By now most of you have heard the rumblings that the Chicago Cubs may be calling U.S. Cellular Field home during the 2013 season. If the Cubs want to renovate Wrigley Field and make the necessary repairs to bring the stadium into the mid-20th century, they're going to need to shut the place down for at least a season. Which leads to an interesting dilemma. Where will they play?

The fans who honestly think it's feasible for the Cubs to play in Milwaukee are lying to themselves. That's far too much of a headache for the schedulers and not entirely realistic for the fanbase. Even more humorous is the "Let's play our games at Fifth Third Ballpark (home of the Kane County Cougars)" contingent. Do you know how many seats there are? 14,000! That's a lot of money that the team would lose playing in such a tiny stadium. There is only one realistic option for the Ricketts if they finally decide to stop trying to "fix" every problem with duct tape and actually update their shrine to mediocrity: become temporary tenants of our Chicago White Sox.

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I was perusing my Twitter account today and a bunch of tweets came in from Ozzie Guillen. It started out innocently enough. First he thanked everyone for their birthday wishes and then told Jermaine Dye that he will kick his butt in golf. Then someone must have told him that Jake Peavy said "I would never quit on a team. ...Ozzie didn't finish with us the last (two) games. So I don't know who quit on who."

Because these were the next four tweets Ozzie rattled off (sorry for the typos, they are his and not mine):

When i get to chitown lets make one thing clear what happen last day whit the sox stay tune

Iam out the country now but i never quit in anything yes be ready when i talk going to be fun

I will kill peoples fellings no mercy i turn the page but they no let me a long then get ready going to be bad

People want me to look bad but i so honest i wiil saynthe real true put u seat belt on

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Just a brief announcement with some stunning new developments for South Side Sox elsewhere on the Internet. And by "stunning," I mean "administrative," which might be even sexier.

Twitter

If you're on Twitter and you don't follow @SouthSideSox, now's a good time to start. I'll still be tweeting on @JimMargalus, but most of my White Sox tweets will come from @SouthSideSox in order to give SSS a more identifiable Twitter voice.

I've also put a list together of all of the SSS staff on Twitter, so follow everybody on the list or follow the list itself, and you win either way.

Google Plus

For you avid Google Plus users, you can find South Side Sox here. Put it in your baseball circles! +1 it! We'll take either or both!

Facebook

If you don't know where we are on Facebook, then you must not visit the home page. You don't have to love us -- you just have to like us.

If you're on these platforms and want SSSers to find you, drop your various handle(s) below.

And if you're already hooked up with us, or you don't care one bit, here's a live feed of Yoennis Cespedes' Dominican Winter League debut to watch while there's snow on the ground.

A couple days ago, Scott Merkin tweeted a strange feature of John Danks' five-year, $65 million contract:

Interesting note on John Danks: His 2012 salary is $500,000. He then gets a $7.5 million signing bonus, paid between June, '12 and Oct., '12

— Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) January 10, 2012

Merkin followed by saying Danks is still an $8 million man on the payroll, so there's no real difference overall. But still, I can't recall ever seeing a signing bonus used in this way. Usually a bonus will be given up front to lessen the salary on the back end of the contract, but this bonus only shifts the money around over the course of one year, and rather drastically.

Thinking it through, there seem to be two conclusions.

The mystery one: In the event the 2012 White Sox are still over their budget, the delay allows Kenny Williams to extend the trade market to the deadline without any financial cost.

The sensible one: As Larry pointed out, the Los Angeles Dodgers' bankruptcy filing showed the White Sox were the fifth-largest unsecured creditor at $3.5 million. That's the same amount as the Dodgers were supposed to pay towards Juan Pierre's 2011 salary. The Dodgers are in the process of being sold -- Jan. 23 is the deadline for initial bids -- so maybe Jerry Reinsdorf is using the Danks contract as a way to balance the books for the first half of the year, expecting the Pierre payment to come in sometime during the second half.

I'm rooting for the mystery box, myself.

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It seemed like a decent enough time to do another one of these (also known as U-God is having writer's block and feels bad about not creating any content in two weeks) so here we go. Today's rotating guest chair belongs to friend of the site and fellow White Sox blogger Tom Fornelli of South Side Asylum. We'll cover such interesting topics as the Danks extension, the hottest new thing out of Cuba, hatred, and the impending new year.

1. What is your initial reaction to the John Danks extension?

Tom: Shock, then anger, then confusion. Shock because when the rumors first surfaced on Twitter it came out of no where. Anger because after spending a few hours chasing down more on the story Chuck Garfien beat me to it 5 minutes before I could publish my story. Then confusion set in because I'm just not sure what this means. Were the trade offers just not enticing enough? Did Jerry see a decline in ticket sales so far and put the brakes on this rebuilding business? Is this move solely to get a larger return on a Danks trade? By actually signing Danks I think the Sox managed to create even more questions.

Tdogg: Pardon my French, but I told you mother turkeys.... (editor's note: not his original word, but replacement word of choice). :-) I like it, I love it. Williams is really not the rebuild type. Danks in my eyes is still underrated and I think this deal will ultimately be a steal.

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It looks like the Sox don't have this package set up with a link yet, but they handed out this little piece of literature along with similar pages for the pick 14, split ticket and other packages you could purchase for 2012. I haven't purchased one myself so I can only assume you can get this from the phone number listed there. Maybe it's not available yet, who knows, but it exists.

In other White Sox ticket price news, it's time for the annual report that everybody just can't wait to read ...

SPRING TRAINING TICKET PRICES!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

But wait! The "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" is genuine this time, because unlike the other ticket price-shifting, there are actual reductions worth celebrating.

While single-game spring tickets won't go on sale until Jan. 6, Camelback Ranch has already posted the 2012 prices, as it's promoting a holiday sale from Dec. 9-12. And on its face, economic realities have apparently won the day.

I've stacked up the 2012 prices to those from the previous two seasons (with "prime" game prices in parentheses), and there are some pretty significant takeaways:

*A milestone in price sanity: The White Sox and Dodgers have ceased trying to force $40 as an acceptable standard price for a glorified minor-league game. That's a victory for fans, even though...

*But still some work to do: ... the Sox (and Dodgers) were the only teams who charged more than $30 for their best standard tickets last season, and it's likely they'll continue to charge way more at the top than everybody else. However, when the other Cactus League teams release their 2012 prices, we'll have a better idea where they truly stand.

*Watch out for prime games: Given what we saw with the Pick 14 plan, I'm guessing they've expanded the definition of prime games in order to recoup some of the money. We'll see.

*Elimination of the most BS seat category: The former "premium infield box" was tiered pricing run amok, since it comprised just the first five rows of the "infield box." Those seats are now just plain ol' "infield box" seats.

*Legitimate economical options: Even at $15, the Sox and Dodgers charged the most for the lowest tier of seats (non-berm/lawn) in the Cactus League. At $10, though, they could very well have the cheapest cheap seats around.

*A 32-percent reduction down the lines: Which means there may be far fewer opportunities for photos like this:

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This might come as a surprise to some of you, but I like to keep track of White Sox ticket prices. Partially because, sure, Things Cost More Than They Used To, but more because it's a form of interaction between the franchise and its fans.

The two sides have circled around this issue like Sharks and Jets for years. The White Sox make a public note when attendance doesn't meet projections, but it's then followed by a regular, small increase in ticket prices. Due to their piss-poor starts the last two years, the Sox have reshaped the way they criticize their fans. Instead of guilt-tripping ("we could make an addition ... if only we had more support"), they've tried to pass it off as a weird compliment ("Boy, our fans sure hold us accountable!") Either way, the tickets never stopped increasing in price, whch puts the onus on the White Sox offer an entertaining product. They're getting further away from that goal.

I mainly focus on single-game prices because I consider the single-game price to be the official offer to the casual fan. And the casual fan is very important to restoring attendance at U.S. Cellular Field. Those prices aren't out yet, but the White Sox made their first attempt at promoting price reductions with their season-ticket packages.

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