“What’s next? I mean, I feel like we’re one step away from God.”
From The New York Times (gift article):
On the day the new pope was elected, the White Sox rewarded his enduring faith in them by losing to the Kansas City Royals, 10-0. Still, the pope’s fandom gave the team a new promotional angle, a way to respectfully capitalize on the joy sweeping over the city.
After confirming that Pope Leo was one of theirs, the White Sox made sure everyone knew it. Their social media team cheekily corrected the Cubs’ marquee, posting a photo of the White Sox’ scoreboard with the words, “Hey Chicago, He’s a Sox Fan!” Sales of their primary baseball cap increased by 33 percent in the next week. By the end of the year, three of the 10 White Sox social media posts that got the most engagement had something to do with the pope.
But those were one-offs; gaining an ally in the 266th successor to St. Peter called for grander ideas, so [the senior director of promotions and marketing for the Chicago White Sox, Mike Downey] and his colleagues set to work.
The team’s senior director of design services created a digital mural of the pope for a wall between Sections 140 and 141. In the top right corner is a smaller image — a screenshot from a television broadcast of Game 1 of the 2005 World Series when Pope Leo, then the leader of the Order of St. Augustine, was caught on camera during the final out. The team also added a commemorative plaque to the seat he occupied that day.
The obvious next step was to get the pope back in the stadium, at least in spirit.
Chicago has a large Catholic population, and the Archdiocese of Chicago is the third-largest diocese in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of adults in the city identify as Christian and 29 percent say they are Catholic, the largest of any denomination. The White Sox have hosted a small Mass for stadium employees for 30 years, when the Bertucci family, which still runs the Patio, the field-level hospitality area where the Mass is held, organized it.
A month after the pope’s election, the White Sox helped the archdiocese schedule a public Mass at Rate Field, where the team plays. About 35,000 tickets were sold at $5 each, during a season when the White Sox averaged 17,849 fans a game. Some tickets wound up on the secondary market for more than $1,000, according to The Chicago Sun-Times.
For Brooks Boyer, an observant Catholic who is the team’s chief marketing officer, having any kind of association with the pope was heady stuff.
“We’ve had sitting mayors of Chicago, we’ve had governors of Illinois that have been avid White Sox fans, we had a president of the United States in Barack Obama,” he said. “I didn’t expect anything bigger than the mayor when I started this job, but we’ve kind of climbed the ladder. What’s next? I mean, I feel like we’re one step away from God.”
