Good luck, Sox fans
-- heh, heh, heh

Originally published: Tuesday, April 19, 1994
Web-posted: Friday, April 11, 1997

he White Sox fan was being gleefully condescending, in a brutally frank sort of way.

"Boy, are your Cubs pathetic," he said.

What could I say? So far, pathetic is almost a generous description.

"I mean, they have some decent everyday players," he said, "but the pitching? It's like watching a saloon league softball game."

Once again, I couldn't disagree, although my earned run average as a graying softball pitcher was slightly better than that of the Cubs crew.

He went on. "I don't know how you stand to watch these clowns year after year. Don't you dummies ever wise up?"

As I've explained in the past, many of us can blame our fathers, who were fans in happier times and passed the virus on to us.

Still trying to get a rise out of me, he said: "Want to make a bet on how they'll finish? How many wins apart?"

I smiled with the calmness and restraint Cubs fans have become known for.

And I didn't resent his taunting because I understand the sociological, cultural and psychological reasons behind it.

It has been explained many times by Dr. Kookie, the renowned expert on lots of stuff.

As he wrote in a scholarly essay called: "Attitudinal Dysfunction Among Losers, Boozers and South Siders":

"The hostile attitude common to White Sox fans has its origins in the old Stock Yards and steel mills. The foul odors and pollution of these industries caused South Siders to have scrunched up faces and squinty eyes, causing many of them to look like Popeye the Sailor. Well, if you got up every morning and looked in the mirror and saw Popeye the Sailor, how would you feel? Especially if you were a woman?

"This combined with their envy of the greater prosperity and tranquility of the North Side led to the well-known physical peculiarity known as the South Side Scrunch-Squint, which after several generations has become genetic and can be found in suburbs to which Side Siders fled. Even today, suburban babies are born with the South Side Scrunch-Squint look.

"The old North Side-South Side rivalry is no longer geographically valid, since Chicagoans have moved every which way and the majority of fans of both teams are suburbanites. But the old South Side-based envy and resentments live on, and are expressed through their hatred of the Cubs, the Cubs fans, and everything connected to Cubness. To them, the Cubs represent the social injustice of their ancestors having to smell a lot of cattle and pigs waiting to get hit on the noggins. To this day, some now-wealthy suburban Scrunch-Squinters have been known to fly into a rage at the sight of ivy on a neighbor's garage wall."

So how can I get angry when a Sox fan, suffering from an inner pain even he doesn't understand, tries to ease his psychological suffering by taunting me about the Cubs?

I can't. All I can feel is compassion and a hope that he will some day find the inner peace that has come to longtime Cubs fans.

On the other hand, I am a betting man. So when he suggested a wager, I couldn't back away.

However, I proposed a different bet. I said that I would lay even money that when the baseball season ended, he would be far more depressed than I was. He would be so depressed, he might go on talk shows and talk about depression, which has become a major show biz fad.

He laughed and said: "Why should I be depressed? You have a team of bozos, but I have a super team. All the experts agree."

"Exactly. Which is why you will suffer more. The loftier the expectations, the longer and deeper the plunge to despair when failure comes."

"But we can win the World Series," he said. "We're one of the favorites. The experts say so."

Ah, but the experts are once again ignoring that most fatal element in baseball success and failure -- the dreaded Ex-Cub Factor.

Now he was no longer snickering, jeering and boasting. His face actually became scrunchy and squinty.

"Wait a minute, you mean there are three. ..."

Yes, there are three ex-Cubs on the Sox roster. And it is likely they will be there all season unless their teammates wise up and stuff them in the trunk of a car.

And that means it is virtually impossible for the Sox to win the World Series.

As true students of the game know, since the end of World War II, 14 teams have played the World Series with three ex-Cubs on their rosters. Only one won the World Series, and that was kind of a fluke.

Only a few years ago, Oakland was hailed as possibly the greatest team in history. It lost the World Series to an inferior team in four straight. Three ex-Cubs.

Last year, Atlanta was clearly the best team in baseball. It didn't even get past the playoffs. Three ex-Cubs.

As a Cubs fan wrote in a brief fling at poetry:

Sox Fans now dream
That they will win it all.
But not with Darrin, Scott
And Paul.

He turned down the bet. And he left, already looking depressed.

A sad way to start a great season. Just call it the North Side Revenge.

© 1997 Chicago Tribune