Comiskey Is Falling, but Coliseum Stands

In the office of the Chicago White Sox, the spokesman for the team is calm, anticipating the trade of Comiskey Parks, old for new.

Final touches for the new are being applied. The office staff moves there Oct. 6. The team follows in the spring.

And what happens to the old, which lies adjacent to the new? It has been spared dynamite. The wrecker’s ball, coming in like a hard slider, is assigned the job after this season.

The acreage will be used for parking.

New Comiskey will seat 43,000. It is being financed at a cost of $150 million by the State of Illinois, which aims to get back its money from White Sox rental and from a hotel tax.

Chicago is a big convention town. Delegates in wholesale plumbing, pharmaceuticals and the like will pay to keep baseball on the South Side.

And if they don’t like the tax? They can move their convention to Peoria.

Old Comiskey has stood since 1910. It was home to the Black Sox, found not guilty of throwing the 1919 World Series. The jury deliberated only two hours.

But the eight defendants were banished anyway by Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who, banishing guys today ruled not guilty, finds himself in litigation up to his wrinkles.

The plaintiffs attach bats, balls and all the hot dogs in the major leagues.

Joe Louis wins the heavyweight title at old Comiskey. Mickey Mantle hits his first big league homer there. George Halas brings in his Bears from across town to play the football Cardinals and, entering a player melee on the field, has a gun drawn on him by a South Side cop.

The place brims with history.

But folks are logical in Chicago. They have no case against the past; they just choose to live for the future. They raise the money for new Comiskey and send the wrecker’s ball against the old.

All the while, Los Angeles sits with a relic called the Coliseum, destined to gather dust like the ruins at Delphi. Sentimentalists fight for the Coliseum’s preservation. Politicians and stadium commissioners fight over funding to redo it.

The upshot is nothing, which is to say the largest county in America continues to have no football facility appropriate for this age.

It is the argument of the Raiders, who stand on the doorsill of pulling stakes, that stadium promises to them have not been kept.

The Coliseum contends the Raiders are partly to blame. If they would accept a new stadium, as the White Sox have, with no demand for special monies, the problem possibly could be unraveled.

The Raiders counter that up-front money, as it is known in industrial circles, is necessary when dealing with politicians and stadium commissioners.

The Raiders point out they could waste two years or more waiting for a stadium deal to be put together at the Coliseum. The deal then dies--and the club has blown opportunities that would have been available elsewhere.

Irwindale made a deal with the Raiders, who assigned a staff to the project and devoted 2 1/2 years to marketing, environmental and engineering studies.

In the end, Irwindale fails to perform. The Raiders claim that if they don’t tap Irwindale for $10 million up-front, they have wasted time, energy and, worse, their own money in the preparation.

But cities have grown sensitive to bankrolling sports promoters. Burned by the baseball A’s, who nicked it for a $15-million loan--under terms very friendly to the borrower--Oakland reared back recently and knocked the Raiders out of the box.

It negated a fat deal city and county leaders had made with the club.

Now Oakland is regrouping, attempting to put together an offer more modest than that previously tendered.

Whether Los Angeles will counter with a package can’t be determined. It can’t even be determined whether Los Angeles cares.

If it doesn’t have a pro team, the village won’t vanish into the sea. But folks must not be deluded into believing that if the Raiders depart, another club will move into a stadium as dated as the present Coliseum.

Paul Tagliabue, the NFL commissioner, has made it clear the Coliseum is not acceptable by today’s standards.

So, you ask, which way are the Raiders heading?

And a logical answer right now would be Oakland, which isn’t doing gainers off the curbstone over the Raiders, but is showing more interest than Los Angeles.

The White Sox are lucky they operate in Chicago, the town they say they love. They got a new stadium for nothing more than love--and a threat to move to St. Petersburg.