Mondays with Mike: Call me Riff

I made it to my second White Sox game of the season on Saturday night, tagging along with our friends Chef Jim and Professor Janet. It was Cinco de Mayo, and the Sox had a mariachi band do the anthem. It was probably the nicest evening Chicago’s seen weather-wise—at least when the Sox have been home.

It was a beautiful night for a ballgame.

It was a good crowd in good spirits–what I would describe as a predominantly working class. Sox games always draw a large Hispanic contingent, and it was larger than usual—a product of the theme night, I’m sure.

Lots of great chatter, lots of kids blowing off steam while their parents sipped a beer. Just like the Family Sundays at the park, Saturday night felt like when my folks would bring us to a game at Comiskey Park in the 1960s.

A lot’s changed since then. The scoreboard is an enormous TV now. There’s more raucous music than organ music, luxury suites, and the special club sections where people wait on you. Bars are behind the stands on the club level, and you know, you don’t have to be where the riff and the raff are.

The suites make me chuckle. I’ve been in them, and I guess they’re fine for a novelty, perhaps an event. But here’s the deal: I pay less for a better experience sitting with the crowd. Call me riff, but I like hanging out with the raff, where you talk baseball with strangers and it’s easier to pay attention to the ball game.

That’s a thing that’s changed since the days my folks brought me to games—not just in the ballpark—but across our society: our tendency to segregate ourselves to varying degrees. If you have enough money and are so inclined, you can buy your way out of lines, into private seating areas, and pretty much insulate yourself away from others who don’t.

I don’t like that change. I do understand the practical value of priority lines/clubs for people who fly all the time—there are some of these things that have as much to do with practicality as they do with exclusivity. But otherwise, I don’t much like the spirit of the whole idea.

This has all been on my mind lately because I came across a couple of different articles about different subjects that I think touch on this dynamic.

One of them looks at how a baseball team (the Cubs) has borrowed a ticket gimmick from Hamilton the Musical. Basically, they’re going to make a certain number of seats available for each game at affordable prices through a lottery. Hamilton’s been doing this from the beginning.

The writer, Chris Jones, calls out the exercise (in baseball and the theater) as more or less a public relations exercise. But he broadens his scope to lament the luxury box phenomenon of selling pricey, exclusive access in the theater, sports, and in general. Give it a read.

On another front, this New York Times article looks at segregation in New York City schools. The essence: The schools are still very segregated. As they are here in Chicago. And the common thread: School choice.

I’ve thought school choice was a bad idea from the beginning. It’s a shell game. And it makes parents and kids have to worry about entrance exams and all that junk at elementary and high school levels, in addition to college admissions.

It also feels like a gimmicky way of running from a problem. I get the idea that a kid in a bad neighborhood should not be obligated to go to a bad school. But here’s my answer: No bad schools. A commitment to neighborhood schools. Because school choice takes good students out of neighborhoods that are already teetering, hollowing out the neighborhood school, and contributing to a downward spiral.

To me, a commitment to public schools means a commitment to neighborhood public schools. What we have here instead is a way to invest heavily in a few good schools, where the usual suspects have the best chance of getting in, and divest elsewhere.

I’m happy to leave skyboxes to others—they end up on the short end of the stick, if you ask me. But when it comes to schools, well, not having to sit in class with your neighbor really doesn’t cut it.