Nice Cub-Sox game tonight. Aside from the ridiculous bad call on the Campana pickoff at a critical time of the game (8th inning), the Cubs, leading 2-1 in the top of the ninth, got a leadoff triple from DeJesus. The Cubs had only scored in one inning with the help of an error (the Sox got their run on 3 walks, a throwing error on a steal, and a double that should have been caught), they were facing Peavy who has been great, and Peavy had been dominating since the Cubs scored early. Getting that third run was critical. Sveum, in his ultimate wisdom, seemed to think that all of a sudden the Cubs would start hitting Peavy, so didn’t squeeze, and of course, didn’t score. I’m okay giving the first batter a chance to drive in the run, but with one out, anyone who doesn’t squeeze in this situation doesn’t have a clue.
The Chicago Sun-Times had a very interesting article recently with the headline: BULLS ON FIRST. Proposal to build new practice facility highlights double standard for Cubs.
The article quoted a stadium-financing consultant who said the way things typically work around the country is that when one team in a city gets something, the other team gets the same thing. He worked with the Yankees and Mets. He went on to say, “Chicago is an anomaly in the notion of fairness. It’s a tradition that goes back 50 years. It’s not who you know. It’s ‘Are you in good standing with the political leadership or not?’ Political favoritism using taxpayer resources is a tradition in Chicago and Illinois.” The article talks about how Reinsdorf has been successful having the city and state subsidize his Bulls and White Sox, and now wants the “city and state to extend the lucrative tax break that has saved the Bulls and Blackhawks tens of millions of dollars.” The article ended with the consultant saying, “The Cubs have been treated unfairly for decades. The night game and advertising restrictions and limitations on their ability to expand and modify their own property are restrictions imposed only on the Cubs. They do not exist for any baseball, football, basketball, or hockey team anywhere. On the South Side, you have arguably the largest public subsidy for a baseball team in the nation–and not just for construction. It’s for upgrades, renovation, and operations. They even have offsets to the amusement tax if their attendance goes down. It’s as different a political treatment as one could find.”