Protocol

The most interesting angle of the story to me is the set of assumptions. Many of you have no doubt already heard about the dilemma facing ESPN 1000’s Dan McNeil. He spoke about it on the air on Friday, and he wrote a column about it for the Northwest Indiana Times. In summary, McNeil donated two pairs of playoff tickets to a charity raffle raising money for a White Sox fan with cancer. Two Cubs fans each won a set of tickets, but the second winner -- the winner of the World Series tickets -- intends to sell them for a large profit, according to McNeil. Mac hasn’t given the man the tickets yet, and feels tempted to deny the Cubs fan the tickets on principle, knowing full well he could be taken to court over the matter.

Now, Mac has become the leading figure on the most popular afternoon radio program in Chicago (Mac, Jurko & Harry) among the male demographic by speaking his mind as an everyman. He takes strong opinions, but he listens to counterarguments and sometimes admits he was probably wrong. They bill the show as Chicago’s last neighborhood corner tavern, and the discussions tend to drift into bar-philosophy, in a good way.

All of this is to say that Mac is a pretty good arbiter of sports fan protocol. This is why I’m puzzled over the seeming rift between Cubs and Sox fans that underlies the bigger moral issue. In other words, why isn’t the second Cubs fan going to the game?

As for the matter of the man selling the tickets for a profit, this is clearly shady behavior at best. This is a fundraiser for a man with cancer known personally by all of the actors involved -- a local fundraiser for a local guy. The spirit of the gift of the tickets is to help the victim, and anyone who buys a raffle ticket should honor that spirit, regardless of whether they are a White Sox fan, a Cubs fan, or an opera fan. So, let’s not get bogged down arguing that point. Much more than fan allegiance, the spirit of giving to help this man is the principle that Mac wants to honor, and I’m fully behind him, whatever he decides.

Sitting on top of that issue, however, is the issue of what it means to be a fan of a particular team, raising questions of sports loyalty in general, and Cubs / White Sox loyalty in particular.

Mac writes, “Brian Gordon, a Cubs fan, won the ALCS tickets and Gordo did the right thing. He took his brother, a Sox enthusiast, to Tuesday's series opener.” The right thing for a Cubs fan with White Sox playoff tickets is to take a White Sox fan. Certainly the fact that it’s the man’s brother factors in, but I have to ask: would it have been somehow wrong for the man to go with another Cubs fan? I get the impression that some people think it would have.

That reasoning is involved in considering the second fan as well: since the man is not a White Sox fan, he is therefore unable (in some sense or another) to use the tickets, and the question left concerns what he should do with them. I just do not get this. How can someone who is a Cubs fan not want to go to a White Sox World Series game? Or any World Series game? Am I way off here?

Are Cubs fans only supposed to go to World Series games in which the Cubs play? So, for that matter, given recent trends (as in decades) is it the case that I may never be able to attend a World Series in good conscience? Or is it just the White Sox games that are off limits? To all of this: hogwash.

I am not suggesting that Cubs fans go to Comiskey and wear their Sandberg t-shirts or taunt the Sox fans or whatever else. This is not the reason for going. The reason is that anyone who is a Cubs fan could very well be a fan of baseball first. That’s how it is for me and many of the Cubs fans I associate with.

I would go to any World Series game if I had the chance, regardless of who is playing, even if it were the Yankees and the Cardinals and I wanted both teams to lose. World Series are History, and missing out on experiencing the moment over loyalty to the Cubs would feel like a betrayal of baseball itself. No team is bigger than the game.

So I ask myself what I would do if I had won a pair of White Sox World Series tickets. I would go, for one, hell or high water. I would invite my father first, my brother second, my sister or brother-in-law next. Past them, I would invite a White Sox fan, but someone who is a baseball fan first. Same goes for the Cubs fan I would invite next. (I would not invite a hot chick just to impress her. This is the World freaking Series, and some things are just too important. That’s my whole point.)

I used to suspect that the White Sox / Cubs vindictiveness was a matter of age, or of time -- of how long one had been a Chicago baseball fan. In other words, people that have not been hardcore fans for as long are more likely to be vindictive about it. Now, though, I wonder if my version of being a fan is much farther in the minority than I thought. I don’t mind fair-weather fans or casual fans, since I figure it’s their loss and that they aren’t really enjoying the bandwagon ride as much as the weathered. Still, I wonder about what the swell of the Chicago baseball renaissance in the last 3 years is doing to the code of being a fan. In other words: is it still culturally acceptable to be a student of the game, first and foremost? Especially if you’re only 25?

Of course, I’m generalizing and maybe even over-generalizing with all of this, which is dangerous. I am full aware that plenty of people do not fit into the boxes I portray. It’s just that I get the sense there is this odd protocol of being a Cubs fan -- or a White Sox fan -- that is taking shape, and I cannot help but question it and reject some of the underlying assumptions.

Once again, I’ll ask the question that no one else seems to be asking: why isn’t the guy who won the tickets going to the game? Don’t answer, because I’m afraid to hear what I already suspect.