Comiskey
Business
Let
me concede here at the beginning that Charlie Comiskey was an S.O.B. He was
a player and a manager, usually at the same time, in the early days of organized
baseball, where he gained a reputation as the leader of rough, brawling clubs
that were largely quite successful. His final winning percentage as a manager
was over .600.
After the end of his on-field career, Comiskey became the owner of the Chicago
White Sox . The story is he shortened the White Stockings to Sox
so it would fit into newspaper headlines better.
Anyway, it was as a team owner that Comiskey really gained a reputation as a
scoundrel. During the early part of the 20th Century, the White Sox were the
most popular and biggest moneymaking team in baseball, but Comiskey wanted to
hog the money all to himself and give as little as possible to the people who
were generating itthe players. When it came to paying the players, Comiskey
was a miser. And, in those pre-free agency days, players were in a take-it-or-leave-it
negotiating position with their ball teams. They were paid what the owner decided
they would be paid.
It does not in any way excuse the behavior of the cheating players who conspired
with gamblers to fix the 1919 World Series, but it is significant that it was
players from Comiskeys White Sox who took $10,000 to throw the series,
and almost brought baseball down with them.
But one thing that Comiskey did that nobody has an argument with: he built a
great ballpark for his team. When Comiskey Park opened in 1910 on the South
Side of Chicago, one prominent baseball publication called it The finest
Ball Park in the United States, which means the finest in the world. This
is especially remarkable when one considers that the site of the park had previously
been the city dump.
In fact, Sox shortstop Luke Applying, who played the infield at Comiskey from
1930 through 1950, once heard his spikes strike metal and the game had to be
delayed as a large copper pot was removed from the field and the hole filled
in.
That wasnt the only memorable moment in the history of Comiskey Park.
This was the place where, in 1960, owner Bill Veeck (as in wreck)
installed an exploding scoreboard that sounded like the South Side was under
enemy attack every time a Sox player homered. And this was the place where,
on July 12, 1979, a promotion called Disco Demolition Night got out of hand.
Between games of a doubleheader with the Detroit Tigers, disco records were
demolished on the field, and the crowd became so musically enthusiastic that
a major riot broke out, the field was swarmed by a mob, and the Sox ended up
forfeiting the second game to the Tigers.
Through all the crazinessand one more World Series and several Hall of
Fame careers and All Star gamesthe White Sox played in the park that Charlie
Comiskey built until 1991, when its age finally led to its replacement by a
state-of-the-art field, built beside the old one. This new field was called,
naturally enough, New Comiskey Park. Gradually the new was dropped
and it became known, as its predecessor had been, as simply Comiskey Park.
So, to sum up, the Chicago White Sox have been in the American League for as
long as there has been an American Leaguesince 1901and since 1910
have played in a facility called Comiskey Park.
Until this year.
When the baseball season starts, the Sox players are going to be coming to work
at the same location. The infield, outfield, dugouts, and clubhouse are the
same. But the corporate management of the White Sox have decided to sell the
naming rights to Comiskey Park to a telecommunications company called U.S. Cellular.
Comiskey Park will be called U.S. Cellular Field.
This is so wrong that there is a very real possibility that it may throw the
earth out of its orbit and send us all spiraling into the icy realms of interstellar
space.
I say this, and I hope Ive made this clear, not because Charlie Comiskey
was a great man whose memory should be preserved as an example for our children.
But he at least did have something to do with the Chicago White Sox and their
history. The current owners of the team are perfectly willing to sell that legacy
to the first telecommunications company that shows up with a checkbook, although
to be, fair, they probably would have been equally happy to sell the rights
to a chain of pawnshops or strip joints.
The White Sox owners should cast their minds back to last year when the Houston
Astros became known as the laughingstocks who played at Enron Field. Other examples
of this may occur to you, perhaps one close to where we live.
The more I thought about this, the madder I got. But then something occurred
to me. Charlie Comiskey was such a skinflint, so blind to the idea that anything
could be more important than money, that he would have been the first person
willing to sell the name of his ballpark if it had ever occurred to him that
he could have done so. I have no doubt that, in 1910, for the right money, he
would have been perfectly happy to have his team take the field in, say, Lydia
Pinkham Patent Medicine Park if sticking some ridiculous name on it would have
enriched Charlie Comiskey.
So maybe in stripping his name from the park, the current owners of the White
Sox are in a backhanded way paying tribute to Comiskeyby being as ignorantly
blinded by money as he was.
I cant wait for Disco Demolition Night II.