Given that I’m a proud Chicagoland resident, it’s only appropriate to send a shoutout to the White Sox and their fans even if I’m not necessarily much of a baseball fan and despite the fact that I live north of the north side.* CONGRATS! It’s fun to see all the excitement conveyed in some of the photostreams on Flickr. Sorry, Ted. (This weekend we can forget about all this and focus on the Northwestern-Michigan football game. Go ‘Cats!)
*If I was a baseball fan and given where I live, I’d have to be a Cubs fan. Every time I go downtown I go right past Wrigley Field so it’s hard not to feel more allegiance to that team. And while I realize some Cubs fans are as bitter as can be about the White Sox victory, that’s not me.
{ 14 comments }
Slocum 10.27.05 at 10:27 am
Are Cubs fans bitter? I had the fortune (not sure if it’s good or bad) to have been born into a Cubs/Bears family and this turned out to be MUCH stickier than organized religion (which, in fact, did not stick at all). The White Sox? Shrug. All things being equal, I preferred to see the Sox win rather than the alternatives in the AL and the Astros, but I can’t say I was emotionally involved.
This has always struck me as typical — Sox fans tend to hate the Cubs because they get all the attention even when they’re not very good while Cub fans mostly ignore the Sox (and this only adds to the Sox fans’ irritation).
The thing about the Cubs is that it’s this whole experience — a gem of a ballpark, a national treasure, in a great city neighborhood just a few blocks from the north side lakefront. City life the way it’s supposed to be. Play hooky from work and take the El to the ballpark, hit the pubs around the park afterwards, that kind of thing.
But the Sox — the park is right on the expressway across from some of the grimmest high-rise housing projects (now, thankfully, mostly demolished). In an era when teams were building intimate, smaller, aesthetically-pleasing parks, the Sox managed to build a new concrete monster that’s not even called Comiskey Park anymore:
http://www.chicagoarchitecture.info/ShowBuilding/291.php
On the inside, it’s not bad, but from the outside…ugh.
I’d rather go to Wrigley to see a .500 Cubs team play than to ‘US Cellular Field’ to see the best Sox team of all time. Which, in a way, is the problem with the Cubs — if they’re only decent, they’ll sell out virtually every game anyway.
But Northwestern-Michigan? The Illinois college football scene was so pathetic when I was a kid, that didn’t stick at all. Go Wolverines!
Steve LaBonne 10.27.05 at 10:36 am
Wait till next year!
-Bitter Indians Fan
Eszter 10.27.05 at 10:54 am
I thought I had read about bitterness on the part of some Cubs fans somewhere.
As for the NU-Michigan game, NU has won the last three games it’s played this Fall (against Wisconsin, Purdue and Michigan State) so this promises to be an exciting Homecoming weekend.
C.J.Colucci 10.27.05 at 12:12 pm
Looks like the Sox really tried to win this time.
M. Gordon 10.27.05 at 12:15 pm
There was a very cute article in the NYTimes about the northside/southside rivalry:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/national/24chicago.html
It’s sort of a New Yorker’s primer on Chicago class tension. I’m originally from the north suburbs (my parents now live in Evanston) and I wasn’t so much part of the north side culture, living too far north, but I definitely know the outlines in my bones. The article says, “South Siders have gone right on moaning that elites crowd into the ivied Wrigley Field caring more about getting tan, talking on cellphones and planning their post-game, North Side bar-hopping than about baseball,” which sounds about right to me, except that I don’t work on my tan. (For post-game drinking, The Half Shilling is fun, and less crowded than some places closer to the park, though still plenty crowded.)
Mark 10.27.05 at 3:25 pm
As a proud South Sider I have to comment.
The White Sox never had the national exposure the Cubs have had, and the South Side doesn’t attract the post-collegiate transients like the North Side does. Consequently there is less exposure to the White Sox by a constantly changing community.
While the neighborhood the “neighborhood guys” who love the White Sox has changed, they haven’t. That doesn’t mean they aren’t an interesting group. Earlier thie year I was reading the SUnday NYT at a game between innings and the neighborhood guy behind me said (in a voice that was a dead-ringer for Dennis Farina’s) “When youy’re done with that section do you mind giving it to me? There’s a story about opera I saw that I want to read.”
bob 10.27.05 at 5:03 pm
slocum:
I don’t know where you got the idea that people in Chicago take the El to Wrigley Field. People in Chicago take the “L” to Wrigley Field, and other places, but there is no such thing as the “El” (or “el”) in Chicago, and never has been.
Serious Chicago rail-fans get very worked up about this point, but I merely take it as a given. What the L?
Slocum 10.27.05 at 6:27 pm
I don’t know where you got the idea that people in Chicago take the El to Wrigley Field. People in Chicago take the “L†to Wrigley Field, and other places, but there is no such thing as the “El†(or “elâ€) in Chicago, and never has been.
Oh brother. I was born in Chicago and grew up in the close ‘burbs. I don’t remember there being a canonical, correct spelling for the ‘El’ (or ‘L’). It’s short for ‘elevated’ so ‘El’ seems like a perfectly reasonable rendering (How do you feel about CTA?) To get downtown, we took what my Mom called the “Skokie Swift” (though, to be honest most of the time mostly we just drove down to Wrigley).
dr ngo 10.27.05 at 11:48 pm
Go Blue!
Mark 10.28.05 at 12:22 am
Tribune style, when I was there, haven’t read it it years, was “El.”
As a child I mentally spelled it “El.”
After starting to learn French in third grade I spelled it “Elle.’
Eszter 10.28.05 at 9:11 am
Bob, I don’t know where you got the idea that people in Chicago don’t take the El. Of course, you can always write “L”, but that usually requires quotes. It’s easier to type out two letters without quotes (two characters, no use of shift) than one letter with quotes (three characters, use of shift).
Mark, interesting idea, maybe I should start referring to it as Elle.;) (It could be the shortened version of Elevated misspelled as Ellevated.:)
DaveC 10.28.05 at 11:06 am
For baseball non-fanatics, the old Comiskey Park and the new, ah, Cellular Field were/are better places to take kids to the game. You can walk all around the park while seeing the game in progress. It’s too bad that the view of the city is not so good.
bob 10.28.05 at 2:17 pm
For documentation on “L” vs “el” (as the NY Times misguidedly spells it) and other variants see e.g. The “L” : the development of Chicago’s rapid transit system, 1888-1932 by Bruce G. Moffat.Chicago, Ill., Central Electric Railfans’ Association, 1995.
If you search the Trib you find that their house style is “L” and always has been. The CTA’s official style is “L” and always has been. I’m not a real rail-fan, but I do like to put down New York parochialisms.
dr ngo 10.29.05 at 10:08 pm
Read ’em and weep: UM 33, NW 17.
Go Blue!
Comments on this entry are closed.