| Kyle Trompeter. 25th October, 2005 - 10:40 am
 And oh how the tables they have turned in Chicago.
It was only a short two years ago that the Chicago Cubs were five outs away from the World Series. Then, well, you know what happened after that.
But things are different now in Chicago. A team is in the World Series for the first time since 1959.
Wahoo!
For Chicago White Sox fans, this is a time of that has been far and few between in the last 100 or so years. There are die-hards that have been alive for over 40 years and they have never experienced what they are going through right now.
Two years ago, the same could ALMOST be said for similar folks over on the north side of Chicago.
Almost.
It is very ironic that the two longest World Series title droughts are both stationed in the same city. But, in Chicago, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Sports in Chicago is so malformed it’s sickening. For example, the 1985 Chicago Bears, one of the greatest football teams ever, win the Super Bowl. But…just one. This team had a defense that is regarded as the best defense of all time, period. They also had arguably the greatest player to ever dawn a football – Walter Payton. But they could only come away with one title and only one Super Bowl appearance.
How does that work?
Furthermore, the Chicago Bulls go from winning their sixth championship in eight years with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen at the helm to a team starring Brent Barry and Matt Maloney. That’s all that needs to be said about that.
Now, Chicago finally has a team in the World Series. But, for a lot of people and the majority of the city as attendance figures will support, it is the wrong team who made the series.
The White Sox has put Cubs nation in a pickle. A major pickle. The kind of pickle that stings the nostrils as Ron Burgundy would say.
Does a lifelong Cubs fan root for the White Sox so that Chicago will end its drought of World Series abstinence?
Some people say yes. They claim it’s for the good of the city.
I say nuts to that. In my mind, and I’m sure many Cubs and White Sox fans minds, you can only root for one team or the other. There is no in-between. No sir-re-bob.
Good for the city? Who roots for the good of the city? Forget the city, you don’t root for the city, you root for the team.
So how could a Cubs fan all of a sudden start rooting for the White Sox, even if they are in the World Series?
Try to think of it like this: If you are married or in a relationship, do you go and cheat on them after you get into an argument? If you are religious, do you contemplate renouncing your faith when times are rough? If your football team runs a spread offense, does it stop passing the ball after it throws one interception?
Hopefully the answer is no to all of them. But boy oh boy. Some people just pull up the anchor and fire up the engine at the drop of the hat. So what if your team doesn’t make the playoffs? It happens, and in Chicago, it happens a lot.
As a lifelong Chicagoan, I can say that back in 2003, there were no White Sox fans sporting Cubbie Blue when the Cubs were making a run to the October Classic.
They were wearing Florida Marlins gear.
It seems like it would be easy for a Cubs fan to start taking the Red Line south towards 35th and Shields instead of north towards Addison. This is especially true with the way the White Sox are winning games in the playoffs.
They are the team of destiny in every sense of the word. The hero of the playoffs maybe their light hitting third baseman, Joe Crede, who up until the playoffs was never able to hit his way out of a wet paper bag. All of a sudden, he has turned into Derek Jeter at the dish and in the field.
Then in game two of the World Series, you have Scott Podsednik at the plate in the bottom of the ninth with the game tied at six with one of the best closers in baseball on the mound. Then what happened next was something completely shocking.
And as Brian Collins, a fellow Ball State student and friend of mine would say, “Boom goes the dynamite!”
That’s right, a home run. Did I mention that Podsednik did not have one round tripper the entire regular season?
Destiny.
But for Cubs fans, the important word to remember is loyalty. They have to live with the fact that better days are to come.
They also have to live with the fact that for White Sox fans, those better days are here. |
