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TBC<br />
White Sox VerSuS CubS<br />
Dredging deep into the heart and mind of a Chicago baseball nut.<br />
worDs: J.r. NelsoN IllustratIoN: DoNNIe Bauer (www.myDBmeDIa.Com)<br />
October 27, 2004. The Beachwood Inn, a bar on<br />
Chicago’s near Westside, is full of patrons, but<br />
eerily quiet. There is a once-in-a-century spectacular<br />
lunar eclipse in the warm night sky and<br />
the Boston Red Sox, the most famously hardluck<br />
team in the annals of sport, is about to win<br />
the World Series for the first time in 86 years.<br />
As St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Edgar Renteria<br />
grounds into the final out and the Boston players<br />
start whooping and celebrating in the infield,<br />
nobody in the Beachwood has much of anything<br />
to say. “Huh,” one of the bartenders opines. “Did<br />
you see that moon tonight?”<br />
Since time immemorial, the annual Chicago<br />
baseball ritual has been watching somebody else<br />
play in, and win, the World Series. The Chicago<br />
White Sox haven’t appeared in the fall classic<br />
since 1959, and were last world champions in<br />
1917. The Chicago Cubs played in the 1945<br />
World Series and have yet to return. Their last<br />
world title was in 1908. The only thing that truly<br />
connects these two franchises is their relative<br />
geography and utter lack of success. Other than<br />
that, they could hardly be more different.<br />
The Cubs play in the friendly confines of<br />
Wrigley Field, an ancient and storied park on<br />
Chicago’s Northside. Old-timey ambience, ivycovered<br />
walls and beery sell-out crowds make it<br />
128<br />
one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions.<br />
Wrigley draws plenty of dentist/lawyer yuppie<br />
dudes and their scantily clad ladyfriends and<br />
because the tickets are more expensive, especially<br />
for the good seats, they’re usually the folks you<br />
see on TV.<br />
The White Sox home is U.S. Cellular Field, a<br />
rather drably designed stadium where, if sitting<br />
in the upper deck and the stiflingly polluted summer<br />
air isn’t too thick, one can see the notorious<br />
Robert Taylor Homes standing out across the<br />
Dan Ryan Expressway. It can be argued that the<br />
White Sox have a much larger black and Hispanic<br />
fan base than the Cubs because they draw so<br />
much support from the largely black Southside.<br />
Caucasian White Sox fans from the surrounding<br />
neighborhoods tend to be one of two groups:<br />
auto mechanics or construction workers out to<br />
get drunk, or zealous baseball fanatics out to<br />
get drunk. The vibe of the place can be nasty.<br />
During a game two seasons ago, a father/son duo<br />
jumped out of the stands and attacked a Kansas<br />
City Royals coach right out on the field. A scant<br />
few weeks later another disgruntled fan emerged<br />
from the crowd to tackle the umpire.<br />
Chicago baseball has led me to renounce God.<br />
I wish that was a joke, but you weren’t there in<br />
‘84 to see Steve Garvey run around the basepaths<br />
with his fist in the air while mighty Cubs hurler<br />
Lee Smith could only dig at the mound with his<br />
huge cleats in defeat and disbelief. I was inconsolable<br />
and 10 years old, and my Mom put me to<br />
bed crying like an infant; from that tearful night<br />
forward, The Lord and I just didn’t see eye to<br />
eye.<br />
It’s the great baseball riddle: how could my<br />
team lose? I have forsaken members of my own<br />
family (Uncle Stu, why be a Cardinals fan? Pujols<br />
is a bum and you have terminal brainfog from<br />
pounding too much Busch!). I have taunted<br />
strangers on Chicago streets wearing Yankees<br />
hats from a moving car. “Hey Dame Dash,” I lustily<br />
shouted once, “What borough are you from?”<br />
This fuels my unquenchable and unceasing<br />
Yankee-based eruptions of jealousy. My utter<br />
awe at their winning providence turns my heart<br />
into fire every summer, even when I’m trying<br />
to do normal person things like eat deep-fried<br />
Twinkies and shop for toilet paper and feel up<br />
some rump to the Crooklyn Clan on Friday night.<br />
But tonight was good. Final score: Sox 2-Yanks 1<br />
in the Bronx. The White Sox still have the best<br />
record in the bigs. Who knows. Maybe this is our<br />
year?<br />
XLR8R (ISSN 1526-4246) is published monthly with bimonthly issues in January/February and July/August for $20 a year by Amalgam Media, Inc., 425 Divisadero Street #203A, San Francisco, CA, 94117.<br />
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