I grew up in Peoria, so the Cubs/Sox dynamic was much different than growing up around Chicago. We were split Cubs/Cards mostly. Peoria's single-A team keeps switching between the Cubs and Cards affiliate every ten years or so.
I didn't start hating the White Sox until my late 20s in the late 90s when I was managing a Marriott hotel in Cook County and had to listen to complaints about the highest in the country hotel taxes every single day. When you get asked 5 times per day why the hotel tax rate is 20%, you learn why, and a good chunk of that was to pay the bonds on New Comisky/Guaranteed Lower Rate Field. It also irritated me that if the hotel tax rate was lower I could have paid my employees more and maybe kept the good ones longer instead of having so much turnover. With just a 4% reduction in that tax rate, I could've paid $1.20 more per hour, give or take.
And then a few years later I learned that the deal Reinsdorf got from Daley, Thompson, and Madigan was the first of its kind in this country. Before then, any subsidies for sports stadiums were minimal, mostly dealing only with infrastructure connections. Nowadays, almost every stadium is predominantly paid for by taxes and the economic benefits they promise never pan out. At best, those subsidies pick the winners and losers of entertainment dollars, they don't create new dollars. (Field of Schemes was a great book studying this dynamic.)
You are so right about Soldier Field. IF it was going to be publicly funded it should have been a Dome for year-round use with public control over how it was used. So many opportunities with a dome. And its just ugly now. That was a debacle, through and through.
Your White Sox got a ring recently enough, I had to wait until last year. I played little league against Jim Thome back in the day, and ran into him around Peoria a few times during his playing career, he is a great dude. As a 14 year old in 1984 I got crushed when the Cubs and my guy Sandberg just missed the Series. I put up with them for another 32 years, like a fool. But I feel your pain with the White Sox being boring right now and an owner not willing to pay for good players. Chris Sale, come on, you keep a guy like that to build around. Moncado better be the next Big Hurt. And the Bulls after Jordan? They lost me, too. Sad. Hang in there. Or don't, and move to Arkansas like I'm about to do. :)
LOL. Good luck in Arkansas!
I rooted against the Cubs for 45 years. Then last year, I gave in. I couldn't root against them. I would have felt like such a hypocrite. They did EVERYTHING the way I dreamed my team would do things. And I want Joe Maddon to adopt me.
By the way, every story I have heard about Thome always ends the same way "He's a great guy". I'm happy the Sox got him, but they were bidding against themselves. He would only agree to be traded to 3 teams (Cle, Cubs, Sox) and the other two teams had first basemen. The Phillies had to trade him (Ryan Howard had been called up) to dump his salary. Instead of tossing the Phillies a scrub and paying the whole contract... Reinsdorf sold the starting CF Aaron Rowand to them so that the Phillies would pick up half the contract. They just won the World Series and would not pay for a premier DH. I despise Reinsdorf!
Not that I'm bitter.
And I remember Reinsdorf starting that trend of tax dollars paying for stadia. In retrospect, they should have called his bluff about Florida. That trend is bad for tax payers and fan bases. Just ask the San Diego Charger fans.
yes i thought so too considering all thats happening recently