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."
"And you can't forget the 'eggheads' in Hyde Park, my first neighborhood in Chicago."
You know, when I wrote that, I knew some South Sider would catch that U.of C. emission.
To bring this argument to its silliest conclusion; Our South Side eggheads are better than theirs!
"Heck, all you have to do is see which team is glorified by the entertainment industry in the past."
Yeah, a real tipping point for what makes the North Side better.
Truuue.
"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."
In the long run, El Duce is no prince either. There was a lot of luck invloved in his last performance. I'd give McCarthy a shot if I were Ozzie.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the defining characteristic of a certain segment of Sox fans. They define their existence as being anti-Cub.
Now I was born (1953) and raised on the north side of the city. So naturally, I have always been a Cub fan. And when I was kid, back in the '60s--when most people still lived in the city--there was a very intense rivalry between the north and south sides. If you were a north sider, you loved the Cubs and hated the Sox and the south side. And vice versa.
But I think the intensity of that rivalry has mellowed over the years--except for some diehard Sox fans. Even though the Cubs were my first team, I did go to a bunch of Sox games in the '70s and cheered for them. And I'll cheer for the Sox now, 'cause they're still Chicago. But I don't like the "Go away, we don't want your support!" attitude that some Sox fans give off.
And BTW, while there may be some non-baseball fans who go to Wrigley Field just for the "happening," that is definitely not true of me and a lot of other lifelong baseball/Cub fans I know, who really know the game. "I am a man, not a metrosexual!"
Another BTW: There were/are more Republicans on the north side than on the south side. Comiskey Park is in Daley's neighborhood, remember.
Don't you mean the "Die Yuppie Scum, Go Back to Wrigley" attitude.
Drop Bartlo (he can't even be used a home) and add McCarthy.
I believe it is in Englewood but not sure. There are some huge mansions just north of Hyde Park where Muhammed Ali, Wallace Muhammed and some others had homes.
Thank you !! everytime my wife who is a huge cubs fan tries to talk up the Cubs and say how great they are, I immediately go into my "gay cubs fan" character - talking about how many white wine sssspriterss I had at the game and how I like Sssssosa but I still miss Sssandberg
Gimme real baseball - Gimme the South Siders - Go Sox !!!!
Muhammed Ali's old pad, Leopold and Loeb's place, and Louis Farrakhan's current residence are in Kenwood, the area north of Hyde Park between 51st and 47th east of Washington Park.
Two words" Hyde Park. --- Clemenza, 60th and Drexel (1997-1998)
I don't hate the Cubs and have some sympathy for what happened to them this year. Any club which had the injuries they had would be in big trouble. But I am not one who falls for the "loveable losers" stuff. Oddly enough I was a Sox fan from the far south side, Arkansas.
However, my son the Navy Nuke looked very handsome in his Cub uniform when playing at Shabonna Park. No damage was done and he is still a faithful Sox fan.
Kenwood that's right Englewood is the other way.
I lived on Woodlawn and 60th in the late sixties. The crime was so bad we had them coming in one end of the apartment while we were in the other.
Now it is a No Man's Land DMZ.
The amazing thing about the "white flight" era on the south side is how even relatively affluent, white collar communities, such as South Shore (with its beautiful lakeside golf course) and Jeffrey Manor were not immune to blockbusting.
Getting back on topic. Bridgeport is a great nabe. Love the Italian sausage place on Halstead.
Remember there are only two REAL CITIES in the United States: New York and Chicago. Everything else is merely a big town.
I think the Sox match up better against the Yankees and they will remember that we swept them earlier this year in New York. Plus there is this West Coast jinx which seems to affect Chicago teams to be worried about. Though I am not really worried about either team and think we will win the Pennant. Going against the likely NL team, the Cardinals, is another matter though.
Sox fans are natural Republicans. They grow up knowing what it is like to be persecuted by a biased press.
Dont forget us 'reejin ratz" in Northwest Indiana
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