THE WORLD SERIES: BASEBALL AND POLITICS CHICAGO STYLE
By Robert Klein Engler (10/23/05)
CHICAGO (23 October '05)--The Catcher's Inn near 35th and Halsted on Chicago's south side is a bar for White Sox fans. The bar is decorated for the World Series now with Sox pennants, T-shirts and banners proclaiming the Sox as the American League Champions. At the Catcher's Inn there is rock and roll music on the stereo and cigarette smoke in the air. There is Miller High Life beer on tap, and great meatball sandwiches from the kitchen.
The Catcher's Inn is more a working class bar then the Yuppie bars on Chicago's north side, the bars where Cubs fans hang out. At the Catcher's Inn few order cosmos or martinis. You don't go to the Catcher's Inn for a beer wearing a Cubs baseball cap, either. Around this neighborhood, the difference between the Sox and the Cubs is like the difference between North and South Korea, not North and South Dakota.
For many around the Chicago area, especially those who hang out at the Catcher's Inn, the unimaginable has just happened. The Chicago White Sox will be playing in the World Series. Nothing like this has happened in this neighborhood since 1959, forty-six years ago. When the Sox won the pennant that year, the city used air raid sirens to announce the victory, waking up thousands, but also scaring thousands more with fear that the city was under attack by the Soviets.
All along 35th Street from Halsted to the ballpark, neighborhood windows are decorated to cheer on the Sox. Halloween ghosts and pumpkins give way to baseball bats and the Sox logo. In spite of the decorations, the current White Sox are hardly a neighborhood baseball team. Not one member of the team was actually born in Chicago. The closest we get is Neal Cotts, who was born in Belleville, Illinois. Nine members of the team weren't even born in the United States. Such a team carries the hope of Bridgeport the way October carries a memory of summer.
In many ways the White Sox reflect the political divisions and ironies of life in Chicago, divisions and ironies that may be hidden to the media coming to the city from out of town and reporting on the games. To start with, the White Sox actually outfit themselves more in black than in white. Hats, T-shirts, and other memorabilia sold to promote the team are more black than white, too. You have to look hard to find white socks on the White Sox players.
Some say the Sox play small-ball, relentlessly winning with consistent hitting, and strong pitching. The Sox are not glitzy ball players and do not carry the media aura of Chicago's other better known team, the Cubs. A few in the Chicago media even seem perplexed by what has happened. The Sox won the pennant! How could that be? Some secretly admit they would prefer to attend Cubs games instead of Sox games and are just now giving the Sox equal coverage. One may imagine other senior reporters from out of town feeling uncomfortable on the south side of the city, as they recall what happened at the '68 Democratic Convention here. But what do these reporters really know? A few of them, heaven forbid, put ketchup on hot dogs!
If you live in Chicago then you know that Mayor Daley is a Sox fan, but the governor of Illinois, likewise a Democrat, is a Cubs fan. Although governor Rod Blagojevich (aka Governor Blow Dry) says he hopes the Sox win, he refuses to wear a White Sox baseball cap. By this refusal, the mayor and the governor represent two ends of the schizophrenic Democratic Party in Illinois. Here the old Democrats and the new Democrats hold on to failed urban policies and bicker over what the White Sox really accomplished. For these politicians, it has been always more about keeping voters on the plantation and the hacienda then it ever was about baseball, anyway.
Even though the White Sox bring well deserved attention to Chicago by their reach towards excellence, below the surface we can hear a swan song for the Democrats. Voters in the city whisper now about another impossibility: Mayor Daley's days in office are numbered. Many of those who would have voted for him on Chicago's south side have moved away and only come back to the city for a baseball game or two each season. Those who remain in Bridgeport wonder what happened to the Democratic Party, now under the national leadership of Howard Dean.
On the north side, the Yuppies and those who recently moved to the city care little for the Clan of Bridgeport or the Sox. They seldom travel south of Roosevelt Road. Come time for the next municipal election, these northsiders may grow weary of the scandals encroaching on the mayor's office and vote for a viable Republican candidate. The Lake Shore Liberals who helped bring Harold Washington, Jr. to office, won't vote for the "da mayor," either. These Lake Shore Liberals also don't care much for baseball. They are too intelligent and cosmopolitan for a game that claims to be "America's pastime."
Then there is the corporate glacier that is U. S. Cellular Field. For the old-timers this field will always be Comiskey Park, no matter what new signs hang from the gates. These old-timers will go to the north parking lot where the real Comiskey Park once stood and look down at a reproduction of home plate set as a memorial in the tarmac. They look out to the foul lines and a distant chain link fence, then look east and south to only shake their head. Wrigley Field, where the Cubs play is set still in a neighborhood. The Cell, as Comiskey Park is now called, stands close to urban renewal failures wrought by the Democrats: housing projects, the Dan Ryan Expressway and parking lots.
Baseball has always been the sport of ordinary Americans. Most men like baseball because they can see themselves when they look at their team on the field. You don't have to be tall and wear bling like a basketball player or be huge and wear shoulder pads like a football player to play baseball. If baseball players are not on steroids, then they look like bricklayers, carpenters, firemen and steel workers. They look like your father or your brother, maybe with a bit more facial hair. They look like men who work for a living and maybe spit too much. They look like the men the Democratic Party of Illinois has sold out.
The men who bring their sons to a White Sox baseball game are not the radical leftist that are driving Hilary Clinton's Democratic campaign for president, nor are they the men who want illegal immigrants to have tuition breaks at Illinois colleges and universities. Some of the men who bring their sons to White Sox baseball games used to be the men who supported the mayor, but since the mayor did nothing to save their neighborhoods from an invasion, they moved to the suburbs and became Reagan Democrats. This week they will drive into the city and cheer on the White Sox they remember. Someday they may remember, too, how they were used by Chicago politicians.
When the umpire calls "Play ball," the Sox fans at the Catcher's Inn will be on the edge of their seats. Unable to get tickets because the rich, famous and connected get them first, they will watch the games on TV. Nevertheless, they will have their hearts set on victory and will cheer "Go, Sox, Go!" This World Series will be an affirmation of their hard work and hope. Finally, those who were overlooked are given a glance. For a few days in October the salt of the earth gets back some of the savor it gave away.
After the dust settles on the pitcher's mound and the lights around the ballpark are switched off; after the last skyrocket falls to ash and the perfume of beer and mustard fades, there will be time to wonder about a new politics in Chicago. The day will come, just like the day the World Series came, when there will be a new mayor, a new governor and a new way of doing things. The World Series in Chicago may signal an end to the old and the beginning of the new. It may be only the illusion of a baseball game on the south side of Chicago, but let us enjoy this illusion while we can. Sometimes, the illusion of sports helps us see the game of politics all the more clearly. Indeed: Go, Sox, Go!
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