Posted on 05/14/2012 7:46:35 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Having not won a World Series since 1908, and having last appeared on that stage in 1945—a war year in which the professional leagues were still populated by has-beens and freaks—the Chicago Cubs must contemplate the only solution that might restore the team to glory: Tear down Wrigley Field.
Destroy it. Annihilate it. Collapse it with the sort of charges that put the Sands Hotel out of its misery in Vegas. Implosion or explosion, get rid of it. That pile of quaintness has to go. Not merely the structure, but the ground on which it stands.
I'm a Roman, and to me, the expanse between Waveland and Addison on Chicago's North Side is Carthage. The struts and concessions, the catwalk where the late broadcaster Harry Caray once greeted me with all the fluid liquidity of an animatronic Disneyland pirate—Hello, Cubs fan!—the ramps that ascend like a ziggurat to heaven—it's a false heaven—the bases, trestles, ivy, wooden seats and bleachers, the towering center-field scoreboard—all of it must be ripped out and carried away like the holy artifacts were carried out of the temple in Jerusalem, heaped in a pile and burned. Then the ground itself must be salted, made barren, covered with a housing project, say, a Stalinist monolith, so never again will a shrine arise on that haunted block. As it was with Moses, the followers and fans, though they search, shall never find its bones.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Amen
All I do is donate a dollar a day to FR and all you do is post this in News.
Seeing Ernie Banks ride a float in the Gay Pride Parade ended my lifelong support of the Cubs. Not to mention, the Ricketts family is an ardent supporter of gay “marriage” and “gay rights”.
But the Ernie Banks thing just killed me...
Carthage must be destroyed!
That was a laugh riot!
the Wrigleys are outed, Theo is there ,,, victory will soon be yours
It won’t help.Cleveland tore down their old stadium and built a new one.Rocky Colivito’s curse continues unabated.
Somebody has to lose. May as well be the Cubs. They’re good at it.
I think old quaint ballparks like Wrigley Field and Fenway Park should stay. And I say that as a Bostonian who would rather go to Camden Yards or even the dreaded Yankee Stadium to see a ballgame so that I can actually watch a game from a seat I can fit in without a pole in front of me with my car in an actual parking lot instead of wedged in back of a gas station in which I had to hand $40 and my car keys to some non-English speaking guy in a Bob Marley t-shirt and dreadlocks from some Caribbean island.
So WSJ pays people to write this drivel? Geez... If he believes half of what he wrote, he probably has a bag of frog eyes, chicken bones, bat crap, and a snip of hair from Babe Ruth hanging from the rear view mirror of his car to prevent accidents as well...
Though I usually skip sports threads, I clicked on this one only because it was from the WSJ. All I can say is that WSJ has really gone down hill if it is printing this kind of sentimental nonsense juxtaposed with quasi-superstition.
It ain’t the park, son. The team sucks swamp water. As a Mariners fan I ought to know.
Elwood Blues will have to go to the DMV to get his address changed.
This is important. It’s Baseball.
I see....
Excellent
Quitcherbitchin..
What’s all this about FSU going to the Big 12.
"1066 West Addison?
That's Wrigley Field!"
All of the old sports stadiums and traditions must be destroyed. So that the masses will be more willing to accept the future their masters dictate to them.
The more people forget how things ever were, the easier it is to get them to accept “change”.
Recently, the Pittsburgh Civic Arena (the Igloo) was demolished. I had many a fond memories of that place... the first time I ever tried ice skating... the Hornets, Penguins... college basketball... concerts from the Beatles to Sonny & Chere to Paul MaCarthy... but it was time. The building had outlived its usefulness.
Nostalgia is a great thing, but there is always a time to move on.
Yankees Fan from WAY back [I was at the ‘58 and ‘61 World Series]. Didn’t complain about the re-model, BUT when they built Macoombs Dam Park, instead of building a new Stadium on the site of the old one, I swore I’d never enter the place. Never have. Sometimes nostalgia is all you’ve got.
Maris din’t hit #61 in “The New Yankee Stadium”. Larsen, Wells and Cone didn’t pitch perfect games there. And Gehrig didn’t play first, Mick didn’t play center, Ford didn’t pitch, Yogi and thurman didn’t catch there, and Ruth never hit the snot out of a baseball there...
For all you north siders here. The last time the Cubs won it all, they played at Polk and Wood Streets, on the south side.
Please let the Cardinals get some more easy Ws from that hellhole and those stupid Cubbies.
then yeah - arc-light that POS!!
When I lived in Lincoln Park, I'd take in 30-40 Cubs games a year but there was only one year (81) where the Cubs got into the playoffs. This is a great park and this Cohen writer is a real b*tcher for sure.
So that more taxpayers can be bilked for building a replacement?
Curse of the Billy Goat
That all is true, but....good times...good times. :-)
Wrigley Field is an entity and an attraction all its own. It’s the world’s biggest beer garden and singles bar.
The Cubs are nothing but a sideshow of minimal relevance.
Ya, but in Pittsburgh, I can take you to a hunk of the left-center field wall where Mazirosoki's home run in 1960 beat the Mighty Yanks in game seven. The people with the serious nostalgia thing for baseball gather there every October 13 to reminisce.
No matter how much you love your wife, you can't make her like she's 20 years old again, and you can't make an old dilapidated ball park attractive to 20 year olds either.
There's a point where ball teams have to move on. It is a business after all.
How about moving the Cubs to either Tennessee or North Carolina? Chicago doesn’t need two teams anymore.
That’s just so cute. A Cubs fan with dreams of getting to the Big Show.
When you add up a combination of World Series appearances and/or wins, the Yankees and the Cardinals have owned the last century. The Cubs, not so much.
Would a new park really make a difference?
you can’t make an old dilapidated ball park attractive to 20 year olds either.
but when they turn 40 their memories are golden
and they remember. Sure they go to the modern venues
but they go to Wrigley to experience baseball.
Go Cubs.
Was that you I was sitting next to on Saturday? I’m 6’1”, not abnormally tall but when I sit in the common seats at Fenway my knees are always jammed into seat in front of me. It’s a great ballpark but it was built for hobbits.
I got away with giving the Jamaican only $30 this time.
Thye should convert a section of seats behind home plate to a small goat pasture. I wouldn’t go to watch the Cubs. But I might go to watch the goats watch the Cubs.
I agree. Still as much as the WSJ has gone downhill, it is still better than the toilet paper quality we get from all the other big city rags out there.
Hell with the flubs. I guess it is now offical that no one alive remembers their last championship. Serves these ____ right. Most obnoxious ignorant fans in MLB.
Over my dead body: May 23, 1945 - Chicago Lying-In Hospital, University of Chicago. Touch that field and prepare to die Cohen!
Get away with this and ‘they’ will be wanting to tear down Ebbets Field or, even worse, move the Dodgers out of Flatbush, or the Giants away from Coogans Bluff and the Polo Grounds.
I'm assuming you've read "The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Homeruns" by Bill Jenkinson?
I have a bro-in-law who held season tickets to the White Sox and took me to a game at old Comiskey Park the year before it was torn down. I couldn't believe how small the park was. Many foul balls went completely out of the park. It was a dump.
The Cubs Official Motto:
“Just wait’ll next year!”
/card fan for 38 years.
I don’t disagree. I wasn’t opposed to a new Stadium. I’m pissed because they didn’t build it where the old Stadium had been.
And as for 1960, that’s still the only Series the Yankees lost that REALLY pisses me off [1981 against the Dodgers comes second]. The only upside was that it cost Stengel his job. Whitey should have pitched Game 1, instead of 2. then he would have pitched 4, and 7.
Isn't the new stadium right next door to the old?
Where would the Yanks have played for two years when they tore down the old stadium and built new on the same spot?
And as for 1960, that’s still the only Series the Yankees lost that REALLY pisses me off
As a 12 year old Pirates fan at the time, I thought it was the greatest series ever! The Yanks broke all the series batting records and the Pirates won anyway. ;~))
Yeah—but on the other hand, look at all the teams that have won games in Wrigley Field while playing the Cubs.
Same in Pittsburgh. The Buccos said, “Build us a new ballpark and we’ll give you a winning team”. Two hundred million dollars and eleven years later and the losing streak is extending into its 20th straight year.
We stole Louis Bierbauer and the longest losing steak in professional sports from the Phillies. WhooHoo!
St. Louis built the new Busch right into the old one with an overlap without skipping a beat.
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