Over the winter, the Chicago Cubs’ organization set upon a renovation/update for Wrigley Field. Lord knows; it was long overdue. Let me just say that it would seem as if the folks in the Cubs’ organization who are in charge of overseeing all of this work are about as adept at that task as the Cubs’ teams have been on the field for the last century or so. It was evident from back around New Year’s Day that the new “Jumbotron” – or whatever they will call it in Chicago – would not be in place quickly enough to assure that the bleachers could be rebuilt around it. Indeed, that work continues. However, that is the good news…
On Opening Day, the Cubbies drew a capacity crowd for a game against the Cardinals; no surprise there. What was a surprise for the fans was that there were not enough rest rooms to accommodate that many folks in the stadium. Reports had it that fans had to wait in excess of 30 minutes in line to use the bathrooms that were functional. Reports also had it that patrons were urinating in empty beer cups and leaving the cups “around and about”.
Look, one of the reasons that the Cubs felt it was finally time to do this renovation/update is that Wrigley Field has always been short on the number of “relief facilities” available. To go with a renovation plan that would allow the stadium to open with even fewer “seats available” than were there before the renovation is purely stupid. How will the Cubbies resolve this problem?
They will put porta-potties out in the left field concourse.
They will have real toilets installed and functioning by “late May” according to Crane Kenney, the Cubs’ President of Baseball Operations.
Just in case you do not realize, “late May” is approximately 25% of the way through the season; the Cubs will not have sufficient bathroom facilities for its fans for that period of time. In fact, by the time 31 May rolls around – that is “late May” indeed – the Cubs will have played 28 home games out of 81 for the season. In case the batteries in your calculator are dead, that represents 35% of the Cubs’ home games for the season. Here is a link to a report on this mess and a copy of the letter sent by the Cubs to their season ticket holders.
A headline on CBSSports.com yesterday caught my eye because it indicated that Dave Bliss was going to be coaching college basketball once again. Frankly, I could not believe that was really going to happen, but according to the report under the headline, Southwestern Christian University (an NAIA school) has hired him. If you do not recall Dave Bliss and his “fall from grace”, let me do a short reset:
At Baylor, he had several players there who were having their expenses paid for but were not on scholarship.
One of those players – one that Bliss had explicitly brought with him to Baylor from a previous coaching stop – was murdered. Much later a teammate was convicted of that murder.
Bliss organized and orchestrated an intentional cover-up of the scholarship improprieties and scripted interviews to be given to police and investigators. Even less classy than that, he promulgated a completely fallacious story that the murder victim was involved with drugs and that his murder was a “drug crime”.
That all happened in 2003. Just to show that I have not just now manufactured these feelings of outrage, I found what I wrote about this subject in a Topical Rant way back then. I have posted it here in case you would like to see more about this sordid mess.
Yes, I do believe in redemption and I do believe that some people do turn the vector heading of their life around significantly. Yes, I believe that may indeed be the case here. And yes, I am skeptical and will need to see evidence of the change in vector heading. What he did – and what some of his assistant coaches did under his tutelage – back then was simply despicable.
The NFL is in the process of devising a rule change that will affect the PAT and the intent is to have that new rule in place for the 2015 season. There is a meeting scheduled in late May where the Competition Committee will make its recommendation to the owners.
[Aside: I am confident that the NFL owners will meet in a venue in late May that has sufficient toilet facilities in place so that they need not use porta-potties. Just saying…]
Dan Daly posted a history of the NFL’s dealings with the PAT issue on his blog, ProfootballDaly.com. It turns out that at least one former Commissioner of the NFL hated the PAT and tried to have it removed from the game for more than a decade. Moreover, Professor Daly presents an argument as to why the league should not want to make the PAT significantly more difficult to convert. I think this a piece you should read in its entirety.
Finally, here is a suggestion from Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle:
“The Sacramento Kings signed Sim Bhullar to a 10-day contract, and the 7-foot-5, 360-pound center is the first NBA player of Indian descent. So can we call him Mahatma Grande?”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
The Cubs restroom inconveniences reminds me of the Jets having a similar problem before they moved to the Meadowlands. Call it Fifty Shades of Shea.
Rich:
That was only a small part of the reason why Shea Stadium was an atrocity!
The last Jets game I attended at Shea I witnessed inebriated fans relieving themselves in a men’s room sinks. It was the last season at New York for the Jets.
Rich:
As I recall, the Jets abandoned Shea in the mid-80s. My first visit to Shea was in the mid-70s for a Mets game. The Mets continued to play at Shea long after the Jets left and I saw some Mets games at Shea up until 2003 or 2004 (cannot pinpoint the time). I never witnessed “whizzing in the sinks”, but by the turn of the century, Shea Stadium was even worse than RFK Stadium – and that is not a pleasant place to be.