Taking sides
The Cubs started out as the White Stockings before eventually rebranding themselves as baby bears. A White Sox fan would argue that, likewise, Darth Vader was a good kid before falling in with the wrong crowd.
The White Sox started out as the White Stockings and became the White Sox not long after. Cubs fans would see that as proof of limited intelligence: What in heaven’s name is a Sox?
Baseball in Chicago has a rich, complicated history that is filled with winners, losers and families torn apart by the city’s sports civil war. It’s a beautiful thing.
From the Cubs’ birth as the White Stockings of the National Association of Base Ball Players in 1870 to the Cubs’ huge success in the early 1900s to the endless desert of the following century- plus to the Joe Maddon- skippered team that finally won a World Series in 2016.
From the White Sox’ American League beginnings in 1901 as the White Stockings to their shocking upset of the mighty Cubs for the 1906 World Series title to the 1919 Black Sox scandal to their own desert to the Ozzie Guillen- led team that captured the 2005 World Series.
From Tinker to Evers to Chance. From White Sox owner Bill Veeck to Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts. From the Cubs’ Orval Overall to the Sox’ Johnny Dickshot. A colorful history.
If I told you that, as we sit here punching our mitts in anticipation of a new season, a Golden Age of Chicago Baseball might be upon us, I’m sure you’d discard me like a scuffed ball. So let’s start with the premise that we’re knee- deep in the most interesting baseball era this town has ever seen. Then let’s see if it takes us in the vicinity of golden- age territory.
Professional baseball was still relatively new at the turn of the 20th century, when the Cubs and Sox had some of their best teams. Despite hitting only .230 during the regular season, the White Sox won the city’s first World Series in 1906, the only time in history our two teams would face each other for the championship. The Cubs would win the Series the next two years and lose in five games in 1910 to the Philadelphia Athletics.
Even through the haze of all those years, that era has a golden hue to it. Some would argue that it beats anything that came after. But everything was reduced then. There was intense interest in the 1906 Series because a city that had rebuilt from the Great Chicago Fire saw a crosstown showdown as a clear sign of rebirth. But the Chicago area was much smaller than it is now. Radio was in its infancy, and broadcast games were years away. The American League was 5 years old. A kindergartner.
Sportswriters were poets and legend makers back then, spinning bigger- than- life tales about ballplayers who were jagged around the edges. And the most interesting thing about the mythicized Tinker- to- Evers- toChance double- play combination wasn’t even widely known back then: Shortstop Joe Tinker and second baseman Johnny Evers hated each other and didn’t speak to one another for years. Imagine the wall- to- wall coverage if that were the case today.
Everything is bigger now – the highs, the lows and the in- betweens. And the ball isn’t dead.
Right now, we have a Cubs team that is in the sweet spot of a competitive window, having won the 2016 World Series to end the longest championship drought in American major sports history. They have been to three straight National League Championship Series. With the signing of ace Yu Darvish, there is no reason to believe that the window is closing any time soon.
Kris Bryant, Javy Baez, Anthony Rizzo, Willson Contreras, Addison Russell and Kyle Hendricks appear to be heading into the prime of their careers. Jon Lester should be good enough again, and if he isn’t, Jose Quintana will be there to soften the landing. There’s enough Theo Epstein- assembled talent on the roster to absorb one or two players’ struggles, the way there was last season when Kyle Schwarber needed harnesses and rappelling devices to get out of the massive hole he had dug for himself.
And these Cubs are fun. As we speak, Maddon, a World Series- winning manager, is using fine art to inspire the team this season. More than a few people, possibly some of them Cubs players, are rolling their eyes. When Maddon unveiled the painting he had commissioned honoring Salvador Dali, 99 percent of the public either didn’t know who Dali was or mistook the handlebar- mustachioed artist for Rollie Fingers. But the bigger point is that Maddon does things differently, people are fascinated by him and, as he said recently, “The Mona Lisa, she’s pretty cool.’’
And the White Sox? How do you squeeze a 95- loss team into a story about compelling baseball? We Chicagoans understand greatness, and on this day, the Sox are anything but great. But they’re interesting in the way a specimen might be on a microscope slide. They’re either going to succeed in a big way or fail in a big way.
The Sox offer hope in Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, Eloy Jimenez, Alec Hansen, Dylan Cease and Luis Robert. Kopech regularly throws 100 mph- plus fastballs, the stuff of legend. Robert, we’re told, is a born hitter.
You’ll hear a lot about these players in the months and years ahead. You might even see some of them together in White Sox uniforms one day. But that’s the point: The Sox have gambled everything on a rebuild that will either work or won’t. They have followed the Cubs’ lead and amassed top draft picks, and now a fan base lives through the potential of those players. Is it real or an illusion? I don’t know. I just know I can’t look away.
No one would be silly enough to say that peace has been achieved between Cubs and Sox fans. You can’t erase genetic coding. But both fan bases seem happy with what’s going on with their respective ball clubs. Sox fans have hope, which used to be the only thing Cubs fans had. And now Cubs fans have had a large helping of winning. How many times in history have both fans bases been pleased at the same time?
The Sox need to get rolling for the Golden Age of Chicago Baseball to be a legitimate discussion. But these are interesting times, as interesting as the city has ever seen. We have greatness on one side of town and a grand experiment on the other.
Are these the ramblings of someone who can’t see beyond what’s in front of him at the moment? There’s probably some of that. Every generation thinks it has found the key to the universe.
But it’s a great time to be a baseball fan in Chicago — possibly on its way to becoming the greatest time. Enjoy it.