I remember the 2005 World Series very well. I’m a South Sider born and raised and watched the clinching game at a friends house right off of Western Ave. We walked down the street after the game high fiving everyone. People were driving by with passengers waving brooms out the window and honking the whole way. We walked down to our local Irish pub (one of about 6 in a mile and half stretch of Western), and we could not even fit inside. People were hanging out the windows. It was amazing. The whole playoff run was just riveting.
Fast forward to now. This is about as down low as I’ve ever felt as a Sox fan. This is brutal. It’s the worst start in our entire history, and there is very little hope for any improvement. We don’t even have a shot at the number 1 draft pick, so I don’t even have that to root for. We can’t draft higher than 10th due to stupid revenue sharing and draft pick rules. My Brother died in 1998, so he never got to see the Sox win the World Series, which makes me sad, but at least he doesn’t have to watch this current team.
As far as the Sox/Cubs rivalry and trashing each other, I would just hope that those that want to rub salt in our wounds this year remember that they also know what it’s like to suck. The Cubs are called the lovable losers for a reason. We may be fan rivals, but we are both Chicagoans as well, and we both know sports pain very very well. So just remember how close to the ledge us White Sox fans are right now and maybe have just a little bit of compassion. The Cubs are exciting this year, so there is zero reason for Cubs fans to pay any attention to the other side of town right now.
I’m so sorry you lost your brother! I can only imagine how much you would have wanted to cherish that time together.
The amazing thing is that their payroll is pretty much at the league average, so it’s not like they have stripped the team for economic reasons. Just a tremendous amount of under performance.
Indeed. I never talk trash about the Sox. I just don’t care. I think more Cubs fans are that way than the other way around. Sox fans tend to delight in the failure of the Cubs in a way I don’t see Cubs fans do with the Sox. My impression may be based by growing up a Cubs fan in Sox Country. It was fucking brutal.
I think there’s a perception among Sox fans that Cubs fans think they are superior because their team is more popular, and they sell more tickets, while the reality is that there is very little difference between a Sox fan and a Cubs fan, we are both just fans of a baseball team, so that kind of arrogance can seem a bit much. It also seems like the Sox get zero credit for winning the first World Series for Chicago in 88 years from that side, like it’s just been forgotten to history once the Cubs won. For the record I was happy for my Cubs fan friends to get to experience what I did, but I think there is that dynamic that Sox fans feel looked down on by the North siders, so yeah, we probably hit back a bit more due to that.
Thank you! It’s been a long road, since I was only 20 when he died, but I still feel close to him, and 25+ years is a lot of time for that kind of burden to become less difficult to carry. I have fond memories of cheering those great 90s Sox teams with him, and I made sure to appreciate every single moment of 2005 in honor of him. Also I agree, this team is disappointing all throughout the roster, with the exception of Garret Crochet, but who knows how long he can keep up this string of great starts. Its just so frustrating to see this kind of organizational futility.
I’m not a Chicagoan (though I did live there for a time as a young man, and consider it one of my favorite cities in the world*), but the Packers are my NFC team for two reasons, one silly and one not. The silly reason is simply that I like their uniforms, traditions, and history. Green and gold just look really good together. (I have a soft spot for the A’s, too, for the same reason).
On the other hand, the only team I’ll root for to beat the Packers is my native city’s Cleveland Browns. Lifelong Browns fan, old enough to remember when Art Modell ripped the city’s heart out and crapped in the bleeding wound. Now, the Packers are community-owned, and can never be moved from Green Bay (which is why they play in the NFL’s smallest market). So that’s my second reason for backing the Pack - no owner can ever screw Green Bay the way that Jim Irsay screwed Baltimore and Modell screwed Cleveland.
I know that as a Browns fan, I should loathe the Steelers with every fiber of my being. But the Steeler fanbase rallied in support of the Browns when Modell was gut punching Cleveland, and Dan Rooney worked with the city to help keep the team. So I really can’t muster the hatred or scathing contempt for Steeler Nation that I feel for the Cowboys, Patriots, or Ravens.
I’m also a firm believer that you only fall in love once. I’ve lived in Atlanta for three decades, but the Browns were my first team, and I don’t care if the Falcons win, lose, or move to Waukegan.
*I lived in Chicago in the mid-90s, when the Bulls were dominating the NBA; any Cubs-Sox animosity I saw in my coworkers was subsumed by a common blinding devotion to MJ, Scottie, and Phil.
There is definitely a bit of an inferiority complex or jealousy or something of that nature going on. And I totally understand that, as I was born in Back of the Yards and grew up and currently live in the Midway area. People around here sometimes feel ignored, as much of the focus of the media is on the North Side, whether it be restaurants, clubs, bars, baseball teams, etc. Personally, I like it that way. At heart, I really should be a Sox fan, but the die was cast when I discovered baseball as a kid through WGN broadcasts during the day, and I didn’t have the parents to steer me right. (They’re both from Poland and couldn’t care less about baseball.)
We get a bit of that in Philly, where the home team is the favorite, but the fan has a secondary team that he roots for if the home team isn’t in the game. But even with that, there are teams unacceptable as backup teams.
You are not permitted the have the Cowboys as your second favorite if you’re an Eagles fan. Nope. Can’t root for the Penguins to any degree if you’re a Flyers fan. Etc., etc…
Inferiority/jealousy, or superiority/arrogance? I guess it depends on which side your on. I’m not at all jealous of anything to do with the Cubs, but a lot of Cubs fans sure feel the need to harp on and on about how much more popular they are and how much higher their attendance is. Given that their team was broadcast free across the country on WGN for many decades, and their stadium us a tourist attraction, that isn’t surprising. But anyway, this not a Sox vs Cubs fans thread, so I’ll drop it there. All I’m saying is this is as low as I’ve ever felt as a Sox fan about my team, I hate my owner, our new GM is severely underqualified and I have zero faith in him improving the team, especially with cheap ass Jerry in charge. I’m already beat up enough, so I don’t need the "neener neener"s from the other side of town right now. It’s like kicking an injured man when he’s on the ground. Have some class about it is all I’m saying.
I’m sorry man. Really sucks for you guys. I don’t like your ownership either and the Sox should have been contenders for a couple years there. It looked like they had all the pieces.
Yeah, and as if all that isn’t enough, we can’t even draft higher than #10 next year because of some revenue sharing, recent draft pick nonsense. We may lose the most games in MLB history and still draft 10th. Feels bad man. Real bad.
I think what went wrong with the last rebuild was signing all of these guys to multi year deals before they even established themselves in the major leagues. We did it because Jerry won’t sign anyone to big contracts so we wanted to keep the core intact for several years, but all it did was make these guys not care about working hard and staying in shape. Hence the original post of this thread. It’s exactly what happened. We also signed Grandal, who is a terrible clubhouse guy as it turns out. Moncada and Eloy have reputations of not being hard workers. I wish we’d just commit to player development and analytics like the Rays do if we aren’t going to try to be a big market team, but right now we don’t sign anyone and we don’t develop anyone. That’s a real bad combo.
Come to think of it, do we like any of the owners of the major sports here? I guess now that Rocky’s gone, I haven’t heard too much rumbling about Danny, but otherwise, I kinda hate them all.
Yeah that’s a good point. I’m not sure about the Chicago Fire or the Chicago Sky, but I am actually excited about the WNBA draft results yesterday. I may actually watch some Sky games this season.
I like some of the White Sox. There was some pitcher a while ago who continued to play through a game with a broken finger. George - cannot remember the last name for the life off me. Some of the players live to play.
Close to home in San Diego, the Pads seem to most badly need CPR. Wait until a guy like me pulls out a potato-chip bag to cover his mouth and tries to revive a corpse.
So after reading this thread at lunch, I ran into a vendor who’s a Chicago transplant and Cubs fan. He told me that Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf has recently bought a ranch outside Nashville, and Dame Rumor, painted in tongues, whispers that he’s looking to move the team to Tennessee. Any validity to that? I would think that a team with a history as long as the White Sox would be immune to such a threat, but then I thought the same about the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts, too…
That has been a rumor for at least many months. I’m not sure when I first heard it, but it was some time last year. (ETA: The earliest reported threats I see are from August.) He may have been threatening for longer, for all I know. There’s also the sports complex or whatever they want to build in the South Loop. It looks really cool, but I ain’t paying for it.
(They’re both from Poland and couldn’t care less about baseball.)