights. Or why, in 80-odd years of trying, this town’s pro-football team never fielded a quarterback who could pass for more than 14,686 yards in his career. (Believe it or not: Sid Luckman, 1939 – 1950. Things only got worse after World War II, I’m afraid. Including that injury-prone hipster of the mid-Eighties—the No. One reason the Bears never made it back to the Super Bowl after their 1985 season.—Oh, well. Maybe the current QB. Right? We shall see.)
One perennial enigma turns on White Sox and Cubs attendance figures. In 2005 and 2006, ponderous questions about whether Chicago really is a “Cubs’ town” made a dramatic reappearance, and the out-of-town news media didn’t missed this story.
As when the Wall Street Journal asked why Sox fans were so “blasé,” and reflected on the Sox’ super start to the young season: “hardly anybody seems to care.”
Or when the Rocky Mountain News noted that no matter what happens, the Sox’ “neighbors to the north will continue to draw better, regardless of how they play.”
Or when the Sacramento Bee observed that although the “Sox have had a better record than the Cubs 14 times in the past 21 seasons,” still, “The teams have totally different perceptions. The Cubs are the Loveable Losers. The White Sox? Pretty much irrelevant.”
The reason for stories such as these? Whereas in 2005, the Sox held first place in the A.L. Central from their Opening Day victory over the Cleveland Indians on April 4, through the 162nd and final game on October 2, the also-ran Cubs outdrew the Sox by some 757,000 fans (3,100,092 to 2,342,804 overall), despite playing one fewer home game than the Sox, and finished ahead of the Sox for the 13th season in a row and the 19th out of the past 25, dating back to 1981.
A similar attendance pattern repeated itself in 2006. And this despite all of the goodwill that the Sox’ victory in the 2005 World Series carrier into 2006. Over the course of 81 home games, the 2006 Sox drew 2,957,414 fans (or an average of 37,518 per game). For their part, though the Cubs again played one fewer home game than the Sox, the Cubs drew 3,123,295 fans (an average of 39,041 per game). That's almost 166,000 more fans than the Sox. Trumping the Sox for the 14th consecutive season. (I happen to be drawing these numbers from the SportsNetwork.com website. Specifically the webpages devoted to the Chicago Cubs Attendance and the Chicago White Sox Attendance.)
Ought not on-the-field performance and the number of fannies in the seats move (more or less) upward and downward together? If (a) being in first-place all season long in 2005, and (b) winning the 2005 World Series, while (c) the Cubs stunk in 2005, and (d) stunk even worse in 2006, still did not translate into box-office victories for the White Sox in either 2005 or 2006, then in all likelihood we are witnessing a long-term trend, and nothing that happens in 2007 will reverse it.
Exactly what explains Chicago’s baseball attendance figures?
In January 1981, a limited partnership headed by Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn bought the Sox from Bill Veeck. Some five months later, the Tribune Company, a media giant, bought the Cubs from the Wrigley clan.
After broadcasting some of their games over the then-incipient WGN “Super Station” during the 1981 season, the Reinsdorf-Einhorn regime made a fateful decision: To control Sox fans’ access to their new sports property by selling the telecasts of its games over an exclusive subscription TV channel known as SportsVision.
“One of Chicago White Sox President Eddie Einhorn's biggest complaints in his first year on the job was that Chicago sports fans had been spoiled by getting too many sporting events on television for free,” United Press International reported the very same day the SportsVision package was announced, in October 1981. “Why, Einhorn wondered, were the city's major franchise owners selling their television rights at the lowest price in the nation when they could be forcing fans to pay for them on subscription television?...Einhorn theorized that by forcing people to pay for what they are used to getting for free, attendance will rise.”
One month later, long-time White Sox TV and radio announcer, and Chicago sports legend, Harry Caray—none better—ever—switched from the South Side broadcasting booth to the North. “Harry Caray, giving up the Chicago White Sox because of their commitment to cable television, said…he has signed a contract to broadcast Chicago Cubs games,” United Press International reported at the time. ''I would lose my people—cab drivers, bartenders and others who can't afford cable TV,'' UPI quoted Caray as saying.
For anyone paying attention in the fall of 1981, Harry Caray’s words about “my people” said it all. In the 25 seasons since, it was the corporate media giant that marketed its sports property to the cab drivers and bartenders and people who can’t afford exclusive subscription TV that witnessed a surge in attendance—and a whole generation of baseball fans has grown up in the shadow of these changes. Before then, seasonal attendance very much was the product of each team’s on-the-field performance. But afterward, attendance figures have become (shall we say) structural—built-right-into the city’s fan base, season after season. These days, one team simply draws better than the other. On-the-field performance is largely (if not entirely) irrelevant. In 2005, the Cubs outdrew the Sox by one-third of the Sox’ regular-season attendance. Even in 2006, the World Champion Sox still failed to keep up with the Cubs. How the Sox’ and Cubs’ owners have presented each of their teams to their fans over the past 26 seasons is the decisive factor that explains their divergent fates.
Coupled with WGN-TV’s “Super Station” status and the Sox’ move to subscription TV, the loss of Harry Caray to the Cubs was pivotal in drumming up interest in Wrigley Field and the Cubs at the expense of the Sox. As a lifelong Sox fan, it pains me to have to say it, but the owners of the Sox are the heart of the problem. While the Cubs nurtured their fan base, the Reinsdorf-Einhorn regime starved and at times poisoned theirs.
The triumphalism of 2005 came and went. But like a failed state that is systematically incapable of nurturing its subjects, the Reinsdorf-Einhorn regime runs a failed franchise that is systematically incapable of nurturing Sox fans. In contrast to the single-year in-and-out of glory that we just witnessed in 2005, the only long-term solution for the Chicago White Sox organization remains what it has been from the very beginning: For everyone associated with the current regime to sell to new owners.
Wake up, sports fans.
Here’s my dollar, in case anybody is passing the hat.
posted by Robert Bonner at 9:57 AM
<< Home