when i posted this picture on metafilter last night the very next guy said “when you win the world series you can kiss whoever you want.”
i hate it when people are right.
a good reader emailed me a link to ESPN.com today where Scoop Jackson beautifully wrote about the sorrow on the North Side and tried to hint at racism but its not racism, its baseball.
yes dummy the Cubs are on the predominately white North Side and the Sox are in the mostly Black South Side, but i grew up in the all-white suburbs of Hanover Park Illinois and if people chose who to root for based on race then there would have been zero Sox fans in our lily white township instead of the 50-50 split that i had to suffer through.
Cubs fans hate the Sox, period.
we cant even deal with this World Series bullshit. its like a bad dream that we will never wake up from.
and i cant even imagine all the fair weather fans who are suddenly wearing white sox caps in my beloved town.
something like this happened in the early 80s when the Sox made it to the playoffs. i forget about who or when – it was success for the Sox therefore of zero importance to my memory banks. but real Cub fans wore their colors, real Sox fans rubbed our noses in it and the fakers bought into the bandwaggon.
and then in 84 when it looked like the Cubs were going all the way we all remembered who had jumped ship and who had stayed true and there were alot of beatings going around in those days in the northwest suburbs and the most delicious went to those who had worn Sox hats and tshirts in 82 who suddenly found themselves under a Cubs hat
those were the ones who found themselves in the gutter with no hat no shirt and no shoes.
the last twenty years have not been good to Cub fans and this only makes things worse.
sure its nice that the Cubs have had some good teams but thats like having the cute girls tell you that they think youre fun. who the fuck cares about what they think, its the result, its the end result. it’s the ultimate result that you care about.
id have rather the Cubs never had wood zam prior maddux and clement.
id have rather sammy sosa stayed on the southside than have them get so far and crush us like that.
id have rather that 1984 never happened, no bull durham, no steve garvey, no rick sutcliffe, no ron cey.
dont get my hopes up. dont give me a taste of the mountaintop unless youre going to go all the way. ask houston what its like to be second place. its not how you play the game, its how you win it as the beasties said so perfectly. and i dont ever want the cubs on the cover of SI unless the words world series champs is over a heaving mass of cubbie pinstripes.
therefore seeing the white sox as champs is … man. worst than anything.
say it aint so.
there is so much to hate about the new world champs that i dont even want to start the list because it will never end.
it starts with eddie gadelle and winds its way through greg luzinski wearing those shorts it goes through disco demolition and jimmy piersall calling all the sox wives sluts to every time the sox beat the cubs during interleague play.
theyre your sisters favorite team. theyre the talibans favorite team.
theyre worse than the yankees because they dont even try to emit hate, just their presence makes you despise them.
if there was an earthquake in the midwest id want the epicenter to be no on the pitchers mound of US Cellular but in the home team’s locker room.
i didnt even watch the game last night because i knew what would happen. i would see dick cheeney on top of my mother, id see cops outside of my house with a megaphone and a battering ram, id see a special report broadcasting that prohibition had just been overturned again: id see that the sox had swept the astros in the world series, and not only had they won, but they won convincingly – against good teams.
in 84 after the Cubs lost in the playoffs i cried and decided that it would be my duty to manage them to a world series because nobody, obviously, gave a shit about it other than me.
here it is 21 years later and im kicking myself for not following that dream. how could the Sox of all teams get the monkey off their back before the Cubs? how? they dont even have any good players! podsednick, fine. buhrle fine. but seriously, who else? a few pitchers? every team has a few pitchers. bubba sparks as the closer? a double A drunkard?
the team that just bulldozed through the best of the AL and NL would not suprise me if they only went .500 next year. but it doesnt matter, the stink of champagne and theyre being measured for rings.
they get the prettiest girl in town and i dont.
again.
its like steve bartman all over again. its like bush being reelected. its like finding out theres not only no santa claus but youre getting coal in your stocking.
and the worst part of it all: the south siders dont even wear white sox.
lying cheating fucking dumbass fucking arrrrrGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
weed isnt bad for you + flagrant + emmaunelle + abrasivist + iron mouth