J.R.

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/24/baseball-in-iran-why-sure/

Extended beer sales ... Crane blinded them with the Leviathan on Waveland, then slipped in this gem.

As I recall, ABC always had the weeknight games (Monday Night Baseball, Thursday Night Baseball) and NBC had the Saturday Game of the Week. The very same production team that made Monday Night Football into an event never really made a dent with the comparable baseball series and it wasn't a factor when the baseball TV world was turned upside down with the 1990 contract (CBS, ESPN.) I was spoiled pre-1990 - seemingly every big game was called by either Vin Scully, Bob Costas or Al Michaels.

Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Three's Company, Too Close for Comfort and Hart to Hart. A big slice of my childhood was preempted for this one. It's a shame that Keith Jackson's football duties caused him to be pulled from the playoffs. Seems he was a very underrated baseball announcer.

There was voting on the matter in 1988, but only in an advisory capacity. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-03-17/news/8803010397_1_voting-property-tax-property-owners Not sure why Rahm is making them do this dance.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/columnists/ct-spt-0407-haugh-chicago-20130407,0,7103172.column

Consider the wildly divergent paths this situation could have careened down from the point that the club was first put up for sale in 2007. Zell's original intent was to sell the park and team separately. He then tried to have the state take ownership of the park. The neighborhood NIMBYs did all they could to force the team out. Now, the team will retain complete control of the assets at Clark and Addison, with the added benefit of unlocking revenue streams heretofore forbidden and wresting other sources of income from the parasitic rooftop owners. A defanged Tunney is just gravy. I am rather happy with our ownership at this point.

That was when they bought out the Wrigleys, and the neighborhood was in tatters.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/matrix-major-league-baseball-owners-[expletive]

Really? We are talking about the Tribune here, I'm surprised they didn't give them a longer deal. They proved that they were completely inept at running a baseball team. They did a terrible job of maximizing revenues. The die was cast when they failed to buy up the neighborhood in 1981. They could have bought every surrounding structure for chump change.

Great showing for the Shark.

I think it is safe to assume that the finished product would look a lot less like a roadside billboard than that quick-and-dirty mockup. Perhaps some green steel framing, pennants aloft, "Wrigley Field" signage. This makes me want to wretch, but I am resigned to the board's inevitability. I can only hope that it won't be used to pipe useless noise and idiocy into the park like the other 29 MLB video screens.

I've been to Rosemont, and relative to Lakeview, it is most certainly bum [expletive].

As an out-of-town fan, I can confidently say that the desirability of seeing the Cubs play a home game in person declines markedly if they are located in bum [expletive] Illinois. The environment surrounding an urban ballpark is absolutely electric. Taking Wrigley out of the discussion for a moment, there is no comparison between parks in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh - purposely built in the densest points of their respective cities - and the parks in Atlanta and Arlington, TX, which were built where the land was cheapest (adjacent to their old parks and already under government control,) the Interstate ramps were wide and the parking plentiful. I reference these because I have visited all of them recently, and the experience is just better when the park is not bordered by miles of asphalt. The Cubs could not credibly play in a place like Schaumburg. It would be a joke, much like the Red Sox playing in a place like Foxboro or the Yankees taking up residence in the Meadowlands. It is too idiotic to even consider. There is an excellent reason why the majority of the new parks were built closer to their respective city centers than the parks they replaced. The suburban ballpark is a dinosaur in today's MLB, which has embraced Wrigleyville as the archetype for its ideal environs (if not Tunney as the ideal community partner.) The Rosemont proposition is straight out of the distant past.

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/15/wrigley-field-renovations-cubs-economics-dont-worry-rick-reillys-got-this/

This. The abominable blue tops would be tolerable with sleeve trim. We had a preview of a modern navy Cubs jersey a few years ago. http://www.bocatc.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/chuck105.jpg

Actually, that was the back of the old CF scoreboard which had been hacked up and sloppily thrown together in LF for the duration of the bleacher construction. You can see it in this postcard (note the unfinished new CF scoreboard:) http://www.baseball-reference.com/bpv/images/thumb/6/61/Postcard_of_wrigley_field.jpg/400px-Postcard_of_wrigley_field.jpg

They were posted to this ballpark enthusiast forum: http://www.baseball-fever.com/forumdisplay.php?58-Ballparks-Stadiums-amp-Green-Diamonds&s=560e0733d4d238f856f145509416e554

1937. http://i1013.photobucket.com/albums/af252/bucket3nyy/wrigleyreno19371_zps62ca282b.jpg http://i1013.photobucket.com/albums/af252/bucket3nyy/wrigleyreno19372_zps2b04b899.jpg http://i1013.photobucket.com/albums/af252/bucket3nyy/wrigleyreno19373_zps554a19ea.jpg http://i1013.photobucket.com/albums/af252/bucket3nyy/wrigleyreno19374_zps63245b1b.jpg

Neat home movie from Wrigley in 1937. The bleachers were brand new. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Fb3_8NX_j6M

First pics! It just got real.

I would think it is a given that the renovations will make it possible to fit a regulation grid. It is inevitable - so long as the bowl TV gravy train keeps rolling.

That was fantastic.

The family has done an excellent job with maximizing the potential of the ballpark by minimizing dark dates. It is remarkable that shareholder-driven Tribune never got serious about spinning the turnstiles beyond the 81 game dates, especially considering the park's history with football and soccer and McDonough's supposed marketing savvy.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/sports/baseball/ex-yankee-peterson-has-no-regrets-40-years-after-w/nT7fG/