This man named Fay, who is the baseball commissioner, is said to be a smart guy. But I wonder. If he`s so smart, how come he can`t even read a map? You don`t have to be an astronaut to figure it out. From Wrigley Field in Chicago to Shea Stadium in New York, it is about 800 miles.
But if you head the other way from Chicago and go 800 miles, you will be in a town called Julesberg, Neb.
And if you get up the next morning and go 800 miles beyond Julesberg, Neb., you will be in a place called St. George, Utah. So, bored out of your mind, you go a few hundred miles more and you are finally in Los Angeles. Which isn`t much of a reward for so long a trip.
So what`s my point? That it ought to be obvious that Chicago is a lot closer to New York than it is to Los Angeles or San Francisco or San Diego.
The question is, why does this man named Fay want to upset the natural order of things by trying to turn Chicago into a Western town?
That`s what Fay is doing when he insists that for the good of baseball the Cubs must switch to the Western Division of the National League.
Why is this good for baseball? It is hard enough being a Cubs fan without being thrown into a foreign culture.
More Top Picks Vacuum Filter
Yes, that`s what it is. Chicago is not west. It`s not exactly east, either, but it is a lot more east than west.
In our lifestyles, recreational choices and attitudes, we have little in common with the other Western Division cities.
Unlike Denver, this is not a cowboy boot or ski slope city. Unlike San Diego, this is not a surfing bum town. Unlike Los Angeles, we don`t eat much raw fish. And unlike San Francisco, we don`t . . . well, most of us don`t, so let`s not talk about it.
But consider the cities that we`ve been sharing our baseball lives with for many years. Pittsburgh, for starters. It`s not as sooty as it used to be, but like Chicago, it`s still a gritty, ethnic shot-and-beer town. If you go into a San Diego bar and order a boilermaker and a boiled egg, they will call the Health Police.
There`s Philadelphia, another tough ethnic town. Forget about the Liberty Bell. It is now better known for Rocky Balboa. Try to picture Rocky working out by punching bloody sides of beef in San Francisco. Hah, the entire city would faint.
Why, I remember what happened when Mike Ditka hit a shrieking San Francisco fan in the head with a wad of his chewing gum. The creature wailed so loudly that thought was given to turning the matter over to a federal grand jury. Why, in a real city, like Cleveland or Milwaukee, the fan would have peeled the gum from his brow and chewed it. Waste not, want not, a solid heartland virtue.
And as much as Chicagoans might deny it, we have a great deal in common with New York. Same silly urge to put up skyscrapers, same kind of murder rate, goofy street gangs, kinky politicians, racial strife. Even Al Capone is shared. He became famous in Chicago, but he grew up in New York.
When Frank Sinatra performs, he always sings: ”New Yawk, New Yawk,” and ”My kind of town, Chicaguh is.” You don`t hear him singing, ”My kind of town, Houston, Texas, is.” Or, ”Denver, Colorado, if you can`t make it there, you can`t make it anywhere.”
Apparently this man Fay does not believe in tradition. If he did, he`d remember that the Cubs have always been in Chicago, and they`ve been here since major-league baseball began.
You don`t have to be an ancient to remember when Houston, San Diego and the others were minor-league cities. If it hadn`t been for the invention of air conditioning, they would still be amusing themselves by shooting snakes and swatting giant skeeters.
So after more than a century of being a genuine, big-league franchise, with a rich tradition going back to the days of tiny gloves and the dead ball, when men were men and the shortstop was usually drunk, is this guy Fay saying that we must now try to establish a rivalry with San Diego, where they sell sushi at the ballpark, or the Denver Whoosits, which won`t even start having a tradition for another 50 years?
Traditional rivalries are not created by marketing. They come from years of mutual loathing, vicious joy at the misfortune of others. The Mets and the Cubs-the hatred is from the heart.
But San Diego? Even if I pretended to hate a Padres fan, he would probably look blankly at me and say: ”Hey, dude, I mean, you want to use my suntan lotion?”
We should have expected this years ago, when they started messing with the natural order by making the Cubs play in the same division as Montreal, a city of Frenchies, where it is practically against the law to speak English.
Now they want to toss the Cubs in with teams from California, where it is practically against the law to be wide awake. Well, in that regard, this Cubs team will be competitive.