With TV deal on the horizon, Fire slowly making progress

Toyota Park is the best thing that ever happened to the Fire, but sometime this week the Fire hopes to announce the next best thing: a locally broadcast TV schedule for this season, possibly the biggest in team history.

Just as important, die-hards and casual channel surfers won't need to break the bank to find the games.

Slowly but surely, step by step, the Fire is establishing itself into the Chicago sports scene.

For the first several years of its existence, the Fire played most of its games in 66,000-seat Soldier Field. The team rarely filled half the stadium, and often it only was about a quarter full.

Needed a seat? Take three. Want to sit by yourself? Feel free to spread out.

The Fire played well at home, but it sure didn't feel like much of an advantage.

Soldier Field was too big.

While Soldier Field was being renovated, the team played the 2002 season at North Central College's Benedetti-Wehrli Stadium in Naperville. But even with special bleachers brought in for the team, Benedetti-Wehrli could accommodate only about 10,000 fans.

It was too small.

Then the Fire joined the soccer-specific stadium revolution slowly making its way through Major League Soccer, moving into its new home in June 2006 in Bridgeview.

Toyota Park seats about 20,000 for soccer and has the look and feel of a true soccer stadium, with great sightlines everywhere and a sense that fans are right on top of the action. The Fire might not always sell out the place, but it comes close enough that fans know they're not alone.

The best off-the-field move the Fire ever made was building a field of its own. Toyota Park is just right.

Now the Fire will make another off-the-field move to make pro games even easier to TiVo when youth games or other plans keep fans from attending games at Toyota Park.

How important is it? Just ask the Blackhawks' new management how they feel about getting home games on television.

Toward the end of last season, Channel 50 broadcast a couple of games, perhaps, it might turn out, to see if it could work with the team in the long run. The broadcasts might have been a little rough at times, but at least a general audience could find the games without signing over a paycheck to Comcast or DirectTV. If not for this deal, the team would be forced to rely on a patchwork of ESPN2, TeleFutura, HDNet, Direct Kick and Fox Soccer Channel.

One more thing: Except for its brief time in Naperville, the Fire has not had its games broadcast in English.

You can hear Fire games in Polish on WNVT 1030-AM and in Spanish on WRTO 1200-AM. You'll have as much luck finding the games broadcast in Pig Latin as English.

Unfortunately, that won't change soon. It's a reminder to management there's more work to be done.