Wrigley Field troughs to survive bathroom rennovations
Fear not retro fans, the troughs at Wrigley Field are safe for one more season. This is from the Chicago Tribune:
Good news for men who enjoy urinating in stainless steel troughs at professional baseball games: The Chicago Cubs will renovate the bathrooms at Wrigley Field this offseason, but a team spokesman has assured the Tribune that the treasured urinal troughs, long a part of the stadium’s lore, will remain.
This guy was not available for comment:
Not nearly Breaking: Bradley to the Rays???
It looks like the Cubs dealing Milton Bradley may happen very shortly. This from Bob Nightengale’s twitter feed:
#mlb #cubs Cubs officials say they are close to trading OF Milton Bradley, and all indications are that he’ll be going to Tampa Bay.
This deal has been speculated for sometime. I’ll have more as this thing unfolds.
UPDATE: This is probably just another bogus rumor the Cubs are floating to the media.
UPDATE 2: He might be traded, he might not. Who really cares at this point. The Cubs are going to let this drama play out all winter. The Cubs actually have bigger issues like what to do with the men’s rooms in the ballpark.
Ice Skating outside the Friendly Confines
If there were any news coming from the winter meetings, I’d be happy to pass it along and have a take on it. In the meantime this is news worthy at least if you live in Chicago and are looking for something to do this winter:
The Cubs and the city have teamed up to put an ice rink outside of the ballpark this winter. The rink will be stationed west of the ballpark and they are in the process of assembling the rink. The rink will open next Tuesday, December 15th for your holiday enjoyment. Here’s a link to Chicago Breaking News.
Crain’s Chicago Business Taking Names Blog has more on the rink, including some later than expected closing times:
But most interesting is that the rink will be open every night — until 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
And a litttle bit more:
“The rink at Wrigley is a great way to bring winter fun to our community and to highlight our commitment to our neighbors and the city of Chicago,” said Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts. “We are excited to offer a family-friendly activity for our fans and neighbors at the ballpark during the off-season.”
The rink opens Tuesday and the grand-opening celebration is planned for 11 a.m. on Dec. 19. Cost is $10 for adults and $6 for kids
If you need any more information the Cubs have set up a website for this: http://www.rinkatwrigley.com/
Tweeting for the Hawk
The fellas over at Cubscast.com came up with a fun twitter way to promote Andre Dawson for the HOF. Here are the details:
We’re calling on all Cubs fans to post comments that include the special hashtag #Dawson4TheHall to Twitter starting on Tuesday December 8th at 1:20 PM Central Time. Tweets must include the #Dawson4TheHall hashtag in order to be counted, and we also recommend that the #cubs and #mlb tags are included.
The goal, you ask? We want to draw as much attention as possible to Dawson’s bid (his 9th) to become elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame. If enough people send tweets using the #Dawson4TheHall hashtag, it will become a trending topic on Twitter. The timing could work out very well as many beat writers and journalists (some of whom have an actual ballot to cast) will be keeping an eye on Twitter to monitor the winter meetings from Indy that day.
Please tell all the Cubs fans you know! If everyone tells 5 people and so on, this has a good chance of working. Show your support for one of the best Cubs outfielders ever!
Cub fans begin to foot bill for debt
It’s gotta be nice to be the Chicago Cubs. With a season ticket waiting list that is over 120,000 they can do virtually whatever they want with ticket prices. So despite this country being in dismal economic times. Despite the fact that many teams are either freezing ticket prices or lowering them. The Cubs are able to announce they will increase prices. But don’t worry the main increase will only be on the premium games. The games that get resold most often. Wait, did I mention the fact that they are almost doubling the number of premium games? LOL.
Here’s the skinny from Paul Sullivan in the Tribune on Saturday:
Club box outfield seats will increase by nearly 19 percent for so-called “platinum” games, a new ticket price tier that was introduced in 2009, and will nearly double from 14 games to 26 next year.
The most expensive seat will be a platinum club infield box, which was raised by $12, or a 12 percent increase from $100 to $112. The cheapest tickets will be $9 for an upper deck outfield reserved seat for one of the six “bronze” games on weekdays in April, May and September.
The Cubs maintain that half of the ticket inventory will remain about the same, while the average price increase will be $2 for “gold” games and $5 for “platinum” games. A 1 percent rise in the city amusement tax, from 11 to 12 percent, also figured into the price hike.
In essence, the Cubs hiked the prices on their most expensive seats and said they believe many of them will be re-sold by season ticket holders. Meanwhile, they held the line on most “cheap” seats that generally go to individuals when tickets go on sale to the public in February.
So this is good news for those of you who get into the VWR every February. For you season ticket holders you are fucked. Crane Kenney somehow still has a fucking job, and he gives us some bullshit on raising tickets:
“We understand our season ticket holders in particular use the secondary market as a way of underwriting their ticket purchases,” Kenney said. “It’s a fact of life. We’re over that. That’s fine. So we did the $5 (average) increase on those premium games as a way of trying to push the burden of our ticket price increase on those games, leaving the ticket prices flat for most of our games, for most of our seats.”
So Kenney decides to run the ‘move the blame to the ticket brokers play’, it’s a play that’s almost as tiresome as a Bears screen pass. Kenney doesn’t have to run this play and truthfully the Cubs should thank the secondary market for being an easy scapegoat every year the Cubs raise ticket prices. I guess it’s easier to blame ticket brokers than it is to tell the fans: ‘the team has a shitload of debt and you will pay for it’. That may not go over so well.
And the Ricketts’ beloved bleacher seats:
All bleacher seats will remain about the same as in ‘09. A bleacher seat for platinum games will go for around $60.50, a .50 increase from 2009. The Cubs did not reveal exact pricing, only announcing the ticket price before the amusement tax was added and saying the number would be “rounded off.” Almost all the six bronze game tickets remained flat. Most of the silver games will be about the same price as ‘09, though the number has decreased from 28 to 19.
So Chad and Trixie can rest easy tonite. The cover charge for Chicago’s best summer beer garden will remain unchanged. Something tells me very few of them will even notice…
Anyone that wants to bitch about this, can just give their tickets back. As Ed Sherman notes this is business and the Cubs have buyers lined up to fill seats at Clark and Addison:
I know there are going to be plenty of Cubs fans who contend the team has no business raising tickets prices after last year’s debacle. Sorry, that’s not the way it works.
The Cubs probably will rank among the top 4 or 5 teams in baseball in payroll. If fans want these top-dollar players, they are going to have help pay the freight. Of course, it might be easier to digest if those top-dollar players could actually play.
Mr. Ricketts also said in his initial press conference that there would be an increase in prices. He isn’t trying to pull a fast one here.
If you think the prices are too high, or want to protest the increase and dump your tickets, fine. The current waiting list for season tickets is at 120,000 people.
The Cubs know there are no shortage of buyers at Wrigley.
Ricketts and company may not add substantially to the Cubs payroll this season. But they will begin paying down the massive debt they acquired with the purchase of the team.
