A Whole New Ball Game
Harry Backlund
Parading up the ramp to the upper deck, a handful of KONERKOs and PIERZYNSKIs who have already had a few too many chant “We’re taking over Chitown!” If the efforts of the White Sox front office that went into Thursday’s home opener are any indication, it would appear this is more than just fanatical bravado—it’s a business plan.
Over the off-season, the South Siders have made aggressive steps into many fronts beyond the diamond. Across the city, the Sox led an imposing ad campaign of “We’re All In” billboards presenting some Sox stars in action and others offering their best game faces to passersby (aside from Mark Buerhle, who just looks confused). Add to that a series of clever TV spots—one also featuring the lefty and a riff on his highlight reel between-the-legs-toss from last season’s opener—and it’s clear the White Sox are looking to extend their territory well north of 35th Street in 2011.
Alex Sellers
The organization’s active marketing campaign was likely designed to call attention to a number of new additions to the immediate area around U.S. Cellular Field, known affectionately as the “Cell” to fans of the team. Pulling into a sleek new Rock Island stop not 600 feet from the ticket window, the Metra train now offers an alcohol-friendly alternative to the CTA’s Red Line and the oft-congested Dan Ryan. This new transit line will do more than cut down on traffic—it’ll sell beer. This season, the Sox switched from from concession stands selling “Beers of the World” to more upscale craft beers. As Billy Guide, owner of Bridgeport’s Cork & Kerry restaurant, put it in the Sun-Times last week, “What [the Sox] lose in parking, they’ll make up for in attendance and beer sales. You can have two or three more beers if you don’t have to drive home.”
Secondly, the train’s schedule expressly accommodates Sox fans on game days, making ticket holders out of once stay-at-home fans from New Lenox, Mokena, Tinley Park and beyond—or at least the organization hopes. For its own home opener, the Metra train wasn’t nearly as popular as the “El,” which still filtered most of the fan base into the mist-enshrouded park for the South Sider’s showdown against the Tampa Bay Rays. Some changes take time to pick up steam.
Alex Sellers
On the other hand, the new “Bacardi at the Park” restaurant-bar attached to the stadium proved to be an immediate hotspot for fans, serving Miller Lights and signature martinis right up until the first pitch. This rum-sponsored bar and grill is the organization’s latest and greatest attempt to combat the park’s reputation as the island in the neighborhood and attract bigger crowds. Well before the Sox’s home was renamed “U.S. Cellular Field” in 2003, Comiskey-regulars got used to the long walks it took them for even the nearest post-game draft. In that time, a local tailgate culture has emerged, with spots like Cork & Kerry (3258 S. Princeton Ave.) and Morrie O’Malley’s Hot Dogs (3501 S. Union Ave) boasting multiple generations of returning Sox fans.
As a boisterous crowd of commuters pushes into the new Bacardi bar, a handful of diehards play pre-game bags’ by the spot of Old Comiskey’s home plate. An eleven-year old sporting the jersey of Jermaine Dye, the recently retired right-fielder and 2005 World Series MVP, steps up to bat at the monument and makes contact with an invisible baseball over the etched plate with the dates “1910-1990,” launching the ball into the cold mist above the parking lot. After the old Comiskey Park was demolished in 1991, this plaque and the residual foul-ball lines serve as the only reminders of a classic field. It is mostly surrounded by rows of Suburbans and outdoor grills.
Inside the crowded multi-level bar and grill—now open two hours both before and after the team takes the field—the decorum seems to celebrate equally Sox history and Bacardi branding. One wall-mural contains a blown up, black and white photograph of old Comiskey packed to the very last seat. Inserted into the middle of the image is the Bacardi bat, not the Sox emblem.
Alex Sellers
If the larger Sox organization continues with its ambitions, “Bacardi at the Park” could be one of many new fixtures. In a recent WGN-TV interview, Brooks Boyer, chief Marketing Officer for the Sox, spoke about the new construction: “In Chicago, you have the rivalry between us and the other team. So when it comes to building the business, you have to find ways to make sure people want to come here.” Boyer went on to say that the neighborhood’s off-season additions weren’t just moves to “catch up” but to “one-up” the Cubbies over at Wrigley Field. But what does it mean for a South Side team to be Chicago’s favorite?
Home of the Sox’s bitter enemies, Wrigley Field is by no means an island in its local North Side neighborhood. Restaurant-bars are aplenty for Cubs fans both pre- and post-game in Wrigleyville, and, as South Sider and barely legal merch-salesman Hollis Harris accounts, houses a completely separate consumer culture than that around the Cell: “People just don’t buy from me around [this area]. I get three times the business up at Wrigley, so that’s where it’s real good for me. That’s where I sell.”
For the benefit of Harris and the Sox alike, the organization’s recent changes seem like calculated moves to emulate the business success of the attractive North Side model. Yet aggressive marketing strategies and corporate branding can’t get at the heart of the team’s charm for longtime fans. One heavy-set manager, his hands full of drinks, was more than a little hostile to the thought of following up the Cubs. A born-and-bred South Sider, he believes the differences between the two parks go beyond their geography: “We’re just a local place, serving good food and drinks, that’s all. We’re never gonna have the mega-franchise that they have up at Wrigley. This is a neighborhood park, not a tourist attraction.”
Perhaps this manager would have fit in more with his tailgating buddies in the Old Camp outside the bar. Then again, maybe he knows the numbers better than the Sox’s front office. According to a 2010 study from inside the Cubs organization, roughly 37 percent of fans attending games at Wrigley are out-of-staters, whereas that number rests at only 10 to 15 percent at the Cell. Chicago baseball columnist Jon Greenberg pointed out the game’s injustice right before the start of the season: “That’s the problem [for the White Sox]: You have real fans. So if you’re not doing well, they’re not gonna come out there. Whereas [with] the Cubs, people make vacation plans to come here.”
Yet despite a homegrown base of ticket-buyers, the White Sox still hold the fourth-highest average ticket price in the MLB at just over $40. The Cubs squeak in just ahead of them in third, as Wrigley tickets go for an average of $46.90. With all the off-season additions to the Cell, those numbers are not likely to get any lower.
At least the locals’ contribution to the team revenue is going to an appealing—and expensive—on-the-field product. Second from the right in the “All In” billboard, the off-season acquisition of Adam Dunn has been the selling point on this year’s threatening lineup, which has proven to be the highest-scoring offense in the league so far. However, forced out of the starting line because of an emergency appendectomy, Dunn missed out on the season’s first home crowd, as applause for the new slugger was instead siphoned onto re-signed Sox star, Paul Konerko. The first-baseman finished the day two for four with one RBI, to a “Pauli, Pauli, Pauli” chant from the gracious Chicago stands.
Konerko was a solid centerpiece on a lineup that finished with a total of twelve hits on the day. Of course, starter Edwin Jackson’s thirteen strikeouts and one earned run through eight innings was another key factor contributing to a dominant 5-1 victory over the Rays. Other off-season acquisitions, Matt Thornton and setup-man Jesse Crain, served to strengthen the team’s bullpen. But it was sophomore reliever Sergio Santos who finished off the Rays in the ninth with a passionate strikeout to seal the team’s opening-day win.
As the sell-out crowd of 38,579 filtered back into the Bacardi bar or hovered in the April mist of tailgating lots, Hollis Harris was back to waving his bags of peanuts. A diehard sporting a weathered, Sox-leather jacket confessed his wariness towards the team’s new prospects: “Well, I don’t know much about some of these new guys yet. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how they do.” Now three years removed from the team’s last division title, old fans such as this one have got a few more reservations than the group of drunk, young Turk Lowns—the right-handed pitcher who led the team to their 1959 American League pennant—chanting outside the gates after the final out (“this is our year!”). In fact, this fan’s cap tells the tale of a local for whom the 2005 World Series championship was long overdue relief after years of frustration—on the front label, just the “Sox” white insignia, but by the back of the hat there read two words: “Always Comiskey.”
If the organization has its way in 2011, they’ll please these old guards with more of the day’s winning formula, and attract a new market of fans alongside the Cell’s changes too: the best of both the baseball and business world.
But whether or not the Sox take over the town in 2011, the team always carries with it an illustrious legacy of baseball on their side of the river. Wearing his #9, the legendary left fielder Minnie Miñoso began yet another year at the Cell, delivering the opening pitch right across the street from where he ran the base paths half a century ago.
This article has a Canadian tone to it. Interesting…
Nice play on the name, whoever-you-are. Maybe you should have gone with “Pink Panther” though–or maybe “Dr. Strangelove”?
Either way, I’ll take your odd com-ment as a com-pliment.