Old Style, on tap at Wrigley Field since 1950, will remain available to Chicago Cubs fans for the next two years under a deal between the team and brand owner Pabst Brewing Company. It wasn’t that long ago — 30 years or less — when Chicago wasn’t the corporate-swill town it is today; we remember […]
Tag Archives | chicago cubs
Ricketts: Boise’s Memorial Stadium is substandard
Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts may have done the Boise Hawks (short season A; Northwest League) a huge favor by coming to the Treasure Valley and ripping Memorial Stadium as being a substandard facility. Ricketts was in town to review the Hawks operations and speak to the Boise Chamber of Commerce. He was pretty pointed […]
Cubs courting Sun Devils as ballpark partner
The Chicago Cubs are pitching Arizona State University officials on sharing the team’s new Mesa spring-training facility in a move that could see the Sun Devils leave venerable Packard Stadium. It’s fairly unusual for an MLB team to court a college program to share a spring-training facility, but this isn’t a normal circumstance. The Sun […]
Boise ballpark search to focus on downtown site
The search for a new Boise Hawks (short season A; Northwest League) ballpark site by local business leaders will focus on downtown Boise, as a third feasibility study will compare potential sites for review by the city and the team. The group of local business leaders, Better Boise Coalition, unveiled their plan yesterday. It’s pretty […]
Wrigleyville West delays possibly extended
The Chicago Cubs won’t be building a Wrigleyville West entertainment complex at a new Mesa spring-training complex until 2014 at the earliest, as city and team officials work to come to some sort of game plan in terms of scope and scale. The enormity of the task in creating a retail complex at a spring-training […]
Gammons rips Wrigley Field, defends Ricketts
Usually Peter Gammons is the smartest guy in the room when it comes to baseball, but comments he made about Wrigley Field being a “dump” and Cubs owner Tom Ricketts not knowing the true renovation price of the ballpark are ridiculous — and are generating lots of heat in the Windy City. Gammons, now an […]
Populous, Hunt land Cubs spring-site design
One of the biggest ballpark deals to come down the pike in recent months has been announced, as Populous landed the contract to design the new Chicago Cubs spring-training facility in Mesa, Arizona, while Hunt Construction will build it. Mesa Mayor Scott Smith made the announcement today. About $84 million is budgeted for the spring […]
Crane group lands Astros
Jim Crane, who lost out to Nolan Ryan in a bid for the Texas Rangers, has perhaps the next best thing for someone in the Lone Star State: he’s heading a local group buying the Houston Astros from Drayton McLane in a deal announced today. No word yet on the purchase price, though we expect […]
Cubs to honor Pete Vonachen
Nice honor for Pete Vonachen: the owner of the Peoria Chiefs (Low Class A; Midwest League) will be honored by the Chicago Cubs during a Wrigley Field pregame ceremony before Wednesday night’s game; he’ll also lead the crowd in the Seventh Inning Stretch festivities. On May 11 at Wrigley Field, Pete and his family will […]
The Week That Was: April 10
The preservation of a historic playing field, franchise shifts and sales in the independent-baseball ranks, a San Francisco ballpark visit, and some bad news from Clark and Addison were the biggest stories this week. A look at the top stories on Ballpark Digest this week, as measured by page views. Giants fan severely beaten in […]
Cubs notch lowest attendance since 2002
The Chicago Cubs have been a box-office machine in recent years, but yesterday Wrigley Field saw its smallest crowd in nine years, with only 26,292 showing up for a matinee against the Arizona Diamondbacks on a chilly, windy Monday. Harbinger or aberration? Of course, many teams would be happy with announcing 26,292 fans in the […]
The Week That Was: April 3
The opening of the Major League Baseball season, the end of the Spring Training season and some potential shifts in the independent-baseball world made headlines this last week. The top stories on Ballpark Digest for the past seven days, as measured in page views. From the Frontier League to Cubs PA announcer Moreno: Time to […]
Parsing the spring-training attendance numbers
With Spring Training 2011 now over, it’s time to look at the winners and losers in the annual tune-up to the Major League Baseball season, with over 3.5 million fans attending games in Florida, Arizona and other exhibition venues. There are actually a few different sets of spring-training numbers floating around out there: MLB tallies […]