Posted on 10/10/2005 9:26:16 AM PDT by Charles Henrickson
CHICAGO (AP) -- Anybody looking for the White Sox Nation is going to need more than a map.
For one thing, the team barely owns its own neighborhood.
For another, the White Sox don't offer enough tradition, romance, celebrities or even anguish for most tortured souls to latch onto. With the Red Sox shedding their lovable loser tag a year ago, the Cubs have that market cornered in Chicago and beyond.
And third, even if there is such a thing as a White Sox nation, it's probably Venezuela. It's one of the few countries south of the city limits where: a.) baseball is bigger than futbol; and b.) the Cuban national team isn't the hands-down favorite.
"Oh, yeah," White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said the other day in lilting, sometimes-fractured English, "Venezuela definitely love us."
Guillen explains this is so largely because of native sons Chico Carrasquel, who became the first Latin American All-Star in major league history while playing shortstop for the White Sox in the early 1950s, and Luis Aparicio, who took over the position, made an even bigger splash, and gave every Venezuelan kid who ever lingered on a diamond something to aspire to.
Modesty prevented Guillen from recounting that he became that rare kid who actually turned the daydream into a reality, but no matter. Suffice it to say Guillen is a hit back home. Because no sooner had the former shortstop and first Venezuelan to become a big-league manager clinched the American League Central title than he received a call from President Hugo Chavez.
"I would say I was honored," Guillen recalled about his appearance a week ago Sunday on Chavez's national radio show. "Not too many people like the president. I do. My mom will kill me, but it's an honor to talk to the president."
The team drew 2,343,833 fans this season, the fourth-largest attendance in franchise history and the biggest since 1993. Two decades ago, that kind of number was good enough for the White Sox to score annual attendance victories over the crosstown Cubs. But two shortsighted decisions turned that tide and even a championship at the end of this season probably won't reverse it anytime soon.
Shortly after buying the team in 1981 from the last of baseball's carnival barkers, Bill Veeck, a limited partnership headed by Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn put some of their games on WGN's just-launched superstation. Unhappy with the ratings and cash flow, the duo decided to sell the team's games on a pay subscription channel called SportsVision. A month later, Harry Caray, the team's wildly popular announcer, switched allegiances and joined the Cubs.
"I would lose my people -- cab drivers, bartenders and others," Caray was quoted at the time, "who can't afford cable TV."
Instead, it was the White Sox who lost fans in droves. Cubs games were carried across the country and beyond, often in the afternoons, when kids home for the summer or just back from school could tune in. Propelled by Caray's boundless, sometimes-beery optimism and his seventh-inning rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" -- a tradition he began on the South Side -- it was the North Siders who caught the nation's fancy.
White Sox fans back home felt embittered and the ones who moved away felt cut off. In an excellent article on Slate.com in August, Mike DeBonis, senior editor of the Washington City Paper, captured the feeling.
"But if they do win it all, there won't be hundreds of books and special-edition DVDs that exhaustively document the final moments of anguish and misery on Chicago's South Side," DeBonis wrote. "When the sports world's most mundane epic losing streak ends, it will go quietly."
That, as DeBonis points out, is because the White Sox have precious few books to connect their history, even fewer celebrities to help raise their profile, and not even enough painful losses over the years to boast of a glorious past. There's nothing to rally around.
The club had a chance to turn things around with the construction of a new ballpark in 1990, but botched even that. With Reinsdorf threatening to leave town, an 11th-hour legislative deal got the stadium built. But as befits political deals struck with bad intentions, the resulting ballpark was so cold and lacking in charm that it became an example of what not to build, so much so that few people even consider it part of the retro-styled boom that began in earnest the following year at Camden Yards in Baltimore.
By then, the White Sox nation had learned to live with little and expect even less.
"It's been pretty comfortable here in the shadow of every other loser in baseball. And if they win, there won't be some mammoth catharsis as we slough off our losing reputation. Which is fine, too," DeBonis concluded. "Unlike Red Sox or Cubs fans, we won't have to re-evaluate our relationship with our longtime losers. Our Sox can just go on winning. Or losing. Whatever."
Agreed!
Last I checked, more people have been shot outside of Wrigley Field than Comiskey Park.
Have you even been to Bridgeport in the past 10 years? There are very affluent homes being built in the area and the property values are soaring.
I continually get disgusted over the ignorance of many North Siders. They buy into Urban Legends when they don't even realize that the area around Comiskey has seen far less crime than Wrigley over the past few years.
"I remember the days when one would routinely have their car broken into when putting their car in the Blue Ribbon parking lot on the South Side."
You make a statment like this, the implication being that you're talking about years ago, and then make the conclusion that you'll have problems at Comiskey. Blue Ribbon Parking lot? What was that, the '50s?
Either you're living in the past, or out of tune with contemporary realities. Comiskey is in island in and of itself. There's nothing around it except parking lots. You talk as though you have to brave the dangers of the South Side just to get there. BS.
I live on the South Side. I would have to travel through some real sh*tty neighborhoods to get to your beloved Wrigley. Aside from the fact that you have no real parking facilities near Wrigley (unless you call parking under the El in a lot that might or might not be owned by the person collecting the parking fee from you), I wouldn't take the El to get there (Chicago public transportation is not for me).
I can park in the parking lot at Schaller's tavern on Halsted for free, walk over to the park a few short blocks away, passing the police station at 35th & Lowe...with thousands of cops all over the place for safety and crown control purposes. I then stop back aqt Schallers for a good meal and a few beers.
"The north side is much safer for people to go, especially people from the suburbs who don't feel like getting their stereo/cd player stolen, or being harrassed by bums, or worse, criminals on the street."
Pure nonsense. Stay on the North Side. We don't want crybabies at our park.
Best part of a trip to the North Side? The ride back south.
"Ozzie runs up the Hammer and Sickle before home games and each member of the team carries a bust of a famous Commie out on the field and parades around with it. And all Sox fans must place their hands on the Communist Manifesto and swear allegiance before they get into Sox Park."
Egg-head commies abound on the North Side of Chicago, not on the South Side. A lot of nitwits too.
"I can't root for a team that has a Chavez-loving Commie for a manager."
No one's asking you to.
Go 'Stros!
Their gay bars.
The term "metrosexual" was invented in Chicago. It means Cub fan.
Look at the bright side, if the Angels beat the Yanks, the "Angel Nation" is even smaller than the Sox. Damn, do Sox fans have a chip on their shoulder, or what?
"Their gay bars.
The term "metrosexual" was invented in Chicago. It means Cub fan."
You got that right, pal.
My grandpa grew up down there by Comiskey and I have family still scattered throughout the whole region. Please read the entirety of my posts before acting like a tool. I am not a Cubs fan nore do I live on the north side.
All I did was write what the perception is. Heck, all you have to do is see which team is glorified by the entertainment industry in the past.
What you wrote did not seem like it was an expression of "the perception" it was written as though it were YOUR conception.
However, I have lived North and South for over forty years and enjoyed both. Now I actually live on Waveland.
It does get a bit tiresome to hear the same crap about the area around Sox Park since it is not very dangerous at all. The neighborhood itself is filled with cops and firefighters who have to live in the city.
Bridgeport has not been crime-ridden since it is the home of many cops, firemen and Machine politicians. Now go a mile in any direction and all bets are off. Knowledge of Chicago's neighborhoods is of great value.
Many suburbanites are afraid to come downtown when it is likely safer than their towns.
Then in 1967 the Cubs got good and almost caught up to the Sox in record and attendance. The Cubs had a string of winning years, 1967-72, with better attendance than the Sox, 1968-73.
But in the years 1972-84, the Sox had the better record in 7 of those 12 years and better attendance in six of those years.
1984 was a key year for the Cubs, in my mind. WGN had gone superstation a couple years earlier, Harry Caray had left the Sox for the Cubs, the Cubs won the division in '84, attendance jumped, and getting into Wrigley Field became a hot ticket. To me that was the beginning of "Cub Nation" and the total media dominance of the Cubs over the Sox.
In the years 1985-2004 the White Sox had the better record in 13 of the 20 seasons, but had the better attendance only in 1991-92, the first two seasons of the new ballpark. This year the Sox obviously had the better record, but even so, I think the Cubs probably won the attendance derby.
The perception is that of people living in Hoffman Estates, Wheaton, Deerfield, Glen Ellen, etc.. Attendance numbers probably bear this perception out.
Pockets of conservatives exist in both the Northwest and Southwest sides but are swamped by the Lakefront liberals on the North side and the Black dependents/brainwashed on the South. While Bush received hundreds of thousands of votes Kerry got more thanks to the Machine control of the urban prolitariat North and South.
And you can't forget the "eggheads" in Hyde Park, my first neighborhood in Chicago.
I was insulted to hear that they had dragged WooWoo down to Sox park. If they play like they have for the last two weeks they will win it all. Though they should drop Marte to make it more likely.
Having a large "Nation" matters not to me either. Let the Bandwagoneers go elsewhere.
Yes, I know some people that are afraid to go downtown and thats stupid. OTOH, the people downtown could make them feel a little more welcome. I always hated the morons that acted like some suburb like Hinsdale was a effing foreign country and therefore the person was "not from Chicago". Stupid.
I love that line.
Does'nt Jesse Jackson and his family have a large pad in Hyde Park?
If you don't live in Chicago you are NOT from Chicago.
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