Bernstein & Holmes: White Sox's quickest path to relevance is building a good team, not a new stadium

(670 The Score) As the White Sox pursue a new stadium in the South Loop, Dan Bernstein and Laurence Holmes explained on their show Wednesday that the quickest path to relevance for the franchise is building a good team, not building a new stadium.

Specifically, they discussed how the White Sox had made inroads just a few years ago in drawing more attention in the Chicago baseball landscape, only to squander the momentum with poor decisions and by playing bad baseball the past two seasons.

“There’s a lot of like smoke blowing of, ‘Well, this is going to change everything,’” Holmes said of the stadium pursuit. “It’s probably not. And it’s probably not because of the numbers problem that the White Sox have.

“If you’re thinking that the thing that turns the tide against the Cubs is going to be this fabulous new ballpark, I have a lot of reservations if you think that is the case. It’s a numbers problem. There just aren’t enough people who love the White Sox. If you poll 10 people in town and ask them what their baseball team was, probably seven of them are going to say the Cubs. And sure, the White Sox have made gains in the southwestern suburbs … northwest Indiana, there’s also a Schaumburg contingent of White Sox fans too that are out there. I’ve seen some of their heat maps.

“But even still, you’re climbing an uphill battle. One of the things that I don’t want to hear is that this is the cure for all of that. It would be great specifically for White Sox fans and other people who are curious that want to come by. But the part that we keep not talking about is having a new stadium is great, but what’s going to happen inside of the stadium? … Are you going to spend actual money on the team? Because I’m here to tell you that you were really close to making a dent (in fandom), and it didn’t have anything to do with your ballpark. It had to do with decisions that were made.”

Listen to their full segment below.

The White Sox are talking with a developer about building a new stadium on a long-undeveloped 62-acre parcel of land near Roosevelt Road and Clark Street.