Savage: Wrigley versus the Cell? No contest
From SABR member Bill Savage at ESPN.com on July 26, 2016:
In the late 1980s, when White Sox ownership threatened to leave Chicago for Florida if the city didn’t build them a new stadium, I said I would be happy to see them go. Besides being against corporate welfare (why should taxpayers fund baseball owners’ profits?), as a Cubs fan, it didn’t matter to me if the White Sox decamped for the orange groves and retirement homes of St. Pete.
Season-ticket partner Old Style told me I was nuts. He’s from Cleveland and understands how great it is to have two teams in one city. “Major League Baseball every damn day,” he’d say. “Hell, sometimes we didn’t have that in Cleveland, even when the Tribe was at home!”
The politicians caved, and so Chicago is the only city that has had two major league teams since the founding of the American League in 1901. One or the other is in town pretty much every day of the season, as they are this week, when they play their home-and-home Crosstown Classic series.
Read the full article here: http://www.espn.com.au/mlb/story/_/id/17077949/wrigley-versus-cell-no-contest
Originally published: July 26, 2016. Last Updated: July 26, 2016.