We’ve been friends, let’s see, must be 30 years.
We toiled together for decades in the vineyards of journalism, we’ve gotten mustard on our faces at ball games and once in a while I would take his daughter for a walk in her stroller.
So, I know something of Randy Blaser.
One of the things I know about him most is that he is a lifelong, statistic-spouting, season-ticket-holding White Sox fan.
So, I was flabbergasted to read in a recent column by him that he has hopped on the Cubs bandwagon.
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What is happening here? Have lions and lambs started vacationing in Vegas together. Have cobras and mongeese (mongooses?) started dating?
Randy’s lips would curl into a sneer at the very mention of the Cubs.
But, I also know that Randy usually has a good reason for what he says and does.
So, I re-read his column.
Randy wrote, “What’s going on is the Cubs have figured out that good baseball players combined with a really good manager equates to winning baseball. And even diehard Sox fans are coming over to see what’s going on.”
If I read Randy right, he’s saying that excellence deserves interest, respect and enthusiasm.
This attitude is pretty foreign to us Cubs fans, who have been worshipping at the shrine of mediocrity for the last 100 years or so.
The implications of what Randy is saying are staggering. He’s saying that we are not just groups of warring tribes (teams). We are one giant sports market.
Is any of this approach to human behavior applicable to resolving conflicts throughout the world?
I don’t know. But maybe Randy is on to something.
Of course, not even Randy is 100 percent right. Once when we were interviewing candidates for the U.S. Senate, Randy predicted (and I agreed) that Illinois voters never would elect a black man from the south side of Chicago with a name similar to that of the world’s most-feared terrorist.
Before this year, I’d have been similarly skeptical – and similarly wrong, as it turns out – in predicting the Cubs would ever defeat the rival St. Louis Cardinals to move forward into the National League Championship Series for a chance at the World Series.
But here we are.
Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.