Chicago’s drizzling rain kept falling Monday, like something out of a dream. White Sox fans stumbled through it and back to their normal lives in the morning–exhausted, damp with it, and unsure anymore what normal meant.
If they’d been to the game, had been in the screaming throngs at U.S. Cellular Field, they happily ignored fatigue or hangovers to describe the experience. Those who saw it on television just kept recounting the game to each other, over and over again.
Offices, lunch tables and neighborhood taverns echoed Monday with Paul Konerko’s grand slam, about the call for relief pitcher Bobby Jenks, about the controversial pitch that may not have hit Jermaine Dye, and about their intuition for a homer ahead of Scott Podsednik’s ninth-inning game winner.
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It was no ordinary Monday in Chicago.
“After last night, I couldn’t tell if I slept at all or if I was dreaming. The day seemed to just blow together,” said 24-year-old Jose Morales.
The Chicago computer contractor spent $720 on a rainy upper-deck seat for Game 2 of the World Series. It suddenly seemed like a bargain. Family members and co-workers pressed him for details before he even sat down.
They didn’t ask about plays–everybody had seen the White Sox squeak past the Houston Astros 7-6.
People on Monday wanted to know what it felt like to sit with 41,000 fans in U.S. Cellular Field and see Chicago winning a World Series game.
“They should have donated tickets to a poet, to put into words what it was like out there,” Morales said. “The entire crowd just kind of swells. There’s a couple seconds of gasping with every hit, a couple seconds of emotion. That’s what everyone’s looking for.”
Tired but elated, many of Game 2’s soggy Sox fans slipped back into Chicago’s airports and flew off Monday to tell their stories elsewhere.
Among them was Judd Sirott, play-by-play announcer for the Chicago Wolves hockey team, who had tickets to Sunday’s game. “It’s history,” he said.
The Wolves were among the first Chicagoans to arrive in Houston ahead of Tuesday’s World Series Game 3. To many members’ chagrin, they are also scheduled to play Tuesday in Houston–against the Houston Aeros.
“I’ll have one eye on their game and one eye on our game,” Sirott said.
To call it history would have cheapened it for Neil Krol, who said Sunday’s winner “was the best game in Sox history. It was the way they won. The way they came back, the rain, how we didn’t think the game was going to start.”
The 39-year-old from Tampa, Fla., was born and raised in Palos Heights. He left for Florida in 1986, the year the Bears won Super Bowl XX. He missed that game, but wasn’t going to miss one of these. His brother lined up two tickets and Krol flew in for Game 2.
In the hours that followed, Krol burned out the battery on his cell phone. He called his wife first, and then woke up all his doubting Florida friends “who said earlier that the Sox didn’t deserve to be in the World Series.”
His steps were heavy as he waited at Midway Airport for his flight home Monday. He couldn’t sleep Sunday night, he said, though he tried for a few hours.
Not after that game.