Tag / Brooks Boyer

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The Wrong Kind Of History

After staving off their ignoble date with history for the final homestand of the season, the White Sox met their date with history on Friday night, losing 4-1 to the Tigers to notch their 121st loss of the season, a total unmatched in modern MLB history.  Owner Jerry Reinsdorf had his fingerprints all over this one, on both sides of the field.  The Tigers, managed by A.J. Hinch, who was then-GM Rick Hahn’s leading choice to manage the White Sox before Reinsdorf insisted on hiring Tony LaRussa for a second go-around, and announced by Jason Benetti, who Reinsdorf and henchman Brooks Boyer drove away from the White Sox booth this past off-season, clinched a playoff berth while handing the White Sox their record-breaking loss.

Last fall, when Reinsdorf promoted Chris Getz to General Manager after firing Hahn and Kenny Williams, he said, “One of the things that I owe the fans is to get better as fast as we can possibly get better.”  He later added, “I realized that if I brought someone in from the outside it’s going to take them a year. He’s going to have to evaluate everyone in the organization.”  Well, both Reinsdorf and Getz now own this year.  The most losses in the 124 years of modern baseball history and second of all-time to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.  In the conversation for the worst team of all time.  And outside of a handful of promising pitching prospects, most of whom have already debuted and contributed to this season’s history-making finish, very little help on the way from the minor league system.  Speaking as a fan, I would have gladly traded that year for competence.  Something that is sorely lacking on the corner of 35th and Shields.

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Building A New TV Home

The White Sox, Bulls, and Blackhawks are expected to announce this week that they are moving their game broadcasts from NBC Sports Chicago to Stadium, a multi-platform sports network controlled by Jerry Reinsdorf.  Stadium, which already has a streaming platform n place that could potentially offer a direct-to-consumer product through its app, would then convert into a regional sports network and attempt to find distribution with cable and satellite providers, in an era where viewership is declining.  The teams, specifically the White Sox and Bulls, are also looking for traditional over-the-air broadcasters to carry some, if not all, of the games locally.

Presumably, most, if not all, of the on-air staff would move to the new channel, as this would seemingly spell the end of the road for NBC Sports Chicago.  Some of the behind-the-scenes staff will likely need to move over as well to enable Stadium to make the transition.

Stadium, of course, is owned by Silver Chalice, a digital and media investment subsidiary of the White Sox with White Sox VP Brooks Boyer listed as CEO.  Their offices and studios are currently located at the United Center.

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South Side Gentrification

new-video-boards-us-cellular-fieldNot to be outdone by their neighbors to the north, the White Sox will have 3 new video boards in place at US Cellular Field for Opening Day 2016.  The Illinois Sports Facilities Authority approved the $7.3 million renovation, including a roughly 7000-8000 square foot video board in center field that should leave the White Sox with one of the largest boards in the league.

The current board, installed in 2003, measures only 1484 square feet and is the smallest board in all of baseball.  The boards in left field and right field will be the same size as the current boards, but with much higher resolution.

Hopefully, along with the new boards, they are reconfigured a little bit.  The bottom of the scoreboard in center field is blocked in its current configuration by the Fan Deck, added in 2003.  The board in left field is blocked from most of the third base side by the Fundamentals Deck added in 2005.  Installation of the new board in center field should be able to be raised a few feet to place it above the Fan Deck.  Switching the location of the other two boards with the ads next to them would, along with fixing the Fundamentals problem, provide the opportunity to use all three boards with each other.

The ISFA will also be allowed to keep any revenue generated by the boards at non-White Sox events held at US Cellular Field, including concerts.  The last concert was held in the park in 2003, but the agency is negotiating with promoters to bring big shows back to the south side.

According to Brooks Boyer, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, there will be a number of other renovations at the ballpark over the winter, but he was unwilling to go in to details.  “Come Opening Day next year,” Boyer said, “it’s going to look a lot different.”