UH-OH, THINGS ARE GOING SOUTH
while cubs have been inactive this offseason, sox are adding pieces to their core and thinking playoffs
You know it. Your Uncle Earl, the former bleacher bum, knows it. His Aunt Dottie, the lifelong Cubs fan — who used to believe wholeheartedly in such romantic folly as “lovable losers” and “wait ’til next year” — knows it. The post-World Series haze isn’t what anyone thought it would be. How many of us heard someone — or an army of someones — say something like this?
“If the Cubs can just win one World Series in my lifetime, I can die happy.”
Every single one of us, that’s how many. Maybe you said those very words yourself. You probably did. Earl and Dottie sure as hell did.
Well, win one the Cubs did. But here’s what happened after the wall-towall joyride of 2016: Cubs fans proved they’re no different than any other fan base that tastes ultimate glory. They got greedy. They got impatient. They watched the team languish out of the gates in 2017, fall apart offensively in 2018 and become irrelevant, in terms of chasing another championship, in 2019.
They became spoiled and embittered, full of righteous aggrievement. They seethed, and, by the way, no one here is blaming them for any of it. It’s merely the nature of things.
Along the way, fans lost faith in manager Joe Maddon and railed at the fallibility of team president Theo Epstein. The popularity of the Ricketts ownership family nosedived, a dark narrative unto itself. Varying degrees of cynicism set in about a host of players, too: the un-Ruthian Kyle Schwarber, the un-clutch Kris Bryant, the unreliable arms in the bullpen, the uncomfortable Yu Darvish, the untapped potential of Albert Almora Jr. and Ian Happ, among others.
It all added up to this: Cubs fans are an unsatisfied, unhappy lot. They gaze upon the horizon and see more frustration, not another World Series. The so-called “championship window”? It may as well be nailed shut.
And the offseason to date — a whole lot of nothing-to-see-here — has done nothing but deepen the seeds of discord.
Meanwhile, something else is happening in this old baseball metropolis. Something new. Something exciting. Something brimming with hope and possibility. Something decidedly un-Cub. Something South Side.
How to put it?
Sox Town.
Say what?
If the filthy-rich Cubs can make up reasons why they can’t go for broke in pursuit of a second title, then we can make up a phrase — Sox Town — to describe the dramatic shift in the baseball balance of our city.
The surging White Sox are taking over, relatively speaking. Maybe the Cubs will always have a larger fan base, a more charming ballpark and a more inviting neighborhood in which to party, but what else do they have that the Sox don’t?
The answer, heading into the 2020 season, is nothing. Instead, it’s the Sox who hold all the other advantages. While the Cubs have been hitting the snooze alarm all offseason, the Sox have made one double take-inducing move after another.
The Sox are the team that promises to command more and more of our attention over the next seven-plus months.
This weekend, Cubs Convention is upon us. The usual suspects — Anthony Rizzo, Javy Baez, Kyle Hendricks, Bryant, Schwarber, Darvish — were rolled out at the Sheraton Grand Chicago to the usual warm welcomes one would expect. But Elvis never entered the building, that’s for sure. With all due respect to the likes of Ryan Tepera and Dan Winkler — relief pitchers, rumor has it — there wasn’t much else outside the norm for Cubs fans to sink their teeth into.
Except for, of course, new manager David Ross, his coaching staff and the fresh faces that were part of a rejiggering of the playerdevelopment operation. Such excitement!
Some would say the only major change
“DID FANS GET SPOILED? ABSOLUTELY. DID WE GET SPOILED? ABSOLUTELY. BUT THIS IS WHAT BEING A CUBS FAN’S ALL ABOUT. WE HAVE A CHANCE THIS YEAR TO BE REALLY GOOD, AND WE’VE GOT TO GO OUT AND PROVE IT.” ANTHONY RIZZO
to the Cubs from 2019 to now was that they downgraded at manager. A role once filled by Maddon — a masterful cultivator of culture — brings Ross in his first go-round at skippering a team. Maybe Ross, who was a greater-than-the-sum-of-his-parts leader as a backup catcher on the Cubs’ World Serieswinning team, will be an instant and surprising hit. Either way, go ahead and chuck the “Grandpa” narrative. Ross is just another question mark.
On the other hand, and this time let’s try saying it together: Sox Town.
For a change, Cubs Convention tastes like an appetizer before the main course — SoxFest, at McCormick Place — that will come in another week. And who needs a bland, rubbery, uninspired appetizer?
Attendees at SoxFest will be expecting to see Yasmani Grandal, Edwin Encarnacion and Nomar Mazara, the trio of offseason acquisitions that will instantly take a lineup to a vastly more experienced — and especially more powerful — place. Fans will look for veteran left-handed pitchers Dallas Keuchel and Gio Gonzalez, free agents who bring much-needed credibility to the starting rotation. They’ll probably get to gaze up at the tall drink of water that is veteran reliever Steve Cishek, the former Cub who should bolster the Sox bullpen in a major way.
Add all those players to a robust list of rising stars and tantalizing prospects who will enter the season riding a wave of enthusiasm about the Sox’ intentions to contend for a division title or wild-card berth. Infielders Yoan Moncada and Tim Anderson, slugging left fielder Eloy Jimenez — the former jewel of the Cubs system — and All-Star pitcher Lucas Giolito all belong to the arrows-up crew. Center fielder Luis Robert almost surely will make his major-league debut on Opening Day, with second baseman Nick Madrigal not far behind him.
Fireballing right-hander Michael Kopech, who has all of four big-league starts under his belt, is good to go after recovering from Tommy John surgery, too.
Talk about an embarrassment of storylines and potential.
It may have been easy enough to ignore the Sox during their recent rebuild — which happened to coincide with arguably the greatest half-decade in Cubs history — but that’s not going to be possible anymore.
Look, the Cubs are always going to hog more than their share of attention, even if they’re worse than expected on the field in 2020. Matter of fact, the further from contention they are, the more a lot of people are going to want to talk about them.
It’s what there is to talk about, though, that’s the problem. Take the luxury tax (please). Cubs apologists will congratulate the team if it steadfastly remains under the threshold, avoiding eight-figure penalties for exceeding it for a third straight year and — perhaps more important — protecting upcoming draft position. Cubs critics will say the Ricketts are printing money and ought to concerned with, above all, winning. Regardless of who’s right, conversations about baseball’s luxury tax are roughly as fun and inspiring as conversations about Uncle Earl’s sciatica and Aunt Dottie’s first husband.
Or, we can simply look to the ongoing uncertainly surrounding Kris Bryant and his future with the club. Hey, what else do you do with a player who has been Rookie of the Year, MVP, owns every tool in the set and — not for nothing — happens to have movie-star looks and a smile that can light up a stadium? Why, you try to get rid of him, of course.
Some of us are old enough to remember when the Cubs were infamous for never having a third baseman worth his weight in Big League Chew, let alone the most talented third baseman in team history.
Guess what else? Some of us are old enough to remember when Wrigley Field was next to empty, day after day, and the Cubs weren’t the least bit more popular than the Sox.
That was a while ago — the early 1980s, really. Sox Town isn’t going to encroach on Cubdom to such an extent that we fully revisit the baseball balance that existed here then. But we’re going to move in that direction. We already are. ✶