Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePhun1
Not really. The problem with Chicago is, relative to other cities, it's not nearly as big as it used to be. And while the Cubs haven't been good historically, neither have the Sox to almost the same degree.
Race is a touchy issue and regardless of your feelings and biases about racism, the same dynamic that happens in the Bay Area between Oakland and San Francisco happens in Chicago. The North Side is the richer, Whiter side while the South Side is the more impoverished, minority side. Fair or not, the Cubs get more love and admiration.
That and the whole cold weather start.
There's room for two baseball teams in Chicago and has been for decades, it's just that the Cubs, for socioeconomic reasons as well as other factors such as Harry Carey, the historic ballpark and the years they spent being broadcast on WGN nationally, get a disproportionate share of fandom. Spread more evenly, the Sox would do better. Either that or they could win more, they've won 3 World Series in more than a century of play, including an 88 year gap, not to mention 46 years without a World Series appearance and 42 years before that. They were in no position to take advantage of the Cubs' ineptitude because they were worse.
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well, i have a slightly different take as a local.
the sox still enjoy wide-spread popularity across chicagoland, but their fan-base is far more hard-nosed and stubborn than the cubbies and their whole "lovable losers" culture. the prevailing attitude i see from sox fans that i know is
"if reinsdorf isn't gonna spend his money to field a quality team, then i'm not gonna spend my money to go see 'em". is that fair-weather? i suppose that's one way to look at it. but to sox fans it seems to be their weird "vote with your wallet" strategy to try and improve the team (i don't know how the team is supposed to improve without money, but whatever).
here are some numbers regarding cubs and sox fans in chicagoland. unlike NY, LA and the bay area, there is no clear winner in fan allegiance within chicagoland. the cubs have a slight edge overall, but there is no massive imbalance like one finds with yankees/mets, dodgers/angels, or giants/A's
CHICAGOLAND:
county ------
% cubs/
% sox
mchenry county:
52%/
28%
lake county (IL):
50%/
30%
kane county:
50%/
36%
kendall county:
46%/
39%
dupage county:
44%/
40%
grundy county:
41%/
39%
cook county:
40%/
38%
porter county:
40%/
41%
lake county (IN):
39%/
43%
kankakee county:
37%/
45%
will county:
37%/
47%
kenosha county is brewers country. once you cross the "cheddar curtain", majority allegiances switch over to wisconsin teams.
source:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...eball-map.html
the other thing fighting against sox attendance (and you touched on this) is their lackluster stadium located in a depressing no-man's-land sea of surface parking lots smooshed between a 14 lane expressway trench and an unbelievably wide (20 sets of tracks) freight railroad ROW. when the cubs host the cards, or reds or brewers, thousands of those fans will travel to chicago to cheer on their team and to see a game at "historic wrigley field" and partake in the exuberant sports-infused atmosphere of wrigleyville. when the sox host the tigers or inidans or twins, guaranteed rate field (and the non-neighborhood around it) just isn't a draw at all to entice more fans to travel with their team.
for the record, i'm
still PISSED OFF that fucking Reinsdorf tore down old comiskey 28 years ago. if only that moron had just the tiniest shred of foresight to realize how special the historic stadium he had on his hands was, and how, with a modernization, it could be a treasured asset for the team in our current era, much like how wrigley and fenway have come to be revered as the lone remaining "cathedrals" of old school baseball. stupid people make stupid decisions. oh well.
and finally, while the white sox have suffered some of the lowest attendance figures in MLB over the last handful of years, the real culprit of the
atrociously low attendance depicted in that pic from yesterday was the weather.
but yes, the complete and total ineptitude of chicago's two MLB teams in the 20th century (174 combined consecutive years without a world series championship) is a feat that will likely never be duplicated again by any other 2-team market. it was a remarkable run of futility. had either the cubs or sox produced even modest success with 3 or 4 WS championships during that 87 year drought, that team likely would have come to dominate the city, and create a large fan-base imbalance. but they both sucked so hard for so long that things stayed pretty even.
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