This weekend, mostly because the Mets and Yankees were not playing against each other, the rivalry between the Cubs and White Sox took center stage on a nationally broadcast Sunday night game. ESPN even had as their “Sunday Conversation” interviews with both Ozzie Guillen and Lou Piniella. I am not complaining about the national attention as I find the Cubs-Sox, Cubs-Cardinals, and Sox-Indians rivalries to be roughly nine thousand times more interesting than the Mets-Yankees rivalry. This is not necessarily because I am from the Midwest (though it certainly does not hurt) but has more to do with the fact that if the Mets-Yankees rivalry were to be compared to a sibling rivalry it would consist of two loathesome, asshole brothers whom no one likes at all save for their blood relatives.
The Mets have won 2 World Series while the Yankees have won 26, both teams have played in Shea Stadium, and one team (the Mets) have a ridiculous nickname and team colors that are simply borrowed from the two other New York teams that left in the ’50′s (the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants). Not exactly an interesting matchup to me.
The Cubs-Sox rivalry, however, is class and economic warfare but it requires some clarification. First, Chicago, while it is the third largest city in the U.S., is essentially a large collection of neighborhoods. Chicago uses a grid system for its streets (New York uses one as well but they also have boroughs as well as neighborhoods; Boston uses what can only be described as “former cow paths”; L.A. doesn’t technically exist as everyone pretty much lives in Pasadena, Glendale, or, in some cases, drive in from Sacramento) and, combined with the huge swaths of Swedish, Czech, Irish, Polish, Mexican and Greek immigrants who arrived generations ago, is a city of invisible barriers when glanced at casually by an out-of-towner. Chicago is a very much a haven for those who do not want to live on a coast yet be immersed in all of the complex neighborhood workings of a very large city. This is important because of Wrigley Field.
Wrigley Field is right in the middle of a neighborhood and an area that typically acts as an oasis for yuppies and young white males and females. US Cellular Field (formerly Comiskey Park) is not directly surrounded by a neighborhood and its area has typically been a gentrified portion of Chicago comprised of the poor and working poor. You can drive to US Cellular and park and tailgate; you cannot do the same at Wrigley. Somewhere along the line (probably before I was born) it became common to equate Sox fans as unruly, drunken, violent working class guys (Disco Demoliton Night probably did not help with this image either) and the Cubs fans as homosexual (because of the proximity to the Boy’s Town neighborhood), fair-weather fans who treated Wrigley Field as a giant bar. As I write this, I am imagining someone reading this and thinking that I am wearing a sailor cap, a rainbow-colored silk tank top, and cutoff shorts who has just blown five men simply because I am a Cubs fan. Which is fine because if you are a Sox fan reading this, you have most likely just finished up with your parole officer. But I digress.
Whereas Mets and Yankees fans will never get along, this is mainly due to the fact that there is the proverbial New York and New Jersey bravado at play. Cubs fans and Sox fans genuinely do not like each other and it can mostly stem from where they live or grew up. There is an identification to the team that seems to be directly proportionate to your home, almost as if Derrek Lee hitting a home run off of your favorite pitcher is akin to finding out that your neighbor has been robbed. It is all very personal, which is ironic because it was not always the case.
From almost everyone that I know of who is at least twenty years older than me, the general concensus is that, yes, you had your die-hard Cubs and Sox fans before but the casual fans simply rooted for whichever team had the better record. Until the Tribune Company bought the Cubs. When the Tribune Company bought the Cubs in 1981 it ushered in an era of marketing that was practically unseen in major US sports as Wrigley Field would sellout almost every game even if the Cubs were twenty five games out of first place. The Cubs did not play any night games so the Tribune Company (with the help of The Chicago Tribune) simply marketed the stadium as a great place to ditch work or take the kids to see a game. Factor in Harry Caray, Ryne Sandberg, and Andre Dawson and everything aligned perfectly culminating in the God forsaken moniker “Lovable Losers” label that suggests that anyone will watch a Cubs game and that ninety percent of the stadium are bandwagon fans.
Add to this, the Cubs and Sox are two of the oldest teams in Major League Baseball (the Cubs are a charter member of the National League) yet have only won a handful of World Series between them and you have a bitter rivalry in which fights break out between fans all of the time when they play. Nobody really has an upper hand in the rivalry—which is really the defining feature of a rivalry. Yes, the Sox won the World Series three seasons ago (which, ironically enough, saw a parade of tens of thousands of fair-weather Sox fans) but before that they had gone almost fifty years without even winning a playoff series.
But the biggest factor in trying to convey how serious this rivalry is is that when the Mets and Yankees played each other in a World Series the city did not stop when the Yankees won. If the Cubs and White Sox should ever play each other in a World Series half the city will be on fire afterwards. O’Hare airport will not operate the next day. If the Cubs were to win, Lincoln Park would probably be teargassed by Sox fans as a first strike so as to not see flags and banners and such. And if the White Sox were to win, well, some Northside neighborhoods would still probably be set ablaze by overzealous fans celebrating the victory. Hopefully, for the sake of Chicago and Midwest productivity in general, the Cubs and White Sox will never meet in a World Series.
In the meantime, it is Ozzie vs. Lou; rich vs. working class; “real” fans vs. “fair-weather” fans; black and white vs. blue and white; ugly-ass stadium vs. American landmark stadium. On the other hand, if you look at the rivalry and think to yourself, “I don’t get it,” well, that’s fine too because we Chicagoans pride ourselves on doing our own things. We know that New York and L.A. are overrated cities and if you cannot understand why the Cubs sweeping the White Sox this past weekend gives us Cubs fans bragging rights for at least a week then you can keep on doing what you were doing.
Chicago is made up of remarkable neighborhoods (the city is home to the largest Czech population outside of Prague, the largest Polish population outside of Warsaw, and some of the largest Greek, Irish, and Mexican populations in the U.S.) and, while ESPN certainly cannot convey all of the intricacies of the Cubs-Sox rivalry within the city’s neighborhoods and bars, it is good to see the spotlight fall on both teams every once in a while. Because the Cubs and the White Sox evoke some of the strongest passions out of its fans and their hunger to see their team do better than the other is nothing short of emphatic.
Well, at least until the Bears’ season starts anyway.