MLB Discussion - 2012 Season

[Mr. Laser Beam]

IIRC, the thing that derailed the new Fenway was that the Boston city council wouldn't let the Sox build it. The team wanted to build a new Fenway right next to a new Pats stadium (can't remember where, exactly).

[tomalak301]

Giants beat the Cardinals tonight 15-0. I didn't know they had it in them, especially against the World Champions. I'm happy for the guaranteed split, but hopefully they can take the series tomorrow.

[SmoothieX]

Skywalker wrote:

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Agreed. If Yankee Stadium can go, any of them can.

I went to college near the old one. It was nothing to write home about, and you didn't get a sense of history as it was basically gutted and rebuilt in the 70s anyway.

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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IIRC, the thing that derailed the new Fenway was that the Boston city council wouldn't let the Sox build it. The team wanted to build a new Fenway right next to a new Pats stadium (can't remember where, exactly).

That would be Foxborough, which would have been a horrible idea because the infrastructure barely can handle 8 Pats games every year. It's a tiny town, well off the the Interstate on residential roads, with limited parking, and no public transit other than the one special gameday train that has to go on side tracks and plods along at a snail's pace and has to stop while the engineer gets off and flips switches.

(I'm a batshit crazy Pats fan so I am familiar with the area and the problems getting to and from there.)

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ No, it wasn't Foxboro. It was somewhere down by the water. I remember they would have had to knock down a whole lot of abandoned warehouses first.

[SmoothieX]

Hmmm, the Patriots play in Foxborough so I assumed that's where you meant. I remember them threatening to move to Hartford at one point, but I don't recall a proposal to put them in the city.

[Timby]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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^ I think the trouble with expanding the upper decks at Wrigley is related to the structural problems of the existing site. If they rebuilt it, they could get rid of all that.

The site is still terrible. This is what the team has to work with:



Any new stadium built by the Cubs would obviously be designed to hold a lot more than the 40,000 or so the current stadium seats -- but with the limitations of that site, the only way to do it would be to make upper decks so high that you'd be a mile away from the action (and then the rooftop owners would have kittens again). Parking is an absolute nightmare already, and so is traffic. The long and the short of it is that there's just no room to put a modern baseball stadium at the corners of Clark, Addison, Waveland and Sheffield. The Ricketts family needs to be scouting locations across the North Side (and around the suburbs, too) and make sure the stadium's done right. Sure, hang onto some classic pieces like the outside marquee and the scoreboard, but let Wrigley become a museum or a high school / college field, and let the Cubs enter the 21st century instead of feeling like they just went back to the minors. Wrigley is a piece of shit garbage scow that reeks of piss and stale beer.

And I doubt Cubs fans would put up with a stadium anywhere other than on that site, looking as much like Wrigley as possible. (Then again, Whitesox fans got over the loss of Comiskey, so I guess anything's possible.)

There'd be some pissing and moaning, sure, but it would go away pretty quickly. As long as those $9 cups of Old Style are flowing, people will show up.

[SmoothieX]

I don't think you'd need much more than a 40,000 seater. Most of the newer stadiums are in the low to mid 40s. The new Yankee Stadium seems to be the only new 50,000+ stadium.

The teams claim it's to make the ballpark experience more intimate, but I think it's more of a function that most people don't give a hot baked turd about a Tuesday night game in June against some garbage team.

[Ar-Pharazon]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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^ No, it wasn't Foxboro. It was somewhere down by the water. I remember they would have had to knock down a whole lot of abandoned warehouses first.

Well, luckily those empty warehouses were saved

As to the Cubs, it's my wish they go back to the West Side, where they won their last 2 World Series'.

The original location of West Side Park II has the UofI Medical Center & Stroger Hospital there, but the area is right on the Eisenhower Expressway.

A few miles to the north is the United Center. A new West Side Park could be built up there and share some of the massive parking areas.

[Timby]

Ar-Pharazon wrote:

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The original location of West Side Park II has the UofI Medical Center & Stroger Hospital there, but the area is right on the Eisenhower Expressway.

A few miles to the north is the United Center. A new West Side Park could be built up there and share some of the massive parking areas.

Ick. That neck of the woods is pretty ugly -- the only open space nearby that I can think of Addams Park, and residents would raise holy hell about the construction, and then they'd raise even more hell about the traffic.

Arlington Park is going broke. Buy the property out there, bulldoze it and develop a nice stadium with placement by an interstate.

[Timby]

Red Sox put Middlebrooks on the DL, Danny ".212 OBP" Valencia is the new starting third baseman. Wow, Cherington, dumping Youkilis for junk when there was no need to trade him ... how's that working out for you?

[Starbreaker]

I ended up going to Oriole Park at Camden Yards (what a mouthful) last night. I had a great time even though there was hardly anybody there except for the douchebag high school kids near me. I was not expecting the loud 'O' chant during the National Anthem. It scared the crap out of me.

Oh... and

[Tom Hendricks]

Are we ready to start talking about MVP award candidates?

For MVP right now I'm looking at a few players. Here are my top 5,

National League
1. Andrew McCutchen
2. Melky Cabrera
3. Carlos Beltran
4. David Wright
5. Ryan Braun

American League
1. Mike Trout
2. Miguel Cabrera
3. Prince Fielder
4. Josh Hamilton
5. Alex Rios

[SmoothieX]

I don't follow the AL too closely, so I won't comment on that.

For the NL, you can get rid of Wright and Braun. They don't tend to give it out to losing, non-playoff teams.

I agree with McCutchen, he's having a great year carrying a team that has sucked for 20 years.

[Timby]

SmoothieX wrote:

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I don't follow the AL too closely, so I won't comment on that.

For the NL, you can get rid of Wright and Braun. They don't tend to give it out to losing, non-playoff teams.

Given how completely self-righteous and stuck up its own ass the BBWAA is about steroids, that would count Braun out already, even if the Brewers were on pace for 120 wins. Wright has the Mets stench, so he's definitely out.

Right now, I'd say it's a dead heat in the NL between McCutchen and Joey Votto. Of course, it's still early -- we still have almost 50 games left in the season. McCutchen might have an edge because of the narrative, though.

Josh Hamilton

Yeah, no. He was the best hitter in baseball in April and May, but his June and July were absolutely terrible, and August hasn't been much of an improvement outside of his last few games. No way.

[SmoothieX]

Well in all fairness the Mets stench is due to the chop shops that surround the stadium, the train yard for the No. 7 train, and the pristine waters of the Long Island Sound as much as it is the slapdickery of team management.

As a fan of the team, I am quite glad Wright has bounced back to his former self.