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How would you feel about 162 games being played in Miller Park in 2015? Sounds pretty great, right? A game almost every day during summer, baseball non-stop, if you wanted to head out and watch it.
What if half of those games were being played by our neighbors to the south, though? If the Cubs spent a season sharing Miller Park with the Brewers?
As it turns out, that almost happened. With heavy construction happening at Wrigley Field, the Cubs president of business operations Crane Kenney confirmed that the team gave extensive consideration to moving all their home games up north to Milwaukee for the 2015 season. Doing so would have helped speed up the construction process to hopefully finish sooner.
According to Kenney in the above linked article:
"We did, really with the help of the Brewers, we did an extensive amount of work looking at going up there ... They hosted us. We talked about the logistics of playing a full season there to try to truncate our work to two-and-half to three years instead of four years. And ultimately, sitting down with the entire team — ticket sales, operations, etc. — we just thought it was too much displacement to move our fans that far."
The Cubs are currently in the beginning of a four-phase, $375 million renovation project to Wrigley that includes revamping the bleachers, which still will not be open until mid-season.
The Brewers are no strangers to hosting other teams that need a place to play. Back in 2008, Miller Park saw the Cubs face off against the Astros due to a hurricane in Houston. Carlos Zambrano actually threw a no-hitter in that game. A year before that, Cleveland was suffering from snow early in the season, forcing the Indians to play the Angels in Milwaukee.
A full season is a bit of a different animal, however. It's also interesting that the Cubs considered Miller Park when Chicago is a two-team city and, assumedly, the Cubs could have potentially looked at U.S. Cellular Field as a home for 2015 instead.
Instead, the Cubs will make Wrigley work, which certainly will appeal more to their fans rather than the long drive up to Milwaukee consistently for games. It would have been interesting to see, and would have made for some fascinating attendance numbers, but it won't happen.