Chicago, Illinois (South Side)

This is the final leg of our trip, after which I will stay in the greater Chicago area for a wedding before flying back home. I spent last evening doing laundry at my parents’ house and telling my mother some travel stories. And reading, but not writing. I do my best to stay focused, and I know from experience that even when you don’t have it sometimes you can sit down and start to write anyway, and then your writing voice wakes up to surprise you, but I felt more like lying on my parents’ couch after they went to sleep even though I knew full well the implication that I would end up 4 days late in my posting as a result. I guess I’m a little bit road-weary.

Today we’re driving to Chicago to see the White Sox play the Twins in U.S. Cellular Field, which is still called Comiskey by nearly everyone who has been to the original Comiskey Park. It is the first day of Autumn, and it is rainy and gray in Michigan, reminding me that these clouds are one of the reasons I have left the Midwest, at least for now. All of the news is still about Hurricane Rita, and my father and I have been wondering whether the reaction is overblown, but of course after Katrina no one wants to be the person responsible for under-estimating Rita. Then, as my father’s local Oldies station starts to die and I scan the channels around Lansing for a replacement, we hear Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World” and I am reminded that Armstrong was a son of New Orleans who learned jazz on its streets and clubs and then championed it to the rest of the country, which needed just this sort of music and just this sort of New Orleans personality if you believe some of the people who tell his story. Armstrong was the first jazz singer to sing like jazz, with style and personality and improvisation, and all of these come through in this song. Today, however, in Katrina’s wake, the song feels ironic in a morose way, and the best I can hope for is that someday “What A Wonderful World” will be the theme song to a story about New Orleans’ resurrection, which seems like a lot to hope for right now on a gloomy Michigan morning.

The morning also finds my father in a reflective mood, and he tells me about his first trip to Crosley Field, where the Cincinnati Reds used to play while he was growing up in Eaton, Ohio. He went with my grandfather and his barber, who was also on my grandfather’s bowling team, and it was a Thursday afternoon because this was the only afternoon the barbershop was closed. The game was rained out on their first trip, so they returned to Cincinnati about a month later on another Thursday afternoon, where my father saw his first professional baseball game as the Reds played Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

He also remembers his second game, which was at the old Comiskey Park during a family visit to relatives in Chicago. He saw the White Sox play Ted Williams and the Red Sox, and he remembers that “There were some guys sitting in front of us drinking, and as they went along they began betting $100, $200 each time on whether Ted Williams gets a hit. I remember thinking, That’s real money they’re betting!” Then he tells me about how he used to have contests with his friends a few years later where they would draft something like 20 players and then collect $0.10 per homerun from each other after a period of about 2 weeks. “The Dodgers were playing in the LA Coliseum, and it was only about 250’ down the left field line, so if the Dodgers were going to be home you would want a guy like Frank Howard or a visiting right-hander. Then of course people would pick their favorite guys too, and I’d always try to get Ernie Banks if I could.”

Earlier we had been talking about baseball television broadcasting, as I told him about the game I attended at Wrigley Field right after Arne Harris’s death in 2001. My father remembers watching “early games broadcast from Cincinnati in black and white, and there would be one camera behind home plate looking through the screen, and you could see the screen and the grid of wires. It seems such a dinosaurish thing today, but that’s how it was. They would broadcast maybe a dozen games a year. Later, I got to see games in Chicago and you could tell the difference in market, because they had 6 cameras and so on.”

Harry Caray used to broadcast White Sox games with Jimmy Piersall, and I learn that they were “a good combination. Harry’d have a few drinks along the way and start sayin’ things, and Piersall would pick up on it and then he’d start sayin’ things. It wasn’t that what they were saying was wrong, they were just critical. Like Ralph Garr -- Piersall would call him a bad outfielder. Harry knew baseball, but Piersall knew baseball as a player, especially as a defensive outfielder. Piersall was a kid whose father really pushed him, and there’s a book called ‘Fear Strikes Out’ that tells the story of how he was so high strung as he came up as a player. But then later he went the other way. With the Mets, when he hits his 100th homerun,” -- and here I finish the story with my father -- “he runs the bases backward.”

I remember the old Comiskey Park quite well. We lived in the far south suburbs, which made commuting to Comiskey much easier than to Wrigley Field. Plus the Sox had night games. My father and I both remember the narrow old green wooden seats -- as narrow as any we’ve encountered this trip, but also with less leg room in front. “I’ve left games with marks in my knees,” my father says, “sitting there with the seat so close in front of you.”

I’m pulling for the Sox this season, for a number of reasons. One, if the Sox and the Indians both make the playoffs, at least one of the Red Sox or Yankees won’t, which is fine by me. Plus, I have just never understood the supposed hatred between White Sox and Cub fans. It’s not like they’re rivals or something, except during the crosstown series (and I don’t even like interleague play). I understand that the White Sox fans have a chip on their shoulder from the lack of positive media attention, but the Tribune company owns the Cubs and that’s just the way it is. If White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf doesn’t like it, he should buy the Sun Times. I’m half joking since newspapers have a responsibility to be somewhat objective, but the other factor is that a newspaper is a business and there is more market demand for Cubs features in this era.

Speaking of Reinsdorf, I have the impression that knowledgeable White Sox fans are still upset with him for the baseball strike in 1994, when the league cancelled the World Series. The White Sox were good that year, as good as they’d been in a decade at 20 games over .500 in August, and so they were among the front-runners for the pennant. Yet, their owner was perhaps the strongest proponent of hard line “fiscal restraint” tactics among the owners. To make matters worse, after the conflict tapered -- without a salary cap -- Reinsdorf was seen as a hypocrite for signing Albert Belle to a large contract, the sort of contract that fueled the issues of the strike in the first place. White Sox fans still ask what might have been, and blame Reinsdorf for his prominent role in screwing up their team’s great opportunity.

Before that, my father remembers, they had “a little run of excitement in ’77, with the South Side Hit Men. They stayed in the race until September by winning a lot of 9-7 type games. That was the team with Richie Zisk, Oscar Gamble, Ralph Garr, and Don Kessinger. The idea then was, We’ll outscore ya.”

Then the White Sox “cruised into the playoffs in ’83, when they lost to the Orioles 3-0, and it was Back to another long wait.” I remember the ’83 White Sox because we had dinner placemats featuring them: Lamar Hoyt, Carlton Fisk, Richard Dotson, Floyd Bannister, Greg Luzinski, Harold Baines. Every night at dinner as I grew up in the ‘80s, I would see one of these faces while I sat for dinner and waited for my plate. My father calls their uniforms from that season “the softball tops,” and adds, “They did not make a guy like Greg Luzinski look good.”

My father asks me if I remember a Luther East banquet where Minnie Minoso was a guest, but I was too young. “He was one of the first Cuban players to come up. He rolled up in a Cadillac with the license plate Minoso 9, which was his number. He was all smiles that night. Uncle Jim saw him at a bank sometime as well, and said he was the same way there. That team finally brought the White Sox up. Before that, a guy like Luke Appling played his whole career for the Sox but never played for a winner.” That gives a sense of the White Sox streak of losing, because Luke Appling played for 20 seasons until 1950.

That rarity of success is what makes this season so hard for the Southsiders, because the White Sox were the best team in baseball for 4 months. Since then, they went into a tailspin while Cleveland won 14 of 16 to reach striking distance. If the White Sox end up losing the division to Cleveland, it will be on the one side an utter, unparalleled collapse, and on the other side a magnificent final run.

I’ve already been to the new Comiskey (U.S. Cellular Field) quite a few times. Last season, for example, we saw Ichiro Suzuki rap 5 hits in a September game on his way to breaking George Sisler’s single-season hit record. The Sox fans stood after the fifth hit and applauded, which Ichiro deserved. This year, I saw the White Sox destroy the Cubs on the steamy, humid afternoon of my going-away party from Chicago. I think that sitting in the lower deck is splendid, but if you’re more than about 7 or 8 rows up in the upper deck, you’re so far back from the field on the X-axis that hardly any foul balls even reach the rows in front of you.

As we drive up, I bring up the lack of a hospitable neighborhood around Comiskey. “Yeah, but the mayor lives just west of it,” my father returns. I didn’t realize this. I knew the mayor’s mansion was on the south side, but I didn’t know where. I reply that his part of the neighborhood probably gets plenty of police attention. “Yep,” my father answers. “And the streets are always clean in the winter.”

Our seats today are in the upper deck, but right behind home plate and only 7 rows up, so we’re alright. My sister and her husband join us. It is still dark and overcast, and it doesn’t look to be getting better. The grounds crew has the tarp ready. Yet, when the time comes, the Twins Cy Young winner Santana and the White Sox rookie prospect McCarthy begin warming up, and the game begins. It’s cool but not cold, with swirling wind, and a decent crowd has arrived.

Through 5 innings, the pitchers duel to a scoreless game, with each team getting only 1 hit. The Twins put men on base in the top of the 6th, but the Sox catcher Widger made a daring play on a bunt to get a force out at third, allowing McCarthy to escape on a double play by the next batter. The rhythms of baseball are such that usually after a series of plays like this, a team will then put up some offense, and sure enough Crede hits a homerun to left field to give the Sox a run. Unfortunately, Jones responds with a solo homer in the next half-inning, and we are knotted again. At this point it begins to rain, pretty heavily at times and lightly at others.

The White Sox defense continues to sparkle, especially Rowand in center field, who has made several highlight plays. Both starters go 8 innings, and exit with the game still tied at 1. In the top of the 9th, a White Sox relief pitcher named Marte allows a walk, and the crowd begins to boo. He exits the game, and another relief pitcher named Pollitte walks another Twin, to a similar chorus of boos. My father thinks that they’re booing the umpire, and says, “I don’t know why they’re upset. Those were not strikes.” “No,” I answer, “the people in this city boo their own players now.”

It’s true. Recently both Cubs and White Sox fans have begun to boo their own players if they are unhappy with them. I ask, “Can you remember it like this?” “No, but this is also frustration from the lead slipping.” I suppose that’s certainly part of it, but that’s not all of it. The trend began before the recent White Sox struggles. I don’t understand it, because to me the logic goes like this: if you want your team to win, you should not do anything that harms their chances, and booing certainly does not help matters. People these days talk about a fan’s right to boo, which seems to me irrelevant because we all have plenty of rights that we should not exercise just because we can, especially if it impedes some other big-picture goal. I remember fans in the left field bleachers booing Todd Hollandsworth this season as he was slumping, and I asked my friend, “Why are they booing Hollandsworth? He’s on our team. Don’t we want him to do good?”

So, with men on base from the walks, the centerfielder Rowand makes two more great plays, and then the shortstop Uribe charges a chopper and gets an out by a split second to escape. It’s tense. In the bottom of the 9th, the Sox load the bases but fail to score, and we head to extra innings. The tenth inning features a double play by each team. However, in the top of the 11th, a bloop double is followed by an intentional walk, and then LeCroy singles to plate a run. Jones then doubles for two more runs, and it’s Twins 4, Sox 1. To make matters worse, the out of town scoreboard shows the Indians leading 8 to 6. The White Sox collapse continues, as they exit meekly in the bottom of the 11th.

It is windy outside the park, and now the fog and low clouds have left without a trace, affording us a perfect view of the Chicago loop skyline to the north from the concourse behind centerfield. I think that the city was better off with the fog, because then at least it wouldn’t have to watch such a dismal skid as the Sox are suffering again tonight. Their standings lead was big enough that they might still limp into the playoffs, but the mood is miserable as everyone exits. Later the next day at my hotel, I get an e-mail from my father that reads, “the sportstalk leaving chicago was brutal ripping the sox.”

We certainly did not end our trip on a high note.