Fans in bleachers out of luck early this season
The Cubs made official Saturday what had been suspected for some time: The expanded outfield bleachers won't be ready for Opening Night on April 5.
The revised Wrigley Field plan calls for the left-field bleachers to be opened in early May, with right field scheduled for late May. As a result, season-ticket holders in the bleachers will be given options from refunds to being relocated to other sections of the ballpark.
The bleacher expansion represents Phase 1 of the multiyear renovation project for the 101-year-old park. Winter weather and logistical problems have caused the delay, the Cubs said. They added that the large video board beyond left field would be ready to go for the home opener.
Crane Kenney, the Cubs' president of business operations, made the announcement during a very busy Cubs convention in downtown Chicago.
"It's what we said when we started, which is it's going to be really close to see if we could get it close to being done by (Opening Day)," Kenney said. "It was going to be a real tight schedule. We were hopeful that we could maybe find some time in the process. We didn't find the time. The steel-delivery date, we were kind of hoping it might get moved up. It didn't.
"It's going to be a little bit hard for people to understand because they're going to see the concrete, and it needs basically a month to cure. The video board doesn't require concrete to be cured. By cured I mean basically solidifying."
May 11 is the target date for left field, said Kenney, who added the Cubs got delayed in right field with Sheffield Avenue not being available to them because of sewer work that took longer than expected.
The center-field bleachers likely won't be open on Opening Day because of what Kenney termed "ingress" and "egress" issues.
The roughly 2,000 season-ticket holders in the bleachers will have until Jan. 29 to choose either a full refund for games before May 11, a credit on account for games before May 11 to be used to purchase tickets for any game on the schedule in any area of the park before tickets go on sale to the general public or relocation of seats for all games before May 11.
Both Kenney and team chairman Tom Ricketts said the Cubs have no plans to play games at any park but Wrigley Field. However, Kenney said the Cubs did discuss with the Milwaukee Brewers using Miller Park. Those discussions, he said, took place early in the planning process but were ruled out.
The other non-baseball topic fans wanted to talk about involved the new local TV deals signed with WGN and WLS. For the next five years, WGN will show 45 games locally, and WLS will show 25, with Comcast SportsNet carrying the cable-TV games.
The problem for fans who live outside of the WGN and WLS viewing areas is that those games will only be shown locally in Chicago.
To remedy that, the Cubs hope syndication deals can be worked out. For example, a local station in Peoria, Champaign or the Quad Cities may be able to show WGN or WLS games as part of a network.
Complicating things is Major League Baseball's archaic blackout rules, which affect streaming of games and watching them as part of the MLB Extra Innings package. Fans who live within a team's territorial-rights area are blacked out of games on these services.
Kenney said that if the Cubs are not able to work out syndication deals with local stations for the WGN and WLS games, they will ask MLB to lift the blackout restrictions.
"This is a very big issue for us," he said.