So this is sports, but it's not sports.
It has been very interesting from an armchair sociological perspective to watch the nation (and certainly the city of Chicago) lose its marbles over the World Series win by the long-suffering Cubs. At 108 years, their championship drought certainly was unprecedentedly long.
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That's not interesting outside of a sports context. But the fact that national media outlets devoted exclusively to covering sports apparently forgot that the Chicago White Sox won the World Series just 11 years ago is.
I'm somewhat biased here, as a Sox fan. I was at Game 2 of that World Series. But the distinction between Cubs and White Sox fans in Chicago is something we can describe without being affected by our own preferences. The Cubs are the North Side. The Sox, the South Side. The North Side is wealthier, whiter, younger, and where people go to have a good time.
The big music venues, the fancy restaurants, the theaters…all north of the loop for the most part. The South Side is not glamorous.
It is traditionally less wealthy, not a place people associate with having a night on the town, and heavily composed of black, Hispanic, Irish, Polish, and other identifiably "ethnic" populations. The North Side is residential and cosmopolitan. The South Side is industrial and without frills.
In 2005, the year the White Sox won the Series, it was interesting to watch how little anyone outside of the South Side gave a crap, here or nationally. The previous year, the Boston Red Sox won their first series since 1918 and everyone in the national media treated it like the second coming. Yet when the White Sox were going for their first win since 1917 – an even longer drought – nobody seemed to care. That they played the equally anonymous (but excellent) Houston Astros probably didn't help. And now ten years later everyone is going crazy for the Cubs and their drought again. Hmm.
The excuses for people hopping on the Cubs bandwagon – everyone loves an underdog, etc. – fall flat. It's clear that *some* underdogs and *some* droughts are worthy of our collective sympathy. As long as the team is one for whom being a supporter is sufficiently cosmopolitan and has sufficient social cachet attached to being a fan, then everyone cares. If your fan base is 25% native Spanish speakers and your stadium is located across the highway from what was once America's most notorious public housing project, then nobody even notices let alone cares.
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I don't mean to read too much into reactions to a sporting event, and I have no doubt personally that the Cubs fans outnumber Sox fans in Chicagoland. Yet the White Sox victory parade in 2005 was attended by 3 million people, a staggering number that I'm sure today's Cubs parade will match. I can't help but feel that which 3 million people were excited about the White Sox is a significant part of the explanation for why their World Series championship inspired so little interest compared to what happened for the Cubs and Red Sox.
CODA: And it was great baseball, too. The White Sox went 11-1 in the playoffs, won a 15 inning marathon in Game 3 of the World Series (the kind of game that legends are made of), and won in the 9th inning of Game 4 on two plays by Juan Uribe that, had Derek Jeter made them, would have been the subject of feature films.
Deborah says:
My husband and I walked up to Michigan Ave this morning to watch the parade. My husband's first comment as we perused the crowd was, "everyone is white". We looked long and hard to spot a black person.
gzt says:
I was living on the South Side at the time – I feel like a bit part of the difference is that the Sox were always a more local interest whereas the Cubs had WGN broadcasting to many other states. So in the city, there was a North/South rivalry and some class-based rivalry and whatever, but outside the city, the Cubs dominated. When I was growing up in Iowa, I could get the Cubs on TV and on the radio, depending on where you were in the state you might have been able to also get the Cards or the Royals or the Twins, but I don't think you could get the White Sox and you could always get the Cubs.
Net Denizen says:
Well, yeah, but the White Sox cheated 100 years ago so therefore they're always cheaters and only the pure, noble Cubs can win a World Series title the "right way" don'tcha know.
Emerson Dameron says:
The Cubs/Sox "rivalry" is very much about race and class, and you can tell an awful lot about Chicagoans by the way they tapdance around discussing that explicitly.
Like one or two other people with strong ties to Chicago, I am a fan of both teams. I lived in Pilsen during the 2005 season and the Sox Sweep certainly seemed like a massive deal from where I was sitting at the time.
This Cubs win is getting a different sort of national attention, which doesn't shock me. I'm still pretty happy about it. I know my former city has a few things going on besides police torture scandals.
Emerson Dameron says:
Growing up in the '80s, Sox merch (like Raiders merch) was popular nationwide with black kids and white kids who wanted to look tough. I can't picture the 2 Live Crew wearing Dolphins hats.
sluggo says:
The Cubs actually fell into there popularity in the 1970's by accident. First the WGN carried there games on TV and Radio. When WGN went coast to coast on cable, the Cubs were a ready product to put on the air.
The second part is day baseball. Let me explain. In the 1970's the Cubs sucked. Not they were just bad. They were a huge fucking pile of mismanaged, rotting, stinking, cockroach infested, smelly, subhuman, flyball dropping, grounder between the legs garbage that drove any thinking person away from the ballpark. Once you add in the fact that no one that worked days could go to day games, the only people that showed up were kids. Hordes of kids, think of the Walking Dead with an all eleven year old cast. Suburban Park Districts cut deals with the Cubs for $3 tickets. There were yellow buses lined up on Clark, halfway to Irving Park.
So the Cubs, simply trying get sell tickets to anyone with an ass to fill a seat lucked into this; sugared up grade- schoolers in the 70's became beer soaked frat boys of the 80's and 90's, who now own the team (Rickets) or pay stub prices (Vetter, Cusak, etc).
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
ps. The Northside wasn't always rich. This is a new thing over the last twenty five years. Wrigleyville back then was a 'rough' neighborhood
Mack says:
Im sure you've seen this but it explains a lot – http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/23/upshot/24-upshot-baseball.html?_r=0
I've lived on the north side of Chicago for almost 25 years. That includes a stint about 4 blocks from Wrigley. I am not a baseball fan but the Cubs fans made English soccer supporters seem almost genteel. The pissing and puking and breaking stuff for no reason before heading back to the 'burbs will be something I never forget (or forgive).
Ray Dio says:
For a number of years back in the 90s, I worked with a guy who grew up in south chicago, but was a cubs fan. This apparently was grounds for substantial abuse from his friends, with a favorite invective being that he was part of the "wine and cheese" crowd who allegedly rooted for the cubs back in those days. (in fairness to him, he was already a cubs fan when his family moved to south chicago- a point that made no difference to his friends)
Droppy says:
I grew up in central Illinois in pre-cable days. The local CBS affiliate in Champaign was the only station we could pick up on our TV. They aired what seemed about 90% of the Cubs games (I guess some kind of syndication deal with WGN.) That's entirely why I grew up a Cubs fan. It was my local team. Our little league took us on a bus trip to Wrigley in 1969, and that was my first time at the park. That cemented it. A fan for life. I'm class-wise more a White Sox fan, but I never met a Sox fan until I moved to South Bend. Everyone in central Illinois was either a Cubs or Cardinals fan.
Robert Walker-Smith says:
I had no idea that Chicago had two baseball teams.
Granted, most of the time I don't know they had any.
gromet says:
I'll throw in my perspective, which is that of a guy who is not from Chicago and doesn't watch baseball. But I tuned in to this World Series because the Cubs weren't only trying to end a long losing streak — they were fighting a long losing streak that began with a curse. That adds a dimension of fate and superstition that's a lot more compelling than just "historically, we're losers." Instead of being a business that was mismanaged and had some bad breaks for a few decades, they became cosmic underdogs. This, I think, explains why the White Sox weren't compelling in a Big National Story way, but the Cubs were (and so was Boston).
jharp says:
I'm a Cleveland Indians fan and am still pissed off at the balls and strikes calls.
Though they did call them shitty for both teams.
I just do not understand why they give the pitchers a strike for that pitch that is clearly two inches off the plate.
And they do it all the fucking time.
Gerald McGrew says:
You can't talk about baseball and race without including this from Chris Rock (both funny and pertinent)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFFQkQ6Va3A
Pete Gaughan says:
Narrative wins. You know that.
It's appropriate to look at the class difference within Chicago. But the rest of the country doesn't know and doesn't care about that. All they know is the Cubs identity — lovable losers who break their fans' hearts because of a curse — was on the line. It's as if the Dodgers had been playing for their lease on Hollywood, or as if the Yankees were in a Series with all their money on the table.
Look at how people view the Red Sox: "long-suffering fan" is gone. Now they're just another rich team. You don't get that kind of paradigm shift when a lowly mortal team like the White Sox or the Tigers win.
xjmueller says:
As a native south sider old enough to remember 1959, i always get irked about the amount of love the Cubs get vis a vis the Sox. Out here in northern VA you don't often see Sox box scores in the paper even when they're a good team. It probably doesn't help that the Sox generally suck. They were great in 2005 but the rest of the decade wasn't much to rave about. They never seem to string together 3-4-5 really competitive seasons. That said, they're still my team. You can take the boy our of the south side but…
Congrats to the Cubs and their fans. Nothing like a championship to raise the mood of a city. They were great this year and overcame their own Cub-ness. Mike Royko use to approach the world series by betting against the team with the most ex-Cubs. He was usually right. Maybe this will change now.
I agree with Sluggo, the neighborhood around Wrigley was a bit rough back in the late sixties and early seventies. Not horrible, but not great either. It started to gentrify in the seventies.
ConcernedCitizen says:
Above commenters have already pointed this out, but the Cubs' popularity has more to do with widespread WGN coverage than some sort of white-upper-class solidarity movement.
Jesus Christ, Ed, not everything need be reduced to race relations.
Bitter Scribe says:
Part of the appeal for this World Series victory was the epic, heartbreaking chokes, in 1969 (the year I started following them), 1984 and 2003. Then you get them coming back from 3 games to 1, blowing that lead in the eighth and STILL pulling another miracle…c'mon, it's a feel-good story.
As for the White Sox, I don't feel they're neglected in any way. Obama is a Sox fan, as were the Daleys, father and son. Guaranteed Rate Field, or whatever they're calling it this week, is one of the few attractions of the South SIde.
Jesse says:
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive — in fact, perhaps there is more to it than simple correlation — but the Cubbies have had WGN and more of a nation-wide reach.
I grew up in Alaska in the mid 90's and have a life-long dedication to the Atlanta Braves simply because we got TBS and if you turned on a ballgame that's what you got. The Cubs were my second-favorite because if the Braves weren't on TBS the Cubs were on WGN. Geographically speaking, I should have been an M's fan and certainly not in "Braves Country" but who wants to be a fan of a team you can never see play?
Most of "the media" probably doesn't live in Chicagoland and if you're not a team on one of the coasts you tend to be forgotten, unless you have 80 games a year on cable TV nationwide.
Bruce Baugh says:
I'm a life-long West Coaster, born and raised in Pasadena, CA. For me, the Cubs have always had a blue-collar aura, just as when I was growing up, the Dodgers were always a bit on the blue-collar side and the Angels had a slicker, whiter vibe.
Since I've never been much of a baseball fan, this is all a matter of stuff picked up on the side of conversations about other things, listening to but not participating in conversations among serious baseball fans, intermittently reading the LA Times and Pasadena Star-News pages, and so on.
Death Panel Truck says:
I still remember some of the names of the White Sox players: Dye, Podsednik, Konerko, Uribe, Crede, Pierzynski, Jenks, Contreras, Buehrle, Iguchi, Rowand. All from memory. A few months from now, I will have forgotten the names of the Cubs star players. It's partially a function of age, but I think mostly it's because the 2005 Sox were simply a better team. If the 2016 Cubs would play the 2005 Sox, I wouldn't bet against the South Siders.
Although Orlando Hernandez didn't play after the ALCS, that didn't stop me from naming our older cocker spaniel after him. Tomorrow, El Duque will be 11 years old.
Death Panel Truck says:
*could play
Paul Nations says:
Being a backward member of the backwoods South, my nearest MLB team is the Cardinals. I followed them when we only had 3 channels to choose from. Now, not so much.
But I remember hearing somewhere about the fans of the White Sox and the Cubs. The difference I recall had to do with lights. The Sox field had no lights so working stiffs couldn't attend the games, while the Cubbies did have lights and the working stiffs began following them.
Can someone from the cosmopolitan North confirm or refute my recollections? Please?
Thank you.
Katydid says:
I wasn't born with a religion gene and apparently wasn't born with a sportsball gene, either. I simply don't care. That said, we're about two days' drive from Chicago yet the Cubs' win has dominated the news here, so i've seen an awful lot of coverage on the news. Just this morning I endured about 15 minutes straight of footage of parades, people spouting statistics, talk of goats at the ballpark (why would anyone WANT to take a goat to a ballgame?), and countless interviews of barely-coherent people whining about how very, very HARD it's been to live their lives without a win by the Cubs. Again, this is inexplicable to me because I know we have a local team and I know sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, but I couldn't tell you which time they're in now.
Also, I am startled to read that the Cubs are considered "upmarket" and white because virtually every person I've seen has spoken English as a second language.
Major Kong says:
@Paul
I think it was the other way around. Wrigley Field (Cubs) didn't have lights for a very long time. I believe it was the last park to get them. When I was growing up in Chicago, the Cubs only played in the daytime.
Dave Dell says:
Big Cubs fan until the Ricketts family bought 'em. Now it's Billionaires watching Millionaires play a game.
Shott3r says:
Similarly, consider the muted reaction to Miguel Cabrera's first-in-45 years Triple Crown. A truly historic achievement by a 2X MVP, 4X batting champion, and 11X All Star. *crickets*
He should have been the story of that year and the next year. Mike Trout and Bryce Harper have comparatively far more hype.
proverbialleadballoon says:
Hi, fellow White Sox fan here. I don't disagree here, generally. Uribe making the catch in the stands with a runner in scoring position in the 9th inning of the clinching game of the World Series, El Duque calling down the thunder with the bases loaded and no outs in Boston, Pierzinski stealing first base, 4 complete games in the ALCS, Joe Crede doing his best Brooks Robinson at 3rd base, Konerko's grand slam, Posednik's game-inning shot, Bobby Jenks blowing away the middle of the Astro's order, Iguchi nailing a runner at third, so many great memorable moments, we could go on and on about that October. But here's where I disagree: the Sox are local, the Cubs are national, and it's as simple as that. You won't find many White Sox fans more than 20 miles from 35th and Shields. You'll find Cubs fans as far as WGN can broadcast, and even further out. tldr: nobody gives a shit about the White Sox except White Sox fans, and that's okay. the Cubs are a national story, and that's okay, too.
fritz says:
My heavily brown neighborhood (Belmont/Cicero) has been filled with plenty of Cubs fans showing their collective happiness.
Just because South siders think everything north of Roosevelt Road is Lincoln Park doesn't make it the truth.
proverbialleadballoon says:
..to add a little to my last post: through the mid- to late-70s, the Sox were the more popular team in town. Think 77 Hitmen. Then, they went from being broadcast on WGN, like the Cubs, to SportsVision. It was either cable, or closed-circuit, I don't remember, I was too small; but my Pops down on the South Side had to get a bootleg black box in order to watch his White Sox. So that's 35 years of being on cable, while the Cubs were on channel 9, playing day games. Harry Carry went to broadcast the Cubs, nobody remembers that he announced for the Sox either except Sox fans lol. And then he, and Ryne Sandberg, and (to get back with your hypothesis) a nicer neighborhood that was gentrifying in the 80s made the Cubs a thing. Sox Park was the 'world's largest beer garden' in the 70s, take a shower in center field, and buy Andy the Clown a beer. By the end of the 80s, Wrigley Field took that title, and then you can see the Cubs in movies, Sammy Sosa, on through today. Sox coulda been a contendah, but now they got a huge, downwards arrow on the facade of their park that you and I pay for, as taxpayers of Illinois (oh, yeah, Sox tore down old Comiskey and put up a shopping mall, Cubs kept Wrigley, and sure it smells like piss and is falling down, but it is an experience that is the very essence of baseball; when you walk up the steps into the concourse, you could be in a movie that suddenly flashes back in time to 1926 with the green field right there and the players warming up playing catch). I derive much of my baseball pleasure from giving Cubs fans shit, ask them who's pitching and they don't know, because they are there for the party. But the reason the Sox don't get attention is because of the White Sox making all the wrong decisions fan-wise, and the Cubs going the other way and milking that shit for all it's worth. And if we're talking current-events 2016, Sox don't deserve any attention, the piece of shit underperforming, missing expectations by 20 games seasons they've turned in the last few years, and the Cubs, well..
Jesus Jones says:
You should really stick to crying out for help in your depressing statuses and then deleting them. I really think that's your niche. This just demonstrates how other peoples' happiness undermines your own sense of security. Kudos for having time to put down a championship team but not having time to do anything about your glaring social and professional inadequacies. Perhaps consider how compelling the White Sox were as a team (in a sweep, not coming back from down 3-1 to win in 7) in 2005. Perhaps consider the Cubs' seven position players 26 years of age or younger. Perhaps consider the national relevance of a team that played nationally televised day games for decades while the White Sox could barely draw a crowd in Chicago. "Longest span without a championship in the history of major North American sports" has a certain ring to it…
Skepticalist says:
I don't know why but I always thought of the White Sox as the Chicago Yankees and the Cubs, the Chicago Dodgers. This was a long time ago folks. Here in Western NY, most of us weren't Yankee fans.
It was hard for me this year because of my being an Indians fan. I guess if the Indians had to lose it was somewhat more tolerable that it was to the Cubs.
quixote says:
I'm with Katydid, missing the sportsball gene. But one thing stands out for me from the comments: that the Cubs had more coverage and that's why they're more nationally known.
And that refutes Ed's point about the class-race component of the coverage how? So the same thing was happening earlier and on a more local level. That doesn't actually change much.
chuck says:
I'm sure the White Sox were a lovable team when Bill Veeck owned them, but once he was pushed out by Jerry Reinsdorf, that ended for anyone outside the South Side.
Reinsdorf basically blackmailed the Illinois legislature into building him a new ballpark, which is now an embarrassment compared to all the HOK ballparks that have been built since.
And in case you forget the work stoppage of 1994-1995, it was all due to Jerry Reinsdorf's attempt to utilize MLB's antitrust exemption to break the MLBPA. When Sonia Sotomayor (who, in one of American history's great ironies, was appointed to the SCOTUS by a White Sox fan), shot down MLB's work rules injunction, it was Reinsdorf who unsuccessfully attempted to call for a lockout.
Reinsdorf will be relegated to the same circle of hell now occupied by Charlie Comisky. And probably George Steinbrenner.
Katydid says:
And chuck just illustrated yet another reason why sportsball just makes me shrug my shoulders and wonder why anyone cares. Even if the games were worth watching, there's always so much b.s. and graft surrounding the team and the stadium, where the taxpayer always gets soaked to pay for luxury skyboxes in ever-more elaborate sportspalaces so multi-millionaire team owners can rake in even more money. When they're not pulling that, they're threatening to run away to another city.
P.S. Just this past summer, friends of ours moved to Ohio for a job (sounds funny but it's true) and were very excited about winning the raffle they had to buy tickets for. The prize? The opportunity to buy season tickets to a high school football team's games. They bought 500 raffle tickets (I would assume $500?) in order to shell out another $2500 to watch high school kids play sportsball. That explains so much about why the country seems to be spiraling down the drain. I guarantee you that money is not going to help academics at the school.
chuck says:
Thanks for that, Katydid, but I should confess that I am indeed a (small-b) baseball fan.
I think it was Veeck who said baseball must be a great game because it survives in spite of the owners trying to kill it.
Emerson Dameron says:
@Jesus Jones:
You should really stick to music. You are an unbelievable creep, but "International Bright Young Thing" still gets my toe tapping.
Khaled says:
@chuck:
The NHL is run by greedy morons who take fans for granted, it's not just a baseball thing.
chuck says:
If anybody really cared about hockey, there would be an outcry for the Blackhawks to change their name. Maybe there is, but I sure don't know about it.
Joe says:
A lifelong East Coast guy like myself learns a lot about the Midwest just from reading this blog.
Deggjr says:
What proverbialleadballoon and other said. As a long time Sox fan, I'm OK with everything.
I remember in 1969 when my dad gave his sons the Hirohito speech derivative; bear the unbearable and endure the unendurable. Then came the Tommy Agee phantom tag, etc. In 1984 my brother and I were pounding the living room floor; 'Steve Garvey, one time' and Steve Garvey delivered.
I thought the Juan Uribe 9th inning last out was an unbelievable act of courage. Absolutely no hesitation. Derek Jeter couldn't have made that play, period. That's just how it is.
The Sox have had eleven years of bragging rights. That's enough. The stink of 108 years will always be on the Cubs in my lifetime anyway. I've known many Cubs fans who died without experiencing the joy of their team winning the World Series. It sucks to be them but I'm happy there won't be any more.
We Sox fans can pat the Cubs fans on their heads and be happy for them.
Gary Thompson says:
Okay, really. Why did this series go to seven games? I don't get it. You really think these uber-profitable sporting events happen by chance? Do you have any idea how much money is involved? Spare me. It gets more obvious as time goes on.The players are using mostly patriarchal demographics to manipulate this crap. Wake up, bitches!
Kmtberry says:
I feel that I, a non- sportsball person who lives far away in Texas, must chime in. Almost nothing can penetrate my sports ignorance. I don't even know how many layers are on baseball, football, and basketball teams respectively. I have a limited grasp of which teams represent which cities.
Yet even I was familiar with the sad history of the Cubs. Losing losing losing always- sometimes by choking at the last minute. The people of Chicago still love them even though they keep breaking their hearts.
So what I am saying is: the Cubs have better PR. People care because they know the story. Even noodle-armed bookworms like me