Cubs vs White Sox in W.S?

[stevo]

Yesss!: Baseball Heaven Meets Baseball Hell in Chicago
By MONICA DAVEY


HICAGO, Sept. 12 — Stunning things have turned up in this city, as strange and unfamiliar as a Republican mayor or thin-crust pizza: pennant races. Two of them. In the heart of September, both the Cubs and the White Sox are still in contention, for the first time in nearly a century.

So this is the year. Next year is here.

This is the year when the elevated Red Line will shuttle fans back and forth, 15 quick stops, to World Series games. The year when all the rotten luck — the memories of the "Black Sox" accused of throwing the 1919 Series, the decades-old hex on the Cubs, and the endless, patronizing talk about Lovable Losers — will finally be proved a bunch of hooey.

Or so say half the people around here.

In a city whose baseball loyalties have always been neatly divided by geography — White Sox on the South Side, Cubs on the North — a different, psychic split is emerging: between the hard-core optimists basking in the hoopla, confident of victory, and the others, who, having been around here awhile, are holding back. Some are openly doubtful, others cautiously hopeful, but all in all, they seem unwilling to predict much beyond tonight's first pitch, and are doomed to savor each win as if it were their last.

But the optimists are planning their Octobers now. Early this morning on the South Side, on a still-dark 35th Street, they lined up for tickets to White Sox division playoff games, which may or may not happen. In 38 minutes, the 21,000 tickets were gone. "Of course it's going to happen," Ray Perez said. "I just feel it. I feel it in my bones."

And on the other side of town this afternoon, Cub optimists shared speed-dialing tips for a similar ticket sale set for early Sunday morning.

The new split has not ended the old one. Cubs fans still accuse the Sox of having a dull, dizzying park, skimpy crowds and boorish fans. Sox fans accuse Cubs fans of caring little for baseball, talking on cellphones, drinking beer and staring at the fancy ivy.

John Russick, curator of a Chicago Historical Society exhibition on the city's teams, dates the problem to 1906, the last time the teams met in the Series. The Cubs were expected to run away with it but did not.

Which is not to say that people even remember why they so hate the other side.

"Why do we root for the Cubs?" Ken Nicholas, 44, finally asked his mother outside Wrigley Field.

"We didn't have a choice," answered Theresa Nicholas. "We were North Siders and my mom and dad were Cubs fans, so we didn't have a choice." Mrs. Nicholas's mother was buried with a Cubs cap.

The thought of a crosstown Series, though, may have weakened that rivalry a little.

Some fans said they would root for the other Chicago team, if only to guarantee a hometown series. At a game this week, Sam Caraballo and his fiancée, Lisa Lassalle, wore full Cubs gear as they ventured into the 12th row of a game at U.S. Cellular Field, the White Sox home. And no one, they said, was particularly mean to them.

Even Mayor Richard M. Daley, a diehard Sox fan who grew up near the old Comiskey Park, conceded today that he would like to see the Cubs reach the playoffs, too. Mary-Frances Veeck, the widow of Bill Veeck, the beloved White Sox owner, said she, too, would not object to the Cubs' winning.

"An El series would mean a lot for the city," she said. "As long as the Sox would take it in the end."

[Bostongambler]

Forget about it..... Note: ( I am grabbing my package as I make that statement)

[jackyl]

If that happens, I'm convinced that there is no God! No God would ever allow the Cubs and the White Sox to meet in the world series.

p.s. I'm already about 95% convinced that there is no God, because no God in his right mind would ever allow the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to win a super bowl!