Our park can hold a candle to anybody’s ballpark. It’s terrific in every respect.
—Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, Chicago White Sox TV play-by-play broadcaster
While disgruntled, goat-toting tavern owners were putting curses on their crosstown neighbor Chicago Cubs, the Chicago White Sox were 25 years into their own curse, placed on them, so to speak, in 1921 by baseball’s first ever commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The eight Chicago “Black Sox” of 1919, having accepted money from mob-connected figures like Arnold “the Big Bankroll” Rothstein to throw their World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, were banned from baseball. Among the members of the team acquitted by jurors but indicted by Landis was would-have-been hall of fame outfielder “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. In his 1,332 games as a professional, prior to being banned by Landis, Jackson batted an astonishing .356 while collecting 1,772 hits. The White Sox did not return to the World Series for almost four decades, when they lost to the exodus-embarked Los Angeles Dodgers four games to two. Another 24 years passed before the White Sox again came close to the fall classic, but in the 1983 American League Championship Series, Chicago fell short to the eventual World Series champion Baltimore Orioles three games to one. Inside their home of “old” Comiskey Park, the White Sox won only one World Series, beating the New York Giants two years prior to the team’s “sitting in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed.” Finally, after 80 years and almost as many uniform changes at the hands of former team owner Bill Veeck, “old” Comiskey Park gave way to “new” Comiskey Park. On April 18, 1991, before a sold-out crowd of 42,000 plus fans, the White Sox were trounced in their new park’s inaugural game, 16–0, by Cecil Fielder and the Detroit Tigers.
Too Soon?
With the construction of the new ballpark beginning only 711 days prior to that first “game” against the Detroit Tigers, there were naturally some architectural and design questions once the 42,000 fans started barreling through “new” Comiskey Park’s turnstiles. Having been at the park from day one, White Sox TV broadcaster Ken “Hawk” Harrelson comments on the park’s original design: “It was okay when they originally built ‘new’ Comiskey Park, but then there were some design flaws in there that were pretty obvious. I’m not an architect. Most people aren’t, but they were able to spot them in a hurry. In the upper deck, they had the entries and the exits in the bottom, so when you came in, if you were in the upper deck, you had to walk all the way up the stairs and then all the way down. Then they redid the stadium. It cost them a lot of money, and they put the entrances/exits in the middle, whereas you would only have to walk halfway up or halfway down, so to speak.” After the ’01 and ’02 seasons, the first two renovations of the ballpark occurred, costing the team $13 million. The biggest change was the addition of an ivy-draped, two-tiered batter’s eye and an extended concourse level beyond the center-field wall. With a $68 million check from the U.S. Cellular Corporation for naming rights to the ballpark burning a hole in their pockets, the White Sox resumed renovations after the ’03 season, costing the team a further $48 million. The largest of these costs was for the addition of LED “ribbon” boards around the club level and the subtraction of the top six rows of the stadium’s upper deck. After the ’05 season, phase five of the park’s renovation changed the color of the seats throughout the ballpark to green and added a scout seating area behind home plate. Another proverbial cashed trust fund check or two later, the team was finally done renovating. Though the phrase “they did it right the second time” won’t be catching fire with Hallmark in its line of congratulatory greeting cards, “Hawk” can best put a stamp on the seven-year, $100 million plus renovations to a ballpark, the original cost of which was only $50 million more, with the words, “All in all, our ballpark is just tremendous.”
With Chicago’s most expensive version ever of Extreme Home Makeover taking the better part of a decade, one can logically expect some changes were made to the field itself. To make room for the relocated bullpens and the new bullpen-themed bar, the fences down the left- and right-field lines were brought in from 347 to 330 feet, a pull hitter’s dream come true. Interestingly, the change didn’t really affect the White Sox as a team, as they remained third in baseball in home runs, with virtually no change from 2001 (214) to 2002 (217). However, the man “Hawk” Harrelson nicknamed “the Big Hurt,” two-time American League MVP and hall of fame first baseman Frank Thomas, in his first two full seasons after the fences came in, hit 70 home runs, only 17 of which happened on the road. Aside from Thomas’s poke-friendly, 17-foot gift, no drastic changes occurred, dimension wise, as a result of the renovations, with left center extending out a mere two feet and right center coming in only three. While newly designed ballparks like Oriole Park at Camden Yards were the main inspiration for the White Sox shattering so many savings jars from 2001 to 2012, U.S. Cellular Field itself became the standard for many of the subsequent ballparks in one particular area. U.S. Cellular Field’s one constant over its 24-year existence has been its playing surface. In fact, the infield dirt was brought over from the “old” Comiskey Park and placed in “new” Comiskey when the park opened. The name by which the White Sox have stood over the past 75 seasons for their grounds-keeping has been Bossard. Harrelson explains, “There’s only perfect conditions on our field because we have Roger Bossard, ‘the Sod Father.’ He’s the best. He’s built the field on many of the new stadiums and stadiums all over the world. We have the best playing surface in baseball. You can tie us, but you can’t beat us in that regard. We’re as good as it gets, so that makes it great for the players as well.” Bossard took over for his father Gene, who was the head groundskeeper for the White Sox for 43 years. The Sod Father’s drainage system, developed specifically for U.S. Cellular Field when it opened in 1991, has been copied and used in two-thirds of the league’s ballparks today, all or most of which opened after U.S. Cellular Field.
Perhaps U.S. Cellular’s most defining feature “taken in” by the fans would be the ballpark’s various culinary contributions. Harrelson notes, “As far as a fan coming to the ballpark for the first time, the first thing that gets you is the aroma. We were voted the best food in Major League Baseball, so you’re going to have the aroma. It’s like going to a NASCAR race. A lot of people who have never been to a NASCAR race don’t understand that there are more elements to it than just watching the cars run. There’s obviously the visual, there’s the audio, and then there’s the unique smell to it. The same thing goes true with U.S. Cellular Field.” With Major League Baseball’s greatest eats available to them, the fans can likely appreciate another of the conditions resulting from the renovations, which is more seating room. Harrelson notes, “We have plenty of room in our seats, which is a big thing for the fans. I think what Jerry Reinsdorf did in the final analysis talking with the Illinois Sports Commission was they decided—especially during the renovation—they were going to go quality rather than quantity. A lot of parks, unfortunately, have gone for quantity. More seats, more seats, more seats. So they cut them down a couple of inches on each side. In a lot of the parks, especially if it’s a big person, they have a very uncomfortable time.” Another gift from U.S. Cellular Field to the fans is the angling of the seats to the pitcher’s mound. Speaking on other stadiums and their spectatorial configuration, Harrelson notes, “Even in the right-field/left-field area, a lot of seats are not pointed towards home plate. They’re pointed straight out, so if you’re sitting in left field, you have to look over your right shoulder, and, from right field, you have to look over your left shoulder at what’s going on with the pitcher and the hitter.” Though the renovations, which cost nine figures, left U.S. Cellular Field almost 2,000 seats shorter than the original park design, the 40,000 plus that remained are arguably among the most comfortable in baseball.
“The Good Guys” Return to Glory
During the ballpark’s first year, the White Sox played a “turn back the clock” game against the Milwaukee Brewers, the first in Major League Baseball in which the teams wore uniforms of yesteryear. The White Sox’s choice was the black uniforms from 1917, the last year the team had ever won a World Series. The new uniform prompted “Hawk” to reach into his bottomless bag of nicknames and come up with “the Good Guys” for the team, which eventually led to the team slogan “Good Guys Wear Black.” In the first 14 seasons at their new home, the Good Guys only qualified for the postseason twice, winning a collective two games between the series. Going into the ’05 season, the White Sox had lost their two biggest sluggers, Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Lee, to free agency and their team leader, Frank Thomas, to injury, but the team had gained Jermaine Dye, Scott Podsednik, A.J. Pierzynski, and Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, all of whom would become quite instrumental once October baseball rolled around. The White Sox heralded the American League’s best regular season record, but it was their nearly impeccable postseason run (11–1) that returned championship glory to the Windy City for the first time in 88 years. Having swept a Red Sox team who had, just one year before, ended their own octogenarian drought, the White Sox eliminated the Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim) in five games to set up the team’s first World Series appearance in 46 years. The series was a short one, especially for the Houston Astros, who, though led by the pitching mastery of Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, and Roy Oswalt, were swept by the Good Guys thanks to late home runs by Geoff Blum and Podsednik (walk-off in game 2), stellar pitching by imported pitchers like Jose Contreras and Freddy Garcia, and a .438 batting average by series MVP Jermaine Dye. Part of this celebratory pileup of Good Guys at Houston’s Minute Maid Park on October 26, 2005, was “Hawk” Harrelson’s all-time favorite White Sox player, Mark Buehrle, who on more than one occasion brought tears to the veteran broadcaster’s eyes. On July 23, 2009, against the Tampa Bay Rays, Harrelson’s weren’t the only eyes that watered inside the confines of U.S. Cellular Field.
A Special Win for a “Special Guy”
In his 12 seasons with the White Sox, Mark Buehrle gathered up 161 wins and 1,396 strikeouts while facing 10,317 batters over 390 games. Of the 10,317, only 27 faced Buehrle on that midsummer’s day in 2009 at U.S. Cellular Field. Using 116 pitches, Buehrle dominated the defending American League Champion Tampa Bay Rays, throwing first pitch strikes to 19 of the 27 batters he faced. While the distribution of outs was fairly balanced (11 groundouts, 10 fly outs, and 6 strikeouts), it was the 25th of the night that made the collective heart inside Buehrle and the 28,036 fans in attendance skip a beat. Tampa Bay right fielder Gabe Kapler led off the top of the ninth with perhaps the loudest out in perfect game history, flying out to deep left center field and the White Sox’s DeWayne Wise. Harrelson recalls the moment: “DeWayne Wise’s catch was the greatest catch I’ve ever seen under memorable circumstances. It would have been a great catch anytime during a regular season game, but for a perfect game, to make that catch in the ninth inning, was phenomenal. The last thing I do as an announcer—before the pitch is made—is I check the outfield. That’s just a habit of mine I’ve had my whole life. As a baseball player, you check your outfielders where you know where they are. As a base runner, you check your outfielders where you know where they are. DeWayne always played shallow. The shallowest center fielder of anybody in the American League, and when Gabe Kapler hit the ball, I’m thinking, ‘Shit! He’s not going to be able to get there.’ Well, he kicked it in high gear about halfway there, jumped up, hit the wall, bobbled the ball, recovered it coming down, and made the catch.” Luckily, the network couldn’t pick up Harrelson’s thoughts, thus avoiding an FCC fine; however, “Hawk’s” call on the field, “DeWayne Wise makes the catch! What a play by Wise! Mercy!” helped soak in the moment for those tuning in to the game on TV. Two quiet outs later, Mark Buerhle had himself the 18th perfect game in Major League history. Looking back on this Good Guy’s masterpiece, Harrelson says, “I’ve been in this game all or parts of seven decades, so I’ve seen a lot of stuff, but the most memorable game for me was Mark Buehrle’s perfect game. It was mainly because of Mark. He reminds me so much of one of the great teammates I had and that was (Jim) Catfish Hunter. They were about the same size. They had about the same kind of stuff. Great personalities. Great teammates. Nothing negative about either one of those guys. When a guy like that goes out and does what he does with the stuff that he had, and he pitched a perfect game, I just cried because Buehrle is such a special guy. You have special guys. You’ve got Derek Jeter in New York. You had Cal Ripken. You had George Brett. You had special guys in the game who don’t come along very often. Mark Buerhle was one of those guys. When you get a guy like that, especially if he’s on your team, I feel like he’s like a son. Those are things that you just do as a person who is a lifer—like I am—in baseball. If it had been Sammy Smith or Jimmy Jones who threw the perfect game, I’d have gone up after the game and said, ‘Nice going, buddy,’ and that’d be it.”
While Good Guys like Mark Buehrle, Frank Thomas, and Jermaine Dye have either changed team uniforms, retired, or been enshrined in Cooperstown, new names like Chris Sale, Dayan Viciedo, and 2014 American League Rookie of the Year Jose Abreu, as well as familiar faces like Paul Konerko and Alexei Ramirez, fill the roster to make sure it’s not another 88 years before the fireworks once again ignite behind Bill Veeck’s historic clock in straightaway center and the confetti streams down from whatever’s left of U.S. Cellular Field’s upper deck.