EXTRA: Smith made mark 73 yrs ago

SMITH: Made his mark all those yrs ago

Eddie Smith was a major league pitcher back in the 1930s into the 1940s, mostly for the Chicago White Sox.

It was in that capacity that Smith achieved the high-point of his baseball career, his mark on history, 73 years ago Thursday, on the Yankee Stadium playing field that now lies within site of the new structure bearing that name.

OF COURSE, NOBODY had a clue that night that what they saw at the ballpark was anything special.

 

Nobody ever did a pop song about Smith

Smith pitched to Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees and gave up one hit in four at-bats. It drove in the only Yankees run in a 3-1 victory by the White Sox. But it was hit Number One in what became DiMaggio’s 56-game consecutive hitting streak – in which he managed at least one hit per game every game through July 16.

It was July 17 against the Cleveland Indians before anyone could keep DiMaggio hitless again. And then, he began another 17-game hitting streak.
 

Where it began all those years ago

As for Smith, 1941 may well have been his best season – winning 13 games, but losing 17, with a 3.18 earned run average for a third place ball club that finished 77-77. An even .500 season, just like this season is shaping up to be.

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Cubs move talk a whole load of bunk?

Am I the only one who thinks all the talk these days about the Chicago Cubs “moving” (all over the front pages of newspapers and on broadcasts and websites) is a whole lot of nonsense?

How much will Wrigley change if Ricketts gets his way?

 

If ever there was a time when our government officials ought to take a hard line and not let themselves get intimidated by a professional sports team, it is this time now.

FOR THE RECORD, Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts made comments implying he’d consider moving his family’s ball club if city and Lake View neighborhood officials aren’t more sympathetic to the renovations they want to make so that Wrigley Field becomes more like other new stadiums – as in containing features that the team can justify charging top dollar for.

Is this just a reiteration of the previously-expressed threat to push for a new stadium to be built at a suburban location? Is Ricketts really threatening to move the National League’s only charter member to play in its original city (the Braves were in Boston and Milwaukee before moving to Atlanta 46 years ago)?

Or is it just a load of hot air that means nothing?

Because when I listen to what Ricketts actually said, I don’t hear anything that’s new. Other than a would-be bully being upset that the other kids in the schoolyard are actually standing up to him!

PERHAPS THAT LINE is a bit harsh. Because I personally could care less what the Cubs do. Considering that I don’t really care much what they do on the field, why should I care where that “field” is located?

Yankee Stadium lost a lot of character ...

I just don’t hear any credible threat. If anything, we were a lot closer back in 1988 to losing the Chicago White Sox than we ever will be to losing the Cubs (we Chicagoans couldn’t be so lucky as to get rid of that “lovable loser” image the Cubs hang around our collective necks).

The day that the Cubs sign a lease to play in another city’s stadium (even if that “city” is just a dinky suburb like Schaumburg, and which the White Sox actually did with St. Petersburg, Fla.) is the day that the talk of moving should be countered seriously.

Until then, it just doesn’t mean much.

... when it was renovated, and even more when it was replaced

BECAUSE I SENSE that Ricketts and his siblings aren’t dumb enough to think they’d be better off playing anywhere else other than the humble abode of one Elwood J. Blues.

That century-old building is so much a part of the ball club’s character that they are the one team that ought to seriously disregard thoughts of playing anywhere else. No matter now unique or fine the new structure might turn out to be, there are too many people who go to see the one-time Cubs Park.

Just ask all those people who wear “Wrigley Field” jerseys to ballgames!

It’s like the New York Yankees, who had the sense in the early 1970s to not think of going to New Jersey and arranged for an overhaul of Yankee Stadium. Let’s only hope that the Cubs aren’t foolish enough to ruin the character of Wrigley in the same way that the Yankees did with their building that wound up servicing the team through 2008.

THAT’S THE REAL reason I’m skeptical of all the Wrigley renovation talk that focuses around giant video boards and the need for video advertising boards and a “Captain Morgan” club for people to spend more of their money in.

Just as much a part of Wrigley lore

Because at least the Yankees could still claim the playing field of the renovated park was the same place where the immortals like Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle played winning baseball for so many decades.

What could the Cubs claim if they turn Wrigley into a commercialized mess? A story about how a black cat once pranced on this field and freaked the Cubs out to the point where they lost.

Or maybe it will come back to Babe Ruth? Future Cubs fans will say, “On this field now surrounded by commercialized nonsense, Babe Ruth hit a home run that caused our Cubs to lose, yet again!”

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Cubs at Cell? – It’s going to happen, no matter how much some squirm

Thus far, it has just been the rumor mill working overtime. All the players in this particular scheme are denying there is any truth to it.

Yet let’s be realistic. “It” is going to happen at some point in the next few years.



Will the statues of legendary White Sox ballplayers look more athletic than the stiffs playing for the Cubs, should that team need to use U.S. Cellular Field as an interim home in the near future?



THE “IT” IN this case being the idea that the Chicago Cubs will wind up playing “home” games at U.S. Cellular Field – the Sout’ Side stadium of the Chicago White Sox, who play a large role in unifying the neighborhoods of the South Side into one entity.

People on all sides of the Chicago baseball fan schematic are complaining about this one.

Cubs fans are either snobbish, or sissyish, or just downright stupid in thinking they don’t want to go south of Roosevelt Road to see their ballclub of choice play – even if it is just for a season or so while the 98-year-old Wrigley Field gets a substantial renovation that would enable it to remain in heavy use for another few decades.

White Sox fans are being equally arrogant, or short-sighted, or just downright dumb, in thinking that the Cubs can play somewhere else. Some fans seem to think the Cubs should have to move to Milwaukee for a season if they really need to play elsewhere while the one-time Weeghman Park gets an overhaul.

NO ONE IS going to chase the Cubs out of town. Any idea that such a scheme would be feasible, or permitted by the baseball powers-that-be, is absurd.

And for those Lake View neighborhood residents who can’t bring themselves to ride a Red Line train south of the Lake Street station , all I have to say is, “Grow up!” Let’s not forget that the 1918 World Series (Boston Red Sox vs. Chicago Cubs) was NOT played at Wrigley Field, BECAUSE the Cubs played their “home” games at Comiskey Park because they thought it a superior (and larger) facility.

The Cubs once played home games here



The rumor mill got kicked into gear this week when WMAQ-TV reported about the possibility of such a move in the 2013 season – implying that the current renovation taking place now to turn the area near the right-field foul pole into a patio area with a 75-foot-wide and 7-foot-high LED board is merely the first of several that will occur.

Eventually, an overhaul to reinforce the structure (and possibly rebuild the upper deck) would take so much time that games could have to be relocated. And for what it’s worth, only a fool thinks that such work could seriously be done without moving the ballclub for a bit.

SO EVEN THOUGH the Cubs management (through P.R. people) are saying it won’t happen in 2013 (which is what the NBC-owned television station implied), it is bound to happen eventually.

The simple fact is that keeping the games within the Chicago city limits while construction takes place is going to happen. And unless somebody seriously thinks that the “good ol’ days” of baseball played in the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles was positive, you can forget about having the Cubs play in Soldier Field.

Jokes about having them play at the 5,000-seat ballpark of the brand-new Schaumburg Boomers ballclub are equally ridiculous.

So they’ll play on the South Side, just like the New York Yankees had to endure two seasons in the borough of Queens; playing at Shea Stadium while Yankee Stadium underwent a significant renovation along the lines of what needs to be done at Wrigley Field to keep it structurally sound.

NOW PERSONALLY, I could care less about the Chicago Cubs. The thought of some of those over-glorified frat-boy mentality fans hanging out on the edge of Bridgeport for a Cubs game makes me a bit nauseous.

But there is the thought of what Bridgeport neighborhood people would do to them if they tried to get away with some of the tacky behavior (I’m talking public urination) that Lake View neighborhood residents who live near the ballpark have come to accept as “the way things are.”

Maybe it would be a good experience if at least some Cubs fans learned the ways of civilized society by having to watch ballgames at 35^th Street?

But as obnoxious as some Cubs fans are in saying they don’t want to see games anywhere else – even on an interim basis – the White Sox fans who “quote the contract” are even more ridiculous.

BY THAT, I mean that I am fully aware that the lease the White Sox have with the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority gives them significant control over what kinds of events can be held in the building – even though state government owns it.

Nothing can even be considered within 48 hours of a scheduled White Sox game, and the ballclub gets veto power over any events at any other time of the year.

White Sox officials claim it’s about maintaining the quality of the playing field. Having two ballclubs share a field would be just too much wear-and-tear.

Nonsense!!!

FOR THE FACT is that if it means the Cubs wind up playing a season at “the Cell,” it would mean that the Cubs would get hit with the cost of maintaining the field, along with the shares of concessions and parking that the White Sox get from the events (mostly their own ballgames) held there already.



Would Cubs fans hate "the Cell" as much as Yankees fans hated this place?



Cubs money going to bolster the White Sox’ operations? I could live with that.

In fact, I can think of only one real potential for ill-will here. For it has been said that a large part of the reason why now-deceased New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner hated the cross-town New York Mets so much was that he remembered just how excessively that team bled his own financially during 1974-75 when the Yankees played in the flight paths of J.F.K. Airport.

How many White Sox fans really would have a gripe if that same situation occurred in Chicago?

  -30-

Park District brings question to my mind – “Are they kidding?” about Payton

In theory, I want to give the Chicago Park District a pat on the back for taking a hard line stance with regards to the family of Chicago Bears great Walter Payton, who want to put a statue of “Sweetness” outside the stadium where the Bears play.

That stadium, of course, is Soldier Field, and it has been owned by the Chicago Park District for decades. It was originally built to be a public facility for sporting events to be witnessed by the masses of Chicago.

IT ALSO WAS to serve along with Navy Pier as a memorial to the military personnel of this nation – Soldier Field and Navy Pier. Now if we could only find something in this city to name for the Air Force and the Marines, we’d have the perfect set.

But it is because of that tradition that the building that seats more than 60,000 people for Bears games eight Sundays each year is a military memorial that the Park District is refusing to allow the Payton statue.

They told the Chicago Tribune that putting up the statue would diminish the memory of the soldiers, even though I’m sure the masses who tailgate outside Bears games probably think more of Payton than any soldier.

It is a nice ideal. I’d like to think that the Park District is sincere in saying such a thing.

BUT I AM one of those people who thinks that the 2001 renovation of Soldier Field killed off any semblance of the building being a war memorial – even though the renovated stadium’s advocates will claim that people can now check out the columns that pay tribute to soldiers.

In fact, any time people mock the Yankee Stadium renovation of the mid-1970s as somehow ruining the historic character of that building, I’d argue that the Soldier Field renovation was worse.

It literally got the building knocked off the National Register of Historic Places, because the changes to put in all those seats that sort of hover over the field (as though it is better to be sky-high than many rows back) obliterated the feel of what made Soldier Field architecturally unique.

So the idea that anyone seriously believes it is a war memorial any longer is absurd, although it probably maintains more character than Navy Pier, which has been turned into a commercial shopping center for the tourist-minded among us.

IN SHORT, CHICAGO has in recent years dumped on what was supposed to be its significant memorials to the military.

So the idea that anyone is now trying to use the military and its supposed presence as an excuse to avoid making some change is absurd.

Particularly since I can envision this rejection managing to offend many Chicago Bears fans who see how so many other new stadiums include among their decorative elements all kinds of statues paying tribute to the top ballplayers in those particular franchise’s histories.

Even in Chicago, just about every other building used for professional sports has these statues – with the best known being that one of Michael Jordan dunking a bronze basketball outside the United Center – and across the street from the Chicago Stadium where his Hall of Fame-quality pro basketball career began.

HECK, EVEN HARRY Caray gets a statue (the one that intoxicated Chicago Cubs fans like to load up with cans of Budweiser) outside Wrigley Field just for slurring his way through 17 years worth of Cubs baseball broadcasts (he really was on top of his game with the St. Louis Cardinals and the White Sox).

So I’m sure there are people who are going to be critical of the Park District and accuse them of disrespecting the memory of Payton, a Hall of Fame football player in his own right.

It turns out that Payton’s widow, Connie, wants this memorial to her late husband (who hasn’t played for the Bears in two decades and has been deceased for 10 years now, time flies too fast).

She’s willing to arrange to have the statue made and to donate it, provided they promise to erect it in a place where it will be seen (and not just become the receptacle for bird droppings).

EVEN THE BEARS themselves (who, let’s be honest, often show a knack for boneheaded public relations moves) are on board, saying they will try to talk some sense into the heads of their landlords to allow for the statue to be erected somewhere.

So I’m wondering how the Park District will wind up backing away from their “military memorial” stance while trying to pretend they didn’t change a thing. For the reality is that modern-day governments build these stadiums (or – in the case of the Chicago Park District – renovate them to the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars), but then give the teams total control over how they are used.

In some cases, they even let the teams have the bulk of the revenues that are earned (parking, concessions) from staging private athletic events in what ostensibly are public buildings.

Just so long as nobody gets the “bright” idea of trying to pay tribute to the memory of the definitely un-immortal Bobby Douglas. For that one, I would be willing to buy the “soldier memorial” excuse.

-30-

Will New Yankee Stadium become the expensive version of New Comiskey Park?

I must admit to paying attention Sunday to the sentimental schlock that took place in the Bronx, when the New York Yankees played their last ballgame in their 85-year-old stadium where many legendary athletic and social events took place.

What intrigues me about the whole concept of the Yankees tearing down their aging stadium and building a new version directly across the street (going so far as to keep the same name – only with a “New” tacked on) is that it sounds so like what our Chicago White Sox did nearly two decades ago.

IS NEW YANKEE Stadium destined to get the same derision that U.S. Cellular Field (which for 12 seasons carried the name New Comiskey Park) gets?

I doubt it, mainly because the Yankees brass will throw a massive hissy fit if anyone dares to badmouth their own fancy building being erected in what some might politely describe as a deteriorating neighborhood.

If the White Sox tried throwing a similar fit in defense of their own park and Armour Square/Bridgeport neighborhoods, they’d be trashed for being too defensive, and certain Cubs-fan pundits would lay on the White Sox criticism even more intensely.

Yet I can’t help but think that the Yankees are on the verge of doing what the White Sox tried to do back in the early 1990s.

New Yankee Stadium won't bring back the character of its predecessor ballpark any better than U.S. Cellular Field retained the feel of what was once on the site of a White Sox parking lot at Bill Veeck Drive. Photographs provided by Library of Congress collection.

BOTH BUILDINGS HAD lengthy histories (Comiskey Park stood for 80 years) of hosting major league baseball events, along with National League Football (Comiskey had the Cardinals, while Yankee had the Giants), Negro league baseball (Comiskey had the old East-West all-star game and the American Giants, while Yankee had the Cubans and Black Yankees).

Both had a history of staging some significant boxing matches and concerts (Comiskey was the scene of the Beatles in Chicago in 1965, unlike Yankee – as the Beatles chose crosstown Shea Stadium when they felt the need to perform in New York).

Now I’m not about to complain that Comiskey didn’t get the same amount of sentiment upon its demise that Yankee Stadium is getting. After all, with the exception of the late 1910s, the World Series was a rare event on Chicago’s South Side.

Thirty-nine World Series at Yankee Stadium, along with 45 years in which post-season baseball was played in the Bronx, adds an aura that no other sports-related building can match.

BUT STILL, THE similarities strike me. Both new stadiums were built (or are being built) in neighborhoods that non-residents would likely never venture into – if not for the desire to go to a ball game.

The White Sox have been blasted in recent years for using their new stadium built in the ghetto as a cash cow – a chance to milk every single dollar possible from their fans.

Already, similar talk is being heard about the New Yankee Stadium, where the growing Dominican population in the South Bronx is unlikely to ever afford the prices the Yankees plan to charge to be allowed to enter the gates and see a game.

New Comiskey gets trashed for having too many private boxes for corporate fans, while the New Yankee is being built so as to make those private boxes a primary seating area. If anything, the fact that fewer seats are being installed in the new Yankee compared to the existing one (about 51,000 seats, compared to 56,000 now) is being seen as a way of keeping the “unwashed masses” from spoiling the view for those more wealthy fans.

AT NEW COMISKEY, the White Sox initially tried to duplicate the concept of the old ballpark by copying the playing field dimensions and installing a center field scoreboard that put on the same lights-and-fireworks display whenever a Sox player hit a home run.

New Yankee plans to make similar gestures to the past by copying the playing field dimensions (although, sadly enough, not the dimensions of the park the way it used to be, when 450-foot fly balls could become routine outs) and the outer walls of the building.

Pseudo-Yankee Stadium will be the same as pseudo-Comiskey, only at a higher pricetag. New York is spending up to $1 billion for its new stadium, while Illinois made sure to stay within a $130 million price tag when it did a new White Sox stadium.

The Yankees made sure to have a strong law enforcement presence on hand for their final games in the old ballpark, so as to ensure that people didn’t try to rip out chairs or signs or sod or any other pieces of the building for a souvenir. They plan to have the ballpark taken apart (rather than demolished, so that the pieces can eventually be sold off to fans – making the old building yet another revenue stream).

THAT IS SO similar to what happened with Comiskey Park, which was literally taken apart all through the 1991 season. White Sox fans had to watch all year from the new park as the old one was gutted, instead of just blown to pieces one sudden day.

The pieces were then salvaged and sold off – so much so that there are many people who can say they own genuine Comiskey Park chairs (my step-mother’s mother actually has one, which is stored away in a garage somewhere) and bricks that the novelty of such items is miniscule.

Perhaps 200 or so years from now when most of those items have been destroyed by the elements and only a couple of pieces remain, then Comiskey will be worth something.

Is this the fate that Yankee Stadium, the building that hosted three papal masses, is destined to suffer?

THERE IS ONE difference, insofar as I can tell, of the way the two ballparks are departing this Earth.

New Yankee Stadium’s plans intend to include a playing field on the site of the old ballpark, which creates the possibility of future generations of youth leagues and other amateur ball clubs having the chance to play baseball on the same site where such ballplayers as Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio roamed.

That may wind up getting the New York version of a new stadium more respect than U.S. Cellular, which wound up using the site of Comiskey Park to add to the paid parking lots the ball club maintains for its fans.

Admittedly, many White Sox fans these days make a point of going to the lot and stepping on the spot where home plate was – as a gesture of good luck.

BUT THE REST of the playing field is covered by asphalt and white lines, marking spots where cars can park during the ballgame. I still remember the time my brother and I went to a White Sox game (against the Yankees, I believe) where we parked our car, then noticed we were right on top of the right-field foul line, literally about 90 feet from home plate.

Yankees fans will be able to look at their old field and dream of seeing the spirit of Billy Martin charging in toward home plate to catch an infield pop up because everybody else on the field lost sight of the ball in the sun.

But my brother and I?

It felt that day like we ran over the spirit of Dick Allen while playing first base during that awesome season he had in 1972 where he very nearly single-handedly led the White Sox to a division title.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: A reminiscence of the building where the Chicago White Sox (http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2008/09/21/2008-09-21_yankee_stadium_closes_doors_but_history_.html) compiled a record of 255-428-3 during eight-plus decades of baseball.

Some memories (http://www.whitesoxinteractive.com/OldComiskey/index.html) of the events that once took place at a parking lot on the northeast corner of 35th Street and Shields Avenue.