It isn’t enough that the White Sox have grown accustomed to losing. Now they are sentenced to a weekend in Wrigley Field, where they must deal with novelties such as noise, traffic and shirt-sleeve crowds.
How would the Sox play in Peoria? Sometimes they think they are. Until Friday, they probably couldn’t fathom that there were so many people in Chicago.
What an afternoon, what an atmosphere. Jack Brickhouse, the healthy-again legend who has broadcast unhappy totals for both teams, threw out the first ball. Ernie Banks and Minnie Minoso handled the seventh-inning stretch, the only hitch being that Banks wanted to sing twice.
Then it went from Ernie to eerie when Brant Brown hit a 12th-inning homer for the Cubs, quite a while after a potential go-ahead run for the Sox was sent back to third, where it stayed, because of a ground-rule double. Magglio Ordonez’s drive stuck in the ivy, would you believe?
You probably would, if you’ve watched the Cubs lately. They’re fighting for a pennant. The Sox are merely fighting.
More Top Picks Earbud Case
They seem to have the same chilly clubhouse the Cubs had last year. Frank Thomas knocks the organization and is chided by manager Jerry Manuel. Carlos Castillo and Chad Kreuter debate who’s to blame for gopher balls. And Jaime Navarro, who once ripped the Cubs from the stretch position, blasts the Sox for being a bunch of dead dogs.
“We stink,” says Navarro, an authority on that subject. If there’s any ballplayer who knows a dead dog, it’s he.
The dunce cap that Ed Lynch wore last year, Ron Schueler inherits. Andy MacPhail, the Cubs president, isn’t dumb anymore. But Jerry Reinsdorf is. His summer team should be broken up, not his winter team. All of a sudden it’s the Cubs who are building and the Sox who are patching.
My, we forget how quickly things can change. Ten years ago this month, the Sox were just about gone to St. Petersburg, Fla., where the Suncoast Dome had been built for them.
But at the last minute–in fact, beyond the midnight deadline that closed the Illinois legislative session–Gov. Jim Thompson got the stadium bill passed. The Sox stayed, as did a certain residue of tension.
Harry Caray, no admirer of Reinsdorf, opined that Michael Jordan saved the Sox for Chicago. Caray’s theory: Reinsdorf, also chairman of the Bulls, would have had to leave town 10 minutes after the Sox, for his own safety.
“Reinsdorf wasn’t about to let go a cash cow like the Bulls too,” Caray reasoned. “If not for Michael, Reinsdorf would have taken the money for the Sox and run to Florida.”
Maybe, maybe not. But this theory that the American League would have rushed here with an expansion franchise is folly. Not without the same new ballpark the White Sox needed. When the Sox attracted a city-record 2,934,154 fans to Comiskey Park II in 1991, there went another bogus notion, that Chicago couldn’t support two teams anymore.
In fact, affection is as cyclical in these parts as artistic merit. The Sox, not the Cubs, first broke the 2 million attendance mark, in 1983. The Sox had four winning teams in the 1980s, compared with two for the Cubs. The Sox have had five winning teams in the ’90s, the Cubs, two.
Before last July, when the Sox consummated a controversial trade that smelled suspiciously like surrender, only one team in either league– the Atlanta Braves–had posted a better record during the ’90s. The Cubs sold sunshine, but with the Sox you could see daylight.
Now, of course, the Cubs are up and the Sox are down, way down. The difference, if you will, is like day and night. Considering off-season maneuvers, both teams are where they belong, the Cubs contending, the Sox groping. But beyond that, the big picture, the Cubs and Sox are in their proper place, Chicago.
History matters, and so does the present. That’s why it’s called “present,” because it’s a gift. Two teams in the same city is a privilege, not to be trifled with, regardless of the standings.
Sox fans, wherever they are, should realize that there is something even worse than bad baseball. No baseball.