White Sox fans: We’re No. 1!! We’re No. 1!!

Not necessarily at baseball, but at least it’s something

Sure, most of the sources talking about the 2024, or even 2025 or 2026 or 2027 White Sox tend to put the team at the very bottom of their rankings. And that’s for any category, be it overall talent or production, or more specific categories like offense or defense, or even P.R. sense or organization-giving-a-damn-ness.

But one publication has the Sox at the very top of its list for last year. No. 1!

WHAT PUBLICATION, MAY WE ASK?

You may.

It is not ESPN. Nor is it Sports Illustrated. Nor The Athletic. Nor FanGraphs. Nor Baseball-Reference. Nor MLB, nor mlbtraderumors. Not the Tribune or Sun-Times, either. Not even a White Sox blog, such as you are now reading.

It is ... wait for it ... Urbanize Chicago.

HUH?

A reasonable question.

As it turns out, Urbanize Chicago is neither singer Keith Urban’s secret method of winning the heart of wife Nicole Kidman, nor is it the name of a new form of slider developed in an underground pitching lab in New Mexico.

Instead, Urbanize is a site dedicated to commercial real estate and similar matters. It has branches in a half dozen or so major U.S. cities, one of them being Chicago. As is the case for many forms of media, Urbanize Chicago did an end-of-the-year list of its Top 10 stories, the rating based on audience response, presumably in the form of clicks.

Naturally, the list works its way up from No. 10 to 1 so as to increase the suspense en route. That means it led off with No. 10, which was the prospective redevelopment of the once-notorious Cabrini Green site into as many as 5,000 housing units. Pretty impressive, eh?

Next, at the No. 9 slot came a development called Halsted Point, at the tip of Goose Island at 901 S. Halsted. Then came ...

GET ON WITH IT!! HOW ARE THE WHITE SOX No. 1?

OK, but you’re missing out on some good commercial real estate stories here. The No. 1 Urbanize Chicago Top Story of 2024, was none other than the initial renderings of that monument to the greed of multi-billionaires, The 78! As Urbanize put it:

Topping our list is the first initial announcement of renderings showing plans for the proposed White Sox stadium at The 78. Located south of Roosevelt Rd, the stadium would potentially become the new anchor of The 78 megadevelopment that has been in the works for years.

Related Midwest and the White Sox have been working on the plan and have approached city and state leaders in a pursuit for public funding to aid in the construction of the stadium, which has been met with opposition from both the public and from lawmakers, putting the brakes on the plan as a resolution is sought. We’ll see how it evolves in 2025.

“Opposition” is putting it mildly, of course. The three greedy, grasping multi-billionaires (Jerry Reinsdorf, with whom you’re all only too familiar; developer Related Companies Chairman Stephen M. Ross; and principal property owner convicted fraudster Nadhmi Auchi) getting a finger that’s not a No. 1 from everyone from Governor JB Pritzker to any man, woman, and child in the street because they want to soak the public for a couple of billion instead of putting their own money where their avarice is.

(Yes, the mayor has not gone full middle finger despite a bankrupt city, but he can’t even get a rudimentary budget approved by the alderpersons and has become somebody just taking up space until the next election.)

So the story is apt to be meaningless, except for a pretty drawing:

But, what the heck, the proposal was No. 1, which is the only No. 1 the White Sox are apt to be part of until the first in that list of billionaires heads off to The Great Con Artists’ Haven in the Sky, beating out the second place demolition of historic buildings at Wells and Superior. It also beat out the third place story, a project at 935 W. Belmont that would, among other things, shut down one of the branches of Chicago institution Ann Sather’s, home of cinnamon rolls to die for (worry not, there’s another close by). It was even also No. 6 when the drawings were updated.

SO, WE’RE REALLY No. 1, No. 1, No. 1!!!!!

Yep. Be proud. Be very proud.