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."
Or a cell block.
This could use a Chicago ping.
Or, alternatively, in honor of corporate naming rights: "U.S. Sell-your-soul Stadium."
I can't root for a team that has a Chavez-loving Commie for a manager.
Thats the difference. Over the years, the south side has become a really bad of town, even though new Comiskey is really a nice park. 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.
I was raised south of the line but by people raised north of the line, I'm mostly a Cubs fan because their park is nicer. But I'll be happy if the White Sox win.
White Sox ping.
Yankee Ping
We charged 25 cents to park in front of my house. Just a little south of 35th Street on Wells. R.G. Lydy had the cinder parking lot concession on the east side of the ball park, which also served as the neighborhood softball diamond. Miss Mike's Hotdogs on the southwest corner of 35th and Wells. (Late '30's.)
Dose were da days, my friend. Too bad they had to end.
You know, my grandpa grew up in the neighborhood too. I grew up around Harlem and Archer and then eventually moved to nicer areas, such as Naperville (of course, my family was making more money at the time too).
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.
Got anymore silly statements?
Suburban fear is greatly overblown. I have no fear of going to Sox Park. The real difference is that Sox fans are baseball fans whereas Cub fans are generally going to the park to be seen or play games.
My grandfather grew up around 57th and Halsted. He was born in 1889. He followed the Sox from their beginnings. He personally witnessed the 1906 "Hitless Wonders" and the 1919 Black Sox. He died in 1961.
I started following the Sox as a child in the 1950's. (My dad is, ugh, a Cubs fan.)
Between my grandfather and myself, we have followed the Sox through their entire 105 year (frustrating) existence.
awwwwww geeeeee - so sowwwy not to have brilliant minds like yours on the bandwagon......
I think that back in the 70's and 80's that suburban fear was not overblown. That part of town was a crime ridden dump. Its still not quaint like Wrigley. Plus, there were more day games. But overall though, New Comiskey (Or US Cellurar or whatever they call it now) is a really nice park.
I think that back in the 70's and 80's that suburban fear was not overblown. That part of town was a crime ridden dump. Its still not quaint like Wrigley. Plus, there were more day games. But overall though, New Comiskey (Or US Cellurar or whatever they call it now) is a really nice park.
I remember the old Comiskey Park where they had that funky pavilion w/picnic tables out in left. So blue-collar... but yet it spoke so well of era gone by.
I won't mind if they go all the way... and I'm a Yankee fan.
I thought it was a nasty piece of trash, probably written by some idiot Cub fan.
In the words of a Sox Fan commenting on NBC 5 News, (paraphrasing) "Ronnie Woo Woo and all the Cub Fans can stay in their bars on the North Side".
People can say whatever they want, they'll only look like bigger fools when we win it all.
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