Jan. 04--The Cubs-Cardinals rivalry continues to intensify, and now it's expanding beyond the outfield walls.
The Cards are installing bigger and better video boards this offseason. According to MLB.com, the new main board will be three times larger than the previous board, with twice the brightness and resolution. The actual dimensions were not provided.
One of the reasons they're going bigger and brighter: The Cubs.
"We did get upset actually when the Cubs had a better videoboard than us," Joe Abernathy, the team's vice president of stadium operations told MLB.com's Jennifer Langosch. "Especially with how it ended (in the National League Division Series) and all they're doing now, we don't want to be sitting behind the Cubs in anything."
The Cubs installed new video boards at Wrigley Field in 2015. Most prominent is the board in left field, which at 3,990 square feet is nearly twice as big as Wrigley's center-field scoreboard.
On another front in the baseball video board war, the White Sox announced in October that they will install three new boards for the 2016 season. The center-field video board, installed in 2003, is expected to more than quadruple in size from its current 1,484 square feet.
According to an artist's rendering the authority provided, the new board will be shaped as a pentagon with multicolored digital pinwheels at the top. There won't be ads on the sides or bottom as there are on the current board.
The Busch Stadium upgrades are expected to be ready for the Cardinals' home opener on April 11 against the Brewers.
The first Cubs-Cardinals series will be April 18-20 in St. Louis.
