Yet another year goes by without the World Series being played in Chicago

The World Series begins Wednesday, and those dreams some of us had of an all-Chicago affair deciding a U.S. professional baseball championship for 2008 are so dead they’re burned to a crisp.

It’s going to be the Tampa Bay Rays against the Philadelphia Phillies. While I can’t say I really care who wins the thing, I must admit to taking some interest in potential Chicago angles to this series.

IT IS THOSE Chicago angles that makes me think all of us in the Second City ought to be rooting for the Devil Rays (I don’t care if that name offends the locals, it’s a sea creature and it sounds better than just “Rays”).

In fact, this ought to be something that could potentially unite fans of the White Sox and a certain other ball club that had delusions of winning a pennant.

Take the Phillies, a ballclub that like the Cubs dates back to the 19th Century. And it is a team that quite possibly has an even more pathetic history than the Cubs (who were a respectable National League franchise for the first third of the 20th Century).

While the Cubs have only won two World Series in their history (1907 and 1908), the Phillies are a team that have only won the series once (1980) in their history.

JUST IMAGINE THE anguish Cubs fans would feel if the Phillies were to win the World Series, thereby giving them just as many overall victories as the Cubs? Ever since the Braves changed the losing character of their franchise history in Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta by rattling off a dominant string of division titles and five league championships in the 1990s, it has been the Phillies and the Cubs as the historic doormats of the National League.

And if the Phillies were to win a World Series, it would create the perception in some minds that they too have dumped their losing ways, leaving the Cubs all alone (except for a few dumpy expansion teams) at the bottom of the baseball pool.

They went from being convinced this was THEIR year to potentially being left alone in the loser pool.

I don’t think I could handle the mass depression that the North Side and its sympathizers would sink into. In fact, I think such depression would make Cubs fans even more unbearable.

BUT THERE ARE a pair of other reasons for which I will admit to taking some interest in Tampa Bay winning a World Series title – even though they have only been in existence for 11 years (it took the Houston Astros 44 years of existence before they won their first National League pennant, and are still waiting for that first World Series title).

Those reasons are pitcher Chad Bradford and outfielder Cliff Floyd – both of whom found their baseball fortunes at a point this year where they wound up signing to play for Tampa Bay.

Floyd is a Chicago area native who played his high school ball in suburban South Holland (the same high school that produced one-time Chicago Bull Eddy Curry and former White Sox and Cubs pitcher Steve Trout). He’s also the guy who grew up a White Sox fan (claiming Harold Baines as his favorite ballplayer) who later went on to play for the Cubs (in 2007).

This could literally be the year that all Chicagoans can unite behind rooting for a hometown guy to have that BIG moment, thereby making him a local sports legend for the remainder of his life – even if his “local” moment came for another city.

CHICAGO SPORTS FANS have so little history of baseball heroes in October that we’ll settle for a local boy done well somewhere else – just like we don’t hold it against Bill Skowron (who learned how to hit while playing slow-pitch softball back in the 1940s) that he had his baseball heroics playing for the New York Yankees back in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Then, there is Bradford, a relief pitcher who I still remember from the beginning of his career when he was with the White Sox.

Bradford is not the BIG MAN who comes into a game to finish it off. He’s the guy who pitches to a hitter or two at a time in mid-game, to prevent a messy situation from becoming a complete disaster.

What makes him unique is that he’s a sub-mariner. He throws his pitches with a motion that’s not quite underhand. But it definitely isn’t a sidearm throw.

I STILL REMEMBER the first time I ever saw him pitch (in 2000 in a late-season game against the Seattle Mariners). As it turned out, I had a seat that game in the lower deck straight behind home plate.

I got the same view of the pitcher that the catcher and umpire had, and I still remember the break on Bradford’s pitches as being absolutely freaky. He doesn’t throw overly hard, but I can’t hit him even in my dreams.

While I realize the White Sox shared the same doubts about Bradford (how can such a freakish throwing motion ever work long term?) that many conventional baseball people have, I must admit to being intrigued that he has lasted for so many ball clubs throughout this decade (the average major league baseball player’s career is only four seasons – he’s already lasted for nine).

If anything, I’ll watch Bradford come into ballgames and try to envision “What if?” As in, what if Bradford had been kept in Chicago? What could he have achieved on the South Side?

THEN, THERE’S THE biggest “What if?” What if we had lost the White Sox to St. Petersburg, Fla.?

Don’t forget that the monstrosity of a stadium that Florida officials built in the mid-1980s in hopes of luring a major league team to the Tampa Bay area nearly lured the White Sox (Thank God for political manipulation, Springfield-style, that kept the team in Chicago).

That World Series title in 2005, along with division titles in 1993 and 2000, and generally winning records throughout the 1990s and 2000s, could have easily been achieved by the “Florida White Sox.”

I’m willing to throw the fans of Tampa Bay a bone and let them finally have a winning season (including an American League pennant and a chance at a World Series title), particularly since it means those of us who are Sout’ Siders at heart got to keep our historic ball club.

SO GO RAYS! Beat the Phillies (even if our junior senator, Barack Obama, is being deluded enough by his campaign manager to root for Philadelphia).

And preferably, they’ll do it in less than six games. Because I’m really not in the mood for a Republican stink over the Obama infomercial on Oct. 29 delaying Game Six of the World Series. We have enough stupid issues in Campaign ’08. Here’s hoping baseball helps avoid another one from arising.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: All those people who placed pre-season bets on Tampa Bay to win the World Series this year (back when the odds were 200-1) have the potential to clean up (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8_fAf0_P0VnrmKibfTL7ywUv8ugD93UEN4G0) financially.

There are two Rays players (http://www.baseball-reference.com/f/floydcl01.shtml) with the potential (http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/bradfch01.shtml) to stir up Chicago interest.

How will David Letterman mock Tampa Bay baseball these days (http://lateshow.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/top_ten/index/php/20020327.phtml)?

A history lesson (http://whitesoxinteractive.com/History&Glory/SaveOurSox.htm) about what could have been.