WTTW: Windows Turned Toward Wrigley

In return for a $150 donation, WTTW is offering donors a Harry Caray documentary, an audio CD of Harry's memorable calls, and a book titled "For Cubs Fans Only." Half of Chicago wouldn't touch that offer with a skunk pole.

Harry Caray was an announcer for the Chicago White Sox from 1971-1981. For all the kids growing up in Chicago during that decade, he was the voice of the White Sox. Harry Caray led Sox fans in "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the Seventh Inning Stretch at Comiskey Park long before he ever reprised that performance for Cubs fans. The fact that Harry became more visible in the local media after he became a Tribune employee does not mean that he was more important to Cubs fans than he had been to Sox fans. It does not mean that he became more important to Chicago as a Cubs announcer than he had been as a Sox announcer. It just means that he benefitted from the Tribune's practice of self-promotion. Both WTTW and the documentary they aired tonight treat Harry's decade with the White Sox as if it doesn't matter. By extension, they treat Sox fans like we don't matter either.

We're used to that, but we're not sure why it happens. I mean, we know why the Tribune promotes the Cubs culture at the expense of everyone else in this diverse city -- as Nelson Algren observed a half century ago, the Tribune distorts reality to promote its own interests -- but we're not sure why competing media and independent media so often follow the Tribune like obedient little lemmings.

Cell Trounces Wrigley in Sports Illustrated Poll

Despite the mantra we constantly hear in the Chicago media about the superiority of Tribune-owned Wrigley Field, baseball fans apparently prefer U.S. Cellular Field. Thanks to Cubune watcher Brian Dykes for directing our attention to this Sports Illustrated Poll of 8,500 baseball fans, who ranked U.S. Cellular Field #8 and Wrigley #24, out of 30 baseball destinations, based on a variety of criteria. Sad that we have to go outside the Chicago media to find fair assessments of Chicago. Sports Illustrated:

We have to give the ChiSox a lot of credit for turning a park that originally had all the charm of a mini-mall into a pretty good baseball destination. Certainly having a World Series trophy helps, but so does the addition of a kids' activities area as well as embracing the legacy of old Comiskey Park with a quirky outfield shower and new green seats. Offering a smorgasbord of tasty food also buys a lot of goodwill. Teams such as the White Sox and the Angels prove that a new park isn't always necessary to draw fans if you have a little creativity and show a commitment to your fans.

Chicago's Best Ballpark Waffles

Tribune softball pitcher and waffle vendor Fred Mitchell waffles in today's paper about crime at the two ballparks. Mitchell doesn't come to much of a conclusion, except to suggest that while perceptions are slippery things, they do keep new restaurants from opening near U.S. Cellular Field. He omits the fact that perceptions are manufactured by daily newspapers, like the Cubs-owning newspaper that he writes for.

In fact, U.S. Cellular Field is not surrounded by restaurants because U.S. Cellular Field is surrounded by parking lots, and the White Sox own vending rights to a vast area around the stadium, which prevent anyone from opening a restaurant that might compete with sales inside the stadium. It's an unfortunate arrangement that prevents development immediately adjacent to the ballpark and consigns most Sox fans to the highway after a game.

As for crimes, Mitchell does mention one of two murders that have taken the lives of spectators following Cubs games in the last two seasons, while extracting a statement from Cubs-friendly Alderman Tom Tunney that the murder in front of the Cubby Bear at Clark and Addison after a Cubs game last year was not "significant to Wrigley Field." That's one of those statements that makes you go hmm.

When he gets to the Cell, Mitchell has to mention Tribune-favorite William Ligue, of course, even though that on-field assault really has nothing to do with his stated topic: fan safety outside the ballpark after games. He also raises the beating of talk-show host Bill Simonson in 2000, an incident that made an enormous media splash precisely because Simonson is a talk-show host. How many brawls, we wonder, occur in the two neighborhoods that do not involve talk-show hosts?

And if a murder outside Wrigley 90 minutes after a Cubs game is not "significant to Wrigley," it's hard to see how Simonson's beating more than three hours after a Sox game could be "significant" to the Cell. But Mitchell doesn't seek out any ameliorating comments from South Side aldermen.

Mitchell just succeeds in illustrating once again how unfortunate incidents that occur in Bridgeport are portrayed in local media as threats to the safety of Sox fans, but much more serious incidents in Wrigleyville are portrayed as insignificant to the safety of Cubs fans. Why is that?

Another Corpse at Wrigley

Another dead body has turned up in the shadow of the Tribune-owned stadium that the Tribune has described as a "sacred garden." According to today's Sun-Times:

A 53-year-old man holding a hypodermic needle and with a belt tightened around his arm was found dead early Thursday in a portable toilet across the street from Wrigley Field.

We've written often about the way Tribune media promote Wrigley as a tourist destination while portraying U.S. Cellular as a scary place surrounded by poverty, drug abuse, and curiously stereotypical racial minorities. Yet in all the years we've been watching, baseball fans have been murdered only after attending Cubs games, and the "smell of marijuana" that one Tribune reporter claims to have detected near The Cell last October seems rather tame compared to the specter of an apparent heroin overdose in a Wrigleyville Honey Hut.

We doubt, however, that the Tribune will divert from the tried and true storylines that earn it the most money.