Plunked between distinct communities, Comiskey Park is not so much a Field of Dreams as a demarcation line between neighborhoods.
In the white and Hispanic communities to the north and west, and in the black neighborhoods to the south and east, there is joy over the Sox winning their first division title in a decade. And residents still consider this very much a South Side team, even though the price of tickets seems increasingly aimed at people who live somewhere other than these working-class neighborhoods.
“One of Ozzie Gillian’s relatives lives down the block here,” a longtime Armour Square resident said with pride, if not perfect pronunciation, making the White Sox Venezuelan shortstop (it’s actually spelled “Guillen”) sound a little bit Irish.
But mingled with the excitement is a feeling that things have changed for the worse since the White Sox arm-twisted Illinois into building the ultra-modern, ultra-efficient soup bowl of a stadium that replaced the original Comiskey at the beginning of the 1991 season.
Some area residents say that in its move from the north to the south side of 35th Street, the once neighborly ballpark-where poor children lingered outside and an assortment of hot dog stands and taverns catered to fans season after season-has turned a cold, corporate shoulder to them.
African-American residents of the Douglas and South Armour Square neighborhoods said they feel especially shut out as new laws have cut back the once-thriving spinoff economy and as a perceived increased police presence in their neighborhoods on game days has made some feel like virtual prisoners.
In the white and Hispanic neighborhoods of Armour Square and Bridgeport, the feeling seems to have more to do with nostalgia for a bygone baseball era, a bygone building and bygone ticket prices than with oppression, but it is nonetheless there.
The immediate vicinity of Comiskey now is practically soulless, an ocean of parking lots where “peddling” has been banned (except at the official White Sox souvenir trailers) and where the only hustling that happens on game day is by fans walking between the park and their cars.
Gone is McCuddy’s, the legendary lager dispensary where Babe Ruth is said to have chugged beers between innings. Gone, too, is “Miss Ann,” a kind woman who operated a greasy spoon from her brown brick hut on the corner of 35th Street and Princeton Avenue.
“It’s our back yard,” James Holmes said with irony, standing in the courtyard of the Wentworth Gardens public-housing complex, looking at Comiskey rising to the north, seeming to touch the hovering clouds.
“It’s their house,” he said. “We ain’t no parts of that.”
Among many residents there is the feeling of being seasonal outcasts in their own community as suburbanites plod through their neighborhood on game days. There is a sense of loss-and of betrayal over the great Comiskey buyout even though the families and businesses that occupied the land where the park is now were well-compensated.
“They used to let us in, when we were little,” Holmes, 29, recalled. Donning a Sox cap, Holmes and his friends downed a few beers as they reminisced.
“At the old ballpark,” he said, “when they would see a bunch of us grouped up there, they let us in. Now they be trying to harass little kids, knowing they be just wanting to get in the park and see the game.
“We used to walk around the old ballpark all day, all up on the gate talking to the Andy Frains. Now they think you’re trying to do something to them-and you ain’t.”
Some young African-American men claimed they are harassed by police, whose presence swells on game days to protect stadium-goers in a neighborhood ripe with crime. Residents admit that there are some dangers but say that the extent of the fear is unwarranted and stems mainly from stereotypes about public-housing dwellers.
“If you’re too far up there, they want to know what you’re doing up there-because you’re black,” said Harry Jones, 31. “We’re subjected to being searched and all that just because we might be going to buy tickets.”
Longtime residents credit the original Comiskey with helping ease some of the tensions between the communities, and perhaps the new one will do that, as some might be able to find common ground in their sense that something has been lost.
“I don’t like the new park at all,” said Bill Sceerey, a 50-year Armour Square resident standing at the entrance to an alley along 33rd Street, trying to drum up some parking business for a friend who has a few spaces. “It’s too expensive, and the upper deck is so slopey, if you lean over too far you’re gone.
“I’ve been offered tickets, and I just don’t go.”
But Sceerey, who said he used to know former White Sox owner “Chuck” Comiskey personally, remains a fan by watching on TV, and he retains his feeling of connection to the team, he said.
A sense that things have changed, of course, may have as much to do with modern baseball as it does with modern baseball stadiums. Free agency, many fans complain, has made teams seem more like economic summit meetings than cohesive units rooted in their home city.
And it must be acknowledged that just as an old ballpayer’s game-winning home run lands one row deeper into the bleachers each time he retells the tale, the old Comiskey has become much better in memory than it was in real life.
But for all its flaws, “it was a neighborhood institution, an incredibly successful one . . . that took disparate individuals and blended them into a roaring crowd,” said Doug Bukowski, a native South Sider and the author of “Baseball Palace of the World,” an ode to the old park.
“The new Comiskey is to the old Comiskey what the O’Hare concourses are to any of the classic train stations,” said Bukowski, a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Indeed, efficiency seems to be the byword. That, for instance, was the reason behind the peddling ban, explained 11th Ward Ald. Patrick Huels. Peddlers would clog traffic on sidewalks and streets, he said.
Huels admitted to a certain nostalgia for the old park, but like many Bridgeport and Armour Square residents, he rhapsodized about how well the new parking setup is working. Now, to park on streets in the vicinity during ballgames, you need a permit from the alderman’s office, a system that all agree has cut vandalism considerably.
“The people in my neighborhood have said things” criticizing the new park, said Huels, “but behind the scenes, they’re all very happy that the White Sox chose to stay on 35th Street. Time heals all wounds. This ballpark is a modern structure, and we’re all going to get accustomed to it.”
He acknowledged that the new Sox are attracting a different customer.
“We never saw too many people in suits at the old Sox park,” he said. “You see that today.”
Indeed, one afternoon last week, in the lobby of the White Sox administrative offices behind home plate, the TV sets displayed a polo match. And anxious messengers awaited valuable currency.
“Sen. Marovitz’s office?” said a Sox staffer bearing a fat envelope. “There you go. All the tickets and all the instructions are in there.”
“Ald. Virginia Rugai?” asked another.
In an office, community relations director Christine Makowski detailed the club’s efforts to be a good neighbor, efforts that extend beyond being kind to politicians and that black community leaders said were sincere and aggressive.
In addition to working with neighborhood groups on traffic and vandalism issues, they’re working with three neighborhood schools in the Adopt-a-School program, leaning on players to visit and donating paraphernalia that can be used in incentive programs.
They hire people for seasonal jobs through neighborhood organizations, Makowski said, and last year hosted a neighborhood Christmas party at the stadium, an event that will be repeated.
A recent jacket and sweatshirt drive netted more than 8,000 pieces of clothing, and the club this summer sponsored a Little League for public-housing residents.
Across the Dan Ryan from the stadium and from Huels’ ward, the Big Hurt is economic and much of the sentiment against the new park seems to stem from lost opportunity.
“Everybody practically made money off the old stadium that was down there: old people, young people,” said Joseph Simmons, a 22-year-old former neighborhood resident. “We was right there parking cars, maybe wiping windows, doing some of anything.
“It was all right. That was the old stadium.”
“We ain’t got nothing against the players or nothing like that,” he hastened to add. “It’s just the business attitude with the police and the difficulties that they will cause.”
Last week, as the Sox finished their season’s final homestand against the Seattle Mariners, 16-year-old Vaun Credit climbed aboard a dirty elevator and hit the button for floor 17 in a grim building of the Chicago Housing Authority Stateway Gardens, just east of the Dan Ryan Expressway.
There awaited what Credit affectionately calls “the penthouse,” where residents can spy home plate, third base and thousands of fans in the park’s blue seats. The tower perch at 3517 S. Federal St. is the closest many of the neighbors east of the expressway get to the ballpark.
“This is it,” Credit assured, when the elevator stopped and opened into a dark hallway. Hurrying about 25 feet, he took a quick left through a doorway and walked a few more steps to the poor man’s perch above the South Side’s bright star.
The luminous white cobs fixed atop Comiskey beamed in the distance. The roar of a passing Dan Ryan “L” train rose from below. The wind whipped through the dull wire fence. And high over the ballpark fluttered a white and black flag labeled “1917.”
“You’ve got a good view from right here,” Credit said. He reckoned he could even tell the time from the lighted digital clock inside the ballpark.
“It’s eight . . . eight . . . ” Credit said, squinting, inching closer until his face was nearly pressed against the fence.
“Oh, it’s 7:16,” he laughed.
