Directly across 35th Street from the White Sox’s current ballpark, a home plate is embedded in an enormous parking lot, and lines on the adjoining pavement represent batter’s boxes and foul lines.
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John Aranza has lived his whole life within walking distance of there. Sitting on the front steps of his Bridgeport bungalow, he explained the meaning of those painted lines, which look like an archaeologist had marked the site of a search for ancient treasure. The comparison isn’t bad, at least for Aranza; The lines trace the base paths of a beloved, vanished ballpark that lives on in his heart.
It was a bright sunshiny day, with a faint hint of a chill, the kind of weather that provokes nostalgia, and Aranza declared his undying love for Comiskey Park, whose remains are buried under the White Sox’s parking lot.
Comiskey Park, where the team played from 1910 to 1990, wasn’t unblemished, but it was the stuff of which legends are made.
“It was built on a garbage dump,” Aranza said. “There were stories of an infielder stumbling over a tea kettle that popped out of the base paths.”
Aranza, 81, didn’t have much to say about Guaranteed Rate Field. He and I share a feeling that it looks as if a spaceship landed short of its suburban destination. It’s a fish out of water in Bridgeport, a resolutely big-city neighborhood.
Blocks lined with bungalows just like Aranza’s bump up against gritty stretches of loading docks, junkyards, and factories. Railroad viaducts bisect the neighborhood. Corner taverns stitch the pieces together. The industrial look of the concrete-and-steel Comiskey Park fit right in before it was demolished in 1991.
An outsider might wonder why anyone would live there. Residents of Bridgeport can scarcely imagine living elsewhere.
Aranza and his wife live a block from where he was raised. Our conversation was interrupted a dozen times, as neighbors stopped to say hello or share a bit of gossip.
Aranza proved his fidelity to Bridgeport’s hallowed traditions when Comiskey Park was being replaced by Guaranteed Rate Field.
“I’d slip away after she went to sleep,” he said gesturing to the front door. His wife Elaine was inside, tidying up after a home repair he’d cut short in favor of storytelling.
He’d scouted the nightly route of the watchman through the demolished Comiskey Park. When the watchman was at the furthest point from trenches dug for the parking lot’s sewer lines and utilities, Aranza would slip beneath the site’s chain link fence. Dashing to an area of excavation, he’d pry loose an artifact or two — including a blue-and-white teapot.
He keeps many of those artifacts in a hall closet. Among them is an X-ray of a ballplayer’s injured shoulder, of undisclosed provenance.
Many a fan fills a scrapbook with favorite ballplayers’ photos. But searching the very ruins of the diamond they played on for mementos?
“It was the kind of players I saw in Comiskey Park,” Aranza said, by way of explanation. “Few were big stars. But they never quit. They taught you how to lose.”
That’s a key lesson in a blue-collar neighborhood like Bridgeport. Knowing how to lose keeps you from quitting until you find a way to win. Or until Lady Luck hovers over your bungalow.
It was Charles Comiskey’s take on life too. The original plans for his ballpark called for a grand entryway based on Rome’s Coliseum. But when he got the estimate, he decided that a simple brick facade would do.
Comiskey, the White Sox’s founder, tailored the ballpark to match his star pitcher Ed Walsh’s blazing fastball. Reportedly Walsh had a hand in the design of Comiskey Park.
It was massive: 362 feet along the foul lines and 440 feet in center field for some years. Considerable power was required to hit a home run over its outfield walls, especially when Walsh was on the mound.
“Walsh made it hard for a batter to get much power behind his swing,” Aranza said, grinning as he recalled Comiskey’s moxie.
During his working years, Aranza drove a sightseeing bus. That presented him with an ethical dilemma. The job required he announce the ballpark of a North Side team that, as a true South Sider, he detested.
“I wouldn’t say the name,” Aranza recalled. “I’d spell it: ‘Capital C-U-B-S.'”
He still won’t, he added, citing his mother’s edict: “She thought North Siders were uppity.” He agreed that Cubs fans looked down on Sox fans. The newspapers played into that.
“Both teams went through lots of losing seasons,” Aranza said. “But the sports writers would say things were looking up for the Capital C-U-B-S. Never much about the White Sox.”
He was grounded in reality by a South Side childhood. His neighbors considered three things sacred: The Democratic Party, the Catholic Church and the White Sox.
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His grandfather, newly arrived from Yugoslavia, understood the local mores. He took Aranza to his first Sox game. Schoolmates taught him the ropes — especially those hanging down from Comiskey Park’s upper reaches that offered a way in without a ticket.
“There was a rule,” he said. “You waited your turn. Then climbed up, and threw the rope down so the next poor kid could get in.”
Alternately, he could go by the Alinovich’s grocery store and help carry the food they sent to feed the Comiskey Park staff. “If you missed that delivery, you could grab a grocery bag and try to bluff your way into the park,” Aranza said.
However a fan got in, there was the magical moment when he saw — framed by steel columns and brick walls — a sea of green. The grass where his heroes would do battle. The glory of the South Side was at stake when the umpire recited the ancient incantation: “Play ball!”
Through the summer of 1990, those two words grew ever more precious.
The death of Comiskey Park was at hand. With a few buddies, Aranza set off for the final game on Sept. 30. The others saw the White Sox beat the Seattle Mariners 2 to 1. But Aranza was frozen in his tracks.
“I just couldn’t go in,” Aranza said, “knowing I’d never see the ballpark again.”