...Back to That Same Old Place...

...Sweet Home Chicago!

It's not the Cubs, but I'll take it.

A lot of outatowners are apparently baffled that there's another team in town, and all they care about is how this affects Cub fans. The Cub Reporter sets them straight. If you came here to find out how this Cub fan feels about the Sox winning the Series: I feel great.

I do not hate the White Sox. In fact, I'm quite fond of the White Sox. As I said the other day, the first professional baseball games I ever attended were White Sox games, at the real Comiskey, not that new ballpark that dared to call itself Comiskey--I've never been a fan of teams selling the right for a corporation to slap their name on a ballpark, but for that South Side ballpark not to call itself Comiskey anymore? I can live with that.

Grandpa and I would choose the Twi-night Doubleheaders. Even Grandma, who detested baseball--we took her once, and she cheered for the visiting Orioles the whole time just to tick us off--recognized the importance of getting the most baseball for our (no) money. Plus, there were usually fireworks after. Somewhat lame fireworks--consisting largely of wooden frames shaped like trains and things, with colored sparklers dotting them to make their shapes light up--as I recall, but still.

Sox fans weren't Cub haters back then, either. Or at least not haters of pizza named for a Cub third baseman. They used to sell Ron Santo Pizzas in the stands at Comiskey, and I always wanted to try one. But you didn't ask for things you didn't need in our family, so I never did ask Grandpa to buy me one. As a result, those pizzas held such an allure that even today, knowing they were probably soggy and tasteless, my mouth waters thinking about them.

I was sitting in Grandpa's chair tonight when the Sox won it. I tend to think he would have felt the same happiness for the Sox and his (adopted) home town, accompanied by the wistfulness of it not being the Cubs.

Sure, we on the South Side where I grew up had a bit of a chip on our shoulders, and it definitely felt like moving into a new social class to move to the North Side. (Never mind that I moved from a more affluent South Side neighborhood to a dump of an apartment on a dubious street on the North Side.) Is becoming a Cub fan putting on airs? (And cheering for the Sox this week hailing the bandwagon?) No. It isn't like that. I grew up connected, by way of Grandpa, to both teams. Because the Cubs were his number one team, so they ended up being mine.

I'm not the only one. NPR host Scott Simon's book Home and Away is his memoir told through the lens of the teams he's rooted for. Go get a copy and read it. It's a brilliant book. Although if you're a Chicago sports fan, you'll be really, really jealous of Simon.

I was living down the street from Wrigley Field when I organized a church outing to a Sox game. That was the year the Orioles--the ones Grandma rooted for, guaranteeing Grandpa and I would never, ever invite her to a ball game with us again, which was, I think, her intentiion--started the season by losing seventeen games in a row. They finally won one, over the Sox. The announcement I wrote for our priest to read that Sunday said: "We're organizing a group outing to the White Sox game next Sunday so we can honor them for their act of Christian charity toward the Orioles."

Hey, it got a laugh at the time.

Last time the Sox were in a World Series, I was two months old. (They lost to the Dodgers.) Last time they won one was the year Harry Caray was born. He was another guy who moved from the South Siders to the North Siders. I think it's gonna be a good year.