Sometimes, inspiration arrives like a light from above.
Or at a light, on Ridge Road.
While stopped at the latter last week en route to work, with a mood to match the morning’s damp chill, I noticed the license plate on the Ford Taurus in front of me: “Ozzie 13.”
I thought, “Man, it must have stunk to drive around with that plate for the last year.” Then I thought, “And this year’s going to be worse.”
In that moment, the reason for my mood crystallized. Baseball season, my favorite season, was fast approaching, and my favorite team’s best spring training story was that the grand nephew of my favorite player, circa 1969, made the team.
Other Sox headlines? Um, they’re selling a burger topped with Italian beef, a combination that goes together like Carlton Fisk and left field.
And speaking of fields, after decades of having visiting the Cell, we’re going to have to get used to saying “Guaranteed Rate Field,” or maybe the Grate for short. Because isn’t that what you use to cover a sewer.
Meanwhile, that other team’s fans continue to bask in the afterglow, the haze of so many metaphoric cigarettes fouling every baseball breath I take. They’re defending, we’re defining — and when the current baseball definition of “rebuild” is “Do it Theo’s way,” it’s that much tougher to take.
Anyway, if I were guessing, I’d have said the driver acquired that plate in 2005 when the White Sox won the World Series in honor of Manager Ozzie Guillen (who wore the number 13). Fortunately I didn’t have to guess, because the Taurus pulled into the train station lot kitty-corner from my usual Starbucks.
As non-creepily as possible, I approached the vehicle, caught the driver’s attention and arranged to chat later.
“I’ve had that plate since 1985,” said Sue Diercouff, a 52-year-old Park Forest native and Thornton resident. “I just absolutely loved Ozzie — and not like a boy-crush kind of love. He was just so much fun to watch, and I kind of figured he’d be around a long time.”
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Guillen was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1985 and played for the Sox for 13 seasons, then returned to manage them for eight more. Diercouff’s plates were originally on a 1984 Firebird, then a ’91 Firebird, a 2000 Grand Am (which was stolen), a ’99 Monte Carlo and an ’05 Ford 500.
Having the plates has led to a handful of meetings with Guillen for Diercouff, a Sox season ticket holder since 1987. Once she pulled a plate off her car in the old Comiskey Park parking lot to get a photo with Guillen in the late ’80s. Within the last couple of years, she had him sign a plate at a liquor store appearance in Calumet City.
“Years ago, we were at a Sox luncheon at Ditka’s, and afterward I’m pulling away from the valet,” Diercouff said. “Ozzie slams his hand on top of my car and says, ‘I’ve been trying to get those plates for three years.'”
He’d get them, sort of, on his last day as a Sox player.
“In ’97, when we knew he wasn’t coming back, I ordered replacement plates,” she said. “At the last game, I got to the park super early and just went down to the dugout and held up the plate until he noticed and came over.
“I told him, ‘You said you wanted these plates. This is as close as you’re going to get.’ And I gave him one.”
It hasn’t all been fun and ballgames, however.
“When he was the manager, there were many times I wanted to put mud over those plates,” Diercouff said.
And lately, with the Chicago baseball universe tilting decidedly northward…
“I will say it’s been rough,” Diercouff, a legal assistant, said. “I work downtown. There’s Cubs stuff everywhere. When they won, our lobby was full of balloons and a banner.
“My boss is a die-hard Cubs fan. The walls of our office are Cubbie blue.”
During and after last season’s playoffs, not even her favorite watering hole afforded safe haven.
“I’d go up to the (Thornton post of the American) Legion and all the of the Cubs fans look at me like, ‘Why are you wearing that?'” Diercouff said. “All my jackets are basically Sox jackets. I told them, ‘I’m not going to buy a new wardrobe just because you’re in the World Series.'”
It goes beyond saying she didn’t jump on any bandwagons last fall.
“I don’t buy that, ‘But you’re from Chicago’ stuff,'” Diercouff said. “I’m truly not a hater. I was happy for a handful of my friends. But don’t confuse it — I was rooting for Cleveland. I’m an American League girl.”
Still, Diercouff said she was thrilled for the start of the new Sox season. She ventured to Milwaukee for the final two exhibition games, and was planning to be at Monday’s home opener.
“I’m anxious,” she said. “We haven’t had baseball in six months. I can’t wait.”
Even with a young, untested club. Or maybe more accurately, especially with a young, untested club. Diercouff is tired of the recent Sox parade of ill-matched, unmotivated, middle-tier free agents who brought little to the field or the clubhouse.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “I’ve been wanting this. For years, I’ve been wanting a rebuild.”
“A lot of us fill out fan surveys every year, and every year we say we want a rebuild. Maybe they finally listened.”
Maybe. South Side fans could certainly stand an extra helping of hope — hold the ketchup and giardiniera.
Phil Arvia is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.