White Sox safety concerns

On Friday, the White Sox played the Oakland Athletics on what was dubbed 90s Night. The crowd at Guaranteed Rate Field mostly showed up for the promise of a Vanilla Ice concert after the game. I know that to some it may be shocking that no one really cared about the baseball game, but when the two teams in the game are two of the three worst in baseball (thanks to the Kansas City Royals for making sure the White Sox stay put at third-worst,) you can understand why.

After sitting through a 12-4 thrashing at the hands of the worst team in baseball, fans were told that the postgame concert was cancelled, leading to “sell the team” chants.

So after leaving the park disappointed, I did what many do and went on the app formerly known as Twitter to see what people had to say about the show getting cancelled. And then we got news of two fans getting shot in the park.

Now I know a lot of people love to talk about how Chicago is so dangerous, especially after the comments by the former president-turned-mug shot T-shirt seller Donald Trump, and to that I have only one thing to say:

But as someone that was actually in the park when the incident happened, there was no signs of anything happening. The game did not stop, and I did not know until after the game that anything happened.

I spent my ride home wondering how someone could sneak a gun past security. In my experience, the park security is solid and I’ve never had an issue with it. And with little to no answers from the team or the Chicago Police Department, speculation began.

Did a place that I’ve always felt relatively safe at make a mistake? Did one of the officers I saw in the stands accidentally discharge their weapon?

Well it turns out that the answer is more complicated than that, as the investigation currently shows evidence that the shots came from outside of the park. Now I’m no scientist, but I’m sure that a special set of circumstances had to take place in order for that to happen. Either way, I do not understand how the game was allowed to continue with no pause in the action.

There were enough concerns that the family members of the A’s were evacuated, yet no one outside of the area that the incident took place was told to seek safety. In hindsight, we were probably in no danger, but it’s telling that we had no idea of what was happening across the stadium from a potentially deadly situation.

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