A Red Line Double Header is when you go to a Cubs/Sox day game, then catch the Red Line for a night game at the other location. It’s a very popular thing in Chicago and a grueling experience if you’ve done it before. Not for the faint of heart at all, especially if you’re starting in Wrigley and then subjecting yourself to the nighttime festivities of Guaranteed Rate. It’s so much better the other way around but I digress. None of this matters because it’s not happening this year.
And on that topic. I still cannot embed instagram posts on the blog so you’ll have to trust me when I say that I also saw the same reel and felt the same panic.
The #1 reason I think this is happening is the scheduling initiative from MLB to not have the Sox and Cubs in town at the same time. My guess is that Jerry Reinsdorf had a say in the schedule making so that he could get better attendance from visitors, vacationers, baseball fans, etc. If the two teams are in town, 100% of non-biased decision makers would choose Wrigley over the White Sox. That’s an obvious fact.
So as the White Sox ticket sales are doomed. As they’re the laughing stock of baseball and can’t get a couple thousand paid attendance. As they quite literally shouldn’t even be a AAA team with respect to gameday revenue. As you consider all of these things… it makes all the sense in the world that Jerry Reinsdorf would go to Rob Manfred and cry poor and blame the Cubs and say they’re stealing money from him. That’s because he’s a cheap fuck who doesn’t care about anyone but himself.
So now Jerry Reinsdorf is strong arming MLB into making sure the Cubs don’t crossover with the White Sox because BOO HOO the White Sox are a joke.
The net result is that guys like you and me can’t be degenerates one day a year and spend 14 hours galavanting around professional baseball with a dozen domestics sloshing around our stomach linings. Personally I think that’s unfair to me but I can also understand the policy behind it.
The fact is that the White Sox need every ounce of help they can get. And while I like to watch a lot of their fans suffer – particularly the loud assholes that build their entire lives around a Jerry Reinsdorf baseball team. I also think it’s important to keep two baseball teams in Chicago no matter how bad one of them gets. It’s as deeply rooted in Chicago’s history as much as it is in MLB history. And one of these days I’ll sit down and talk to you guys about how the White Sox today are the exact same organization they were at inception – a marketing tactic designed to capture the Cubs’ runoff.
We can tackle that topic later.
For now I just want to say that I think it’s absolute fucking bullshit that Jerry Reinsdorf is allowed to design MLB’s schedule to such an extent.
Fuck that guy.
PS – look at this schedule and tell me this doesn’t sound awesome. This is what we’re missing. This is why I’m mad: