Some of the rhetoric spouted by people who hate the idea of the Cubs playing some “home” games at the stadium built by the People of Illinois for the Chicago White Sox borders on the ridiculous.
CUBS FANS SOMEHOW think it beneath themselves to venture into the “real” Chicago (south of Roosevelt Road), while some Sox fans are so small-minded as to want to play mind games with the thought that the Cubs would be a homeless baseball club.
Let’s face facts.
The Cubs play in a 94-year-old-and-counting building that is in need of major renovation (it should have been significantly rebuilt three decades ago) if it is to remain the long-term home of the long-time-loser National League team.
Reconstruction calls for a significant amount of work that takes time, particularly since we in the Midwestern United States have to endure real winters (not some floofy San Diego version) that can put a cramp in construction schedules. (God is NOT a Cubs fan who will work a miracle to make it possible for the project to be complete in less than one year – like some fans are dreaming). 
The South Side of Chicago likely will be the focus of all Chicago baseball for a short stint in the near future. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.
That means the Cubs have to find a temporary stadium, similar to how the Chicago Bears played one season at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Ill., and the Chicago Fire real football team had to shift to a college football stadium in suburban Naperville for two seasons when Soldier Field underwent its major renovation in the early 2000s.
No, the Cubs are not going to play “home” games in Milwaukee or St. Louis or Peoria (where the minor league Chiefs have a nice, new stadium in the downtown area on the Illinois River).
All this adds up to the fact that when, in the next couple of years, the Cubs move ahead with the renovation of Wrigley Field, the team will play at U.S. Cellular Field.
US WHITE SOX fans are going to have to get used to the notion of these ridiculous people coming to our team’s building and using it as the setting for a year or two of their losing ways.
What stands in the way is the possibility of White Sox team “pride,” where ball club officials might try some sort of legal move to prevent the act from taking place.
I can already hear the White Sox grounds crew registering their complaints that playing an extra 81 games on the field will cause additional wear and tear to the stadium’s turf.
Somehow, I think Roger Bossard and his crew (who have a reputation in baseball circles as being among the best groundskeepers in the business) are capable of handing the demands of a smooth, level field for 156 games played every week between early April and late September.
(DREAM ON CUBS fans, you’re not playing in the World Series on the South Side).
What gives the White Sox leverage in the use of the building is the lease they signed with the State of Illinois.
The state owns the building, but the White Sox have the upper hand if the matter ever goes to court.
Under the terms of the state’s lease, no event can be held in the building within 48 hours either before or after a scheduled White Sox game. The lease also gives the White Sox the right to veto any suggestion of holding events in the building at any other time.
THE ONE CONCESSION is that the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority does have the legal right to stage one event in the building every year and keep whatever proceeds they can raise, as part of the way of offsetting the cost of maintaining a stadium for the White Sox up to the standards demanded by Major League Baseball.
In recent years, the state has used that right to stage an event by holding concerts – usually in late summer. Remember the Rolling Stones and the sight of a geriatric Mick Jagger prancing around the White Sox turf?
There may very well be a way of negotiating a deal to allow the Cubs to use the building, particularly if the White Sox are cut in for a significant percentage of the parking and concessions revenues for Cubs games played in their building.
Also, don’t be surprised if White Sox officials then went out of their way to start putting up the Old-English script “Sox” logo all over every inch of the park so that it showed up in every camera shot for people watching Cubs games broadcasts on television.
THINK THIS IS a petty way to do business? It is totally in character with the way baseball people think.
Baseball’s one precedent for a construction-related shift took place in 1974 and 1975 in New York when historic Yankee Stadium underwent a major renovation. That building was stripped down to the foundation, reinforced, then re-built with more comfortable plastic seating, high-tech (for the 1970s) scoreboards and video displays, escalators and other doo-dads.
The Yankees had to play for those two seasons at Shea Stadium, the Queens-based stadium that is the home of the New York Mets. Yankees officials of that era say the Mets put in so many ridiculous conditions restricting the ballclub and the extent to which they could use the building and its clubhouse facilities.
Some say part of the reason Yankees owner George Steinbrenner still hates the Mets so much is that he remembers just how much they messed with him for those two years.
DOES ANYBODY DOUBT that Jerry Reinsdorf could be equally petty, especially when he has the law on his side?
Let’s not forget that when Soldier Field was re-built, the Chicago Fire originally wanted to shift their matches (about two per month) for two seasons to U.S. Cellular Field. The White Sox vetoed the measure, which is why they ultimately wound up playing at North Central College – which has a nice stadium for a Division III football program.
I always thought that was a mistake on the part of the White Sox.
Letting the Fire in could have built up some good will, while also getting people who let their irrational fears about the South Side get the best of them. They would have come to see some soccer matches, realized the building the White Sox play in is a comfortable, functional building and may very well have returned to watch the Sox play.
BESIDES, THERE WAS a precedent to having the Sox share their stadium with soccer teams. The Chicago Sting, back when they were a championship-caliber team (North American Soccer League titles in 1981 and 1984), played their games at the old Comiskey Park located across the street from U.S. Cellular Field.
To my mind, Karl Heinz Granitza and Arno Steffenhagen are just two of the many quality athletes who took the field at Comiskey and enhanced its reputation as an athletic paradise for generations of Chicagoans.
So let the Cubs come to The Cell. Let’s not forget that current Cubs owner Sam Zell for many years was a minority partner of Reinsdorf with the White Sox. If anybody can reach some concessions, it will be those two.
IT WILL BE good to expose the suburban and rural Illinois types who are deluded enough to cheer for the Cubs to expose them to a part of the city many of them prefer to ignore and to a building many of them deride even though they may never have visited.
Perhaps exposure to a contemporary building with amenities is what it will take to get them to realize that their aging building has seen its best days. It is time to let go. Perhaps they will stop eulogizing the notion that cramped aisles and a funky aroma wafting from the men’s room is somehow a part of the character of baseball.
I have just one bit of advice for any North Sider who ventures to The Cell.
I KNOW LAKEVIEW neighborhood residents who don’t particularly care for baseball because of the boorish behavior of Cubs fans, particularly at those moments when “nature calls” and they use neighborhood lawns to relieve themselves.
Anybody who acts like that in Bridgeport or Armour Square resident will cause a reaction somewhere along the lines of a resident grabbing his “Bill Melton” model baseball bat (from Bat Day 35 years ago) and using it to try to teach you some manners.
Show some class, Cubs fans, and you will be welcome on the South Side. It’s as simple as that.
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