EXTRA: White House Cubs’ tribute acknowledges Chicago baseball feud

I got my chuckle Monday from Chicago Cubs baseball boss Theo Epstein, who publicly gave soon-to-be former President Barack Obama a “midnight pardon” thereby giving him Cubbie forgiveness for the way in which Chicago’s very own president has been so publicly a supporter of the Chicago White Sox.

It makes me think the guy who put together the first ball club in over a century that could call itself “World Series champions” has a little sense of politics, what with the “midnight pardon” being used usually to refer to the last-minute acts of clemency that former President Bill Clinton managed to slip through before George W. Bush took over.

IT COULD BE taken as a political pot shot, particularly since we still don’t know what final acts of clemency Obama will feel compelled to issue this week. But Obama seemed to get the gag, and laughed along.

Yes, Monday was the day that the Chicago Cubs ventured to Washington to have the now-traditional meeting of an athletic champion with the president. Some hay has been made of the fact that the Cubs met with Obama.

Rather than waiting until this season when they play the Nationals, by which time Donald J. Trump will be president. But it seems that even though Cubs ownership wound up backing Trump and one Ricketts brother got a Trump political appointment, Ricketts sister Laura is an Obama backer and used her influence to make sure the Cubs were paid tribute to by the Hyde Park resident who has made quite a public spectacle of his choice of the White Sox.

Even though many suspect he’s more of a basketball fan at heart.

FOR THE RECORD, Obama noted that while many of his Chicago-oriented staffers contracted Cubbie fever back in October and November, he didn’t share the same visceral reaction.

Although he did call himself the “number one Cubs backer” amongst White Sox fans.

I couldn’t help but notice that when reciting the list of Bears and Blackhawks sports teams whom he got to greet at the White House for championships, he also gave a plug to the 2005 White Sox that also won the World Series – even though that came back in the days of Bush, the younger, as president.

Will Barack Obama in the future find it easier to just say he's a Bulls fan?

For what it’s worth, I recall how White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski ribbed Bush about the fact that his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, was at the ’05 World Series games played in Houston and was rooting for the Astros. Also present at that White House event?

THEN-SEN. BARACK Obama, D-Ill., who managed to tag along for the event with many Illinois politicos (but not Cubs fan Gov. Rod Blagojevich) just as many staffers managed to cram their way into the White House on Monday to see the Cubbies.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out back in Chicago, particularly if Obama were ever to actually try to use that symbolic lifetime family pass the Cubs presented him with. This being the guy, after all, who once threw out a first pitch at a baseball All Star game and offended some baseball people by insisting on wearing his White Sox warmup jacket, rather than one bearing the All Star Game logo.

Obama may find that his move to the District of Columbia, or possible future move to Honolulu (where he grew up) will be forgiven much more quickly than if he ever deigns to wear Cubbie blue and sit in the stands at Wrigley Field.

For I’m sure there are some White Sox fans who would have liked it if Obama had responded to Epstein’s “midnight pardon” with a choice expletive and a statement of where he could shove it, declaring himself to be a Sout’ Sider once and for all!

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Why can’t they all just get along?

It is a long-standing sentiment that likely will always exist within our local law enforcement – federal officials based in Chicago and the local cops and prosecutors don’t have much use for each other.

It was on display throughout the political corruption trial this summer of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich – whose attorney was a criminal law veteran of the scene at the Cook County Criminal Courts building. Many pundits and observers tried to make a point of how his crude, hard-hitting ways didn’t fit in with the more refined (in a sense) atmosphere of the courts at the Dirksen Building.

BUT BEFORE ANYONE presumes that this means federal law enforcement types are somehow superior to their local legal types (even though one could argue that Sam Adams Jr. managed to avoid conviction for Blagojevich on so many charges that he beat the feds), keep in mind that the ill-will really does run both ways.

Local cops and prosecutors can be just as arrogant when viewing their federal counterparts. Which has always been behind the fact that Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis doesn’t have the support of the cops working the streets – and has many police officers counting down the days until next spring when they expect him to be fired.

It was with that goal in mind that the Fraternal Order of Police local representing Chicago police officers held a protest march, picketing the police headquarters on 35th Street and Michigan Avenue on Wednesday to let it be known they want their boss fired.

So now, when Weis is replaced by whoever does manage to win the mayoral election next spring, it will be the more politically motivated of cops who will take credit for personally getting him dumped. Maybe the real problem is that these FOP-types spent the past two years resisting Weis, instead of trying to work for the betterment of the public. All that jazz about "serving and protecting" that cops claim they're there to uphold?

I DON’T THINK the local police deserve that credit for Weis' departure. I view political appointments like police superintendent as being similar to a baseball team manager – you get hired to get fired. Weis will be replaced, just as some day White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen will be fired. It won’t mean that his stint running the ballclub was a failure.

Just as we shouldn’t be too quick to write off the Weis era of the Chicago Police Department, just because the rank-and-file of cops never took to him because he is a former “G-man.”

Weis’ law enforcement career was within the FBI and included posts in several cities, including a stint as Special Agent In Charge of the Chicago office. That is what appealed to Daley when he picked Weis for the top local police post back in 2008.

An outsider with no ties to anybody who wouldn’t particularly feel beholden to anybody and would be willing to make changes, regardless of whose feelings are hurt. What we learned on Wednesday by watching this protest is whose feelings were hurt, and remain hurt, and are now determined to craft the circumstances in such a way that they can claim to have run Weis out of town.

NOW I’M NOT necessarily a Weis defender. Nor am I particularly a critic of his. Personally, I think he has done as competent a job as anybody could in that position – particularly when one considers that the economic struggles that have impacted our society in recent years have also caused government entities to have to make cuts in areas they would have preferred to avoid.

That includes law enforcement.

At a time when the Chicago Police Department could use more staff, it is getting less. Weis has tried to compensate for it by shifting officers about on special assignments so as to put more people into critical situations.

But that has the police types whose focus is purely on their own district all upset when it is their officers who get shifted away to somewhere else.

I KNOW SOME people are going to complain about the crime rate in Chicago. They’re going to claim that Weis hasn’t caused it to reduce dramatically. Perhaps it is because my days as a full-time police reporter-type person were two decades ago when Chicago would see nearly 1,000 murders per year (a day without a killing was rare, and the weekends with multiple slayings were all too common), but I look at the current situation as an improvement.

Even though President Barack Obama this week in Philadelphia cited his adopted home town’s violence – particularly the 40 Chicago Public School students who were killed the last school year – as an example of the challenges facing teenagers today.

I see improvement. I also realize that the outlandish incidents (such as children being killed) will always draw more attention and will make the entire situation appear more severe.

But this is what Weis’ critics don’t want to have to acknowledge. They’re more interested in propagating the schism between the federal and the local law enforcement types (which is a true sentiment, I still remember the choice obscenities I heard two decades ago when I was a court reporter and I heard various assistant state’s attorneys use whenever they talked about their encounters with the FBI or the U.S. attorney’s office).

WHICH MAKES ME wonder if part of the real problem when it comes to crime in our society is that our law enforcement types seem so hung up on their jurisdictions and can’t work together more easily.

Perhaps we have a police department that needed the shakeup, instead of a superintendent who would make the rank-and-file feel more comfortable? In short, will the perception next spring be that Weis got fired because he was doing what he should have been doing?

Which also makes me think that perhaps Rodney King’ quotable moment during the Los Angeles riots of 1992 was a line that ought to be recycled these days toward our local cops and their federal counterparts.

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At the very least, Sandberg return would resurrect ‘80s Chicago baseball memories

Ryne Sandberg, the one-time second baseman for the Chicago Cubs who already is a member of baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., received another “honor” on Friday.

He is Manager of the Year for the 2010 season in the Pacific Coast League. That is the top-level minor league where Sandberg has been manager of the Des Moines-based Iowa Cubs, in large part because of the fact that the team remains in contention for a playoff spot this season even though a large number of his ballplayers made the jump from Iowa to Chicago this season.

IT SEEMS SANDBERG, who has spent the past four seasons managing minor league affiliates of the Chicago Cubs, is developing a knack for the job. It is no secret he wants to do the same thing at the major league level some day.

And it also is no secret that Sandberg is one of those ex-Cub ballplayers delusional enough to believe that the Cubs organization itself is somehow special. In short, Sandberg wants the job that opened up when Lou Piniella left the team last month (former coach Mike Quade is the interim, with little chance of keeping the job permanently).

In theory, I can comprehend the hesitancy of the Cubs management to make Sandberg their field manager. They’d like to think they could get someone who has previously had a major league managerial job.

Yet I can’t say any of the names that I have been hearing of former managers who may be willing to come to Chicago would truly be any more impressive than that of Sandberg – who if anything has a unique value to the Cubs organization that they should try to take advantage of.

IT MEANS THAT I don’t think names like Eric Wedge (formerly of the Cleveland Indians, whose highlight was nearly catching the Chicago White Sox in 2005) are really any better. Anybody who thinks that Joe Girardi would give up a job managing the New York Yankees to be the with the Cubs is being delusional. Besides, all that would likely happen if he really DID make such a move would be that his name would go alongside those of Piniella and Gene Michael as Cubs managers with Yankee ties who failed in Chicago.

Although I personally could care less about the Cubs, I must admit to being impressed by the level of dedication Sandberg has shown to trying to learn the organization and gain the “experience” that allegedly is needed to manage a major league baseball club.

Which is why when I see ESPN Chicago reporting stories headlined, No front-runner for Cubs job, I have to wonder who in management has developed such a big ego that they think the baseball world is supposed to come crawling to him.

A part of me says just give Sandberg the post, and start working with him toward trying to rebuild for the future. At least he already has a handle on what potential, if any, exists within the Chicago Cubs minor league system.

HE MAY WIN. He may not. There’s no guarantee that anyone will be able to overcome the Chicago Cubs funk in the next few years. The idea that the Cubs seem to want a guarantee that their next manager WILL win a National League pennant (hasn’t happened since 1945) and a World Series (not since 1908) is absurd.

At the very least, it would be entertaining from a fans perspective, particularly those people who grew up here in the 1980s (I was already off at college by the time Chicago’s teams won their first division titles ever, and have no desire for a ‘70s-style managerial match-up of, say, Jorge Orta and Larry Biittner).

Because we literally would have both of our city’s ballclubs being managed by popular former All Star players (Guillen for the White Sox, Sandberg for the Cubs) from that era.

Considering that Guillen’s White Sox coaching staff has ‘80s stars like Harold Baines and Greg Walker, it makes me wonder the potential for a Cubs coaching staff under Sandberg. Gary Matthews? Keith Moreland? Maybe bring Rick Sutcliffe back into a uniform and away from sports broadcasting. Or maybe Steve Trout needs a job?

AT THE VERY least, it would give those fans of a certain age a lot of chances to reminisce in the event that the current ballclubs turn out to be disappointing on the field.

Perhaps we could even settle, once and for all, that baseball “debate” of Chicago fans from that generation – which team was better?

’83 White Sox, or the ’84 Cubs – both of whom won their divisions, but then got knocked out of the playoffs in ways that make the names Jerry Dybzinski and Leon Durham amount to little more than “Mudd” in our memories.

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A duel between the 1st and 2nd cities

It seems we now have something resembling a good ol’ fashioned Chicago/New York brawl on our hands, and not because the Yankees are in town (that won't happen until the end of August).

I got my kick out of seeing the provincialism of the Chicago newspapers versus their New York counterparts, both of which seemed determined to claim that new Supreme Court of the United States nominee Elena Kagan is really a hometown girl – one of our very own.

THE FACT IS that she is a New Yorker who lived and worked for a few years in Chicago. But that didn’t stop the stories in both cities that tried to claim Kagan was truly a native of their own boundaries.

Which amuses me, makes me laugh, because for all the blowharded talk that we get from people in both municipalities about how chic and sophisticated they are and how the rest of the world (or at least the rest of the Midwest in the case of Chicago) looks to them as a role model, we can be so rube-ish at times.

You’d think we were French Lick, Ind. – going on and on even now about how one-time pro basketball star Larry Bird once lived there.

But that was the level of boosterism we got from the Chicago Sun-Times, which managed to come up with a picture of Kagan from back when she was on the University of Chicago law school faculty. Not that she was doing anything academic – she is seen with a bat in her hands playing softball.

THE 16-INCH KIND, the newspaper tells us. Although the look in her eyes is just a little too clear for her to be all liquored up like many an aging Chicagoan who plays the slow pitch game because they can’t handle anything more athletically challenging.

Of course, that wasn’t the only tidbit we got from The Bright One.

We also learn the address of Kagan’s apartment in the Lincoln Park neighborhood (which makes me wonder if the landlord will now use this factoid to justify a significant rent increase to the current occupant – hey, a “celebrity” once lived there), that she was a regular in the lunches held by the law school faculty and that she occasionally treated her students to lunch at Café Ba Ba Reeba.

I feel like the tapas place on North Halsted Street owes somebody some money for the free publicity they just received.

AS IT TURNS out, Kagan was like many an out-of-towner whose work brings them to Chicago. She left the Second City when a better job opportunity came along. In her case, it was a chance to work at the White House under then-President Bill Clinton.

Clinton even tried to make her a judge, but partisan politics (against William J., not Elena personally) caused the appointment to stall.

The University of Chicago wasn’t all that enthused, according to the Sun-Times, about having her come back just so she could wait out her time for another political appointment. So that is what ultimately caused her to leave the shores of Lake Michigan, ultimately settling in at the law school at Harvard University.

While some might think it was her presence there that gave her resume the substance that caused President Barack Obama to choose her for the spot of replacing retiring justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, one can’t underplay the significance of her time along the Midway Plaissance.

IT WAS THERE that Kagan and Obama met (he was the one-time instructor at the U of C law school). Any personal tie that would have developed between the two that would give her the edge over other potential nominees (including Diane Wood, the one-time Chicago law school professor who is a federal appeals judge for the Northern Illinois district, who some thought would be the local “favorite” to get a high court nomination) occurred in the Second City.

In short, New Yorker Kagan had to come to Chicago to find herself. And a little piece of our city is likely to be with her no matter what ultimately becomes of her life or how long she winds up serving on the Supreme Court (at 50, she has the potential for decades of public service as a high court justice).

One point I did find amusing was the angle played up by the New York Daily News – the one that stated Kagan was a long-time New York Mets fans, compared to Obama’s other appointment to the Supreme Court.

Sonia Sotomayor has never done a thing to hide the fact that her baseball loyalties lie with the New York Yankees. Are we going to have judicial “brawls” everytime the two teams take each other on every season?

POSSIBLY. BUT I think the better comparison lies between Kagan and Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton.

For the Sun-Times reported that Kagan used to go to Chicago White Sox games when she lived here in the early 1990s (back in the days when Frank Thomas was an undisputed star hitter who still played first base). So Kagan is a Mets fan who took to watching the White Sox.

By comparison, the one-time Hillary Rodham grew up in the Chicago suburbs, rooted for the Chicago Cubs, then took to cheering for the Yankees (occasionally wearing their cap) when she moved to New York to become a U.S. senator in the 2000s.

It sounds to me like Elena is the anti-Hillary, at least on the baseball diamond. And that may be more interesting than any of the other trivial tidbids we got from our newspapers on Tuesday.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Who knew hotels would give you a celebrity-adjacent room just for the asking?

Call it one of the quirks of being the transportation hub of the United States. It makes it possible for just about any incident to have a Chicago connection.

In the case of the insurance salesman whom federal prosecutors say was behind the attempt to shoot nude video of bosomy ESPN broadcaster Erin Andrews undressing, he literally got busted at what could be considered the nation’s “Ground Zero” – O’Hare International Airport.

THIS INSURANCE SALESMAN travels a lot, and was returning from a trip to Buffalo when he was picked up by federal agents. After a court hearing on Saturday, he got to spend a weekend in the South Loop.

Admittedly, it was at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, not one of the luxury hotels like the Palmer House that would have made a downtown Chicago weekend enjoyable.

Michael David Barrett will soon leave our fair city. It could very well happen this week. He is scheduled to appear in court on Monday for a hearing that will determine just how quickly he is extradicted to California – which is where the federal prosecutors who are handling the actual illegal activity against Andrews are located.

It turns out that Barrett lives in a gated community in the upper-crust suburbs of DuPage County, which means he put on the trappings of being a part of proper society.

AND THE FACT that his job required him to travel so often made his neighbors think he was just a hard working person. At least that’s what they told all the reporter-types who swarmed into their neighborhood the past couple of days – to justify the fact that they knew nothing about him.

It was also that travel that enabled Barrett to indulge what federal officials say was his obsession with Andrews – who has a cult of fans who enjoy the thought of a blonde standing on the sidelines during games and asking vapid questions of athletes to supplement the vapid commentary offered by the actual game announcers.

If it seems like I don’t think much of this story, I’ll confess I don’t. When Andrews’ situation became public fodder earlier this year, I had little interest. In fact, the only part of this whole situation that intrigues me is the word that Barrett was able to get at least one hotel to give him a room adjacent to Andrews. If I had known that, I’d have asked for a room next door to Penelope Cruz a long time ago.

What else was notable during the weekend that the Chicago Bears tried to take our minds off of a pair of dismal baseball seasons coming to a close?

WE DESPERATELY NEED A BOOT IN THE BOOTY: Let’s be honest. Chicago is like that intelligent-but-lazy high school kid who needs the fire of a hard-and-fast deadline lit under his tush in order to inspire him to do anything.

One of the reasons I was supportive of bringing the summer Olympiad to Chicago in the year 2016 is that I figured it would serve as that deadline, since getting the city ready to stage such a massive event would take the full seven years. Work would literally have to start now to make the needed infrastructure improvements.

So when I now read commentaries and hear statements from people saying they hope the city maintains its desire to make the improvements even without the eventual treat of an Olympics, all I can honestly think to myself is that the pressure is off city officials, so maybe they’ll get to it sometime during my lifetime. Or maybe they won’t.

People have been saying for decades that Chicago’s air traffic needs (and that of the nation whose airlines pass through Chicago on many of their routes) require another airport. Officials have made plans for years. Yet I don’t see that we’re any closer now to hiring contractors or turning over spades of dirt than we were in, say, 1991.

A SCAPEGOAT ON BOTH SIDES OF TOWN: I remember as a kid thinking of Von Joshua as a light-hitting outfielder for the San Francisco Giants (although he also played a bit for the Los Angeles Dodgers).

But now, the Chicagoan in me is going to think of the baseball lifer as the guy who got blamed irrationally for bad baseball being played on both sides of the city. Joshua spent part of this season as the hitting coach for the Chicago Cubs, the identical post he held back at the beginning of the decade with the Chicago White Sox.

He got fired by the White Sox as part of an attempt to jolt the ball club into playing better – in short, because it was easier to replace one coach than several athletes who weren’t worth squat.

Now, he suffered the same fate with the Cubs – being let go right after the Sunday loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks that brought baseball in 2009 in Chicago to a close.

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Sosa no longer outrages me like he used to when way too many adored him

I can remember the day not so long ago when Sammy Sosa was the face of the Chicago Cubs and the image of the prevalence of the Latino ballplayer in the U.S. major leagues.

He was the home run hitting slugger with a childlike sense of humor, although there were times when Sosa’s schtick came across as being too much like a real-life Chico Escuela.

IN FACT, ABOUT the only people who didn’t think of Sluggin’ Sammy as a baseball golden boy were written off as hopeless cranks whose real reason for not appreciating all that was good about Sosa was the fact that they spent their spare time rooting for the Chicago White Sox.

Petty jealousy, Cubs fans would claim.

But now that the suspicions of some baseball fans have been confirmed with circumstantial evidence published by the New York Times that Sosa failed a drug test for steroids back in 2003, does this mean that White Sox fans are the only people on Planet Earth with their minds grounded in reality?

And what does it say that the only person wanting to be seen in public with Sosa these days is Jose Canseco, the former baseball slugger who admits his steroid use and claims baseball officials are harming his income by refusing to employ him. He wants Sosa to support a lawsuit he is considering filing against Major League Baseball.

ACTUALLY, LET’S GET one thing straight. Sosa passed the test. Failing would mean that no traces of banned substances were found in his system.

So now that people who are quick to dismiss Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Rafael Palmiero will eagerly add Sosa’s name to the list, what should we really think?

For the fact is that back in a certain era of just under a decade ago, Sosa was the face of Chicago athletics. And he also was the modern-age Latino ballplayer personified.

To drop from such exalted status to that of a non-person in a matter of six years is truly unique.

WHAT MAKES SOSA unique is that his rise to sports stardom was so shocking – he had been a journeyman ballplayer for nine years in the major leagues before doing anything that even came close to hinting at stardom.

Both the Texas Rangers and White Sox had given up on him, with the White Sox deciding that his stubbornness to work the kinks out of his swing at bat would prevent him from ever becoming a truly great hitter.

I know many Cubs fans want to believe that White Sox fans somehow wish their team had never given up on Sammy, and somehow were jealous. It just isn’t so.

It’s because we remember how awful a ballplayer he was during his early 1990s stint with the White Sox, and because we always suspected that the only reason he hung on with the Cubs for so long before finally hitting all those home runs was because the Cubs had such awful teams.

THEY COULD AFFORD to keep a baseball-playing hack like the pre-home run hitting Sosa on their roster for so long.

My point is that my years of nitpicking Sosa (who hit for such awful batting average and struck out so often when he wasn’t hitting home runs, and also was a mediocre-to-terrible defensive player) came years ago.

To me, I don’t see what is to be gained by ganging up on Sosa these days.

My initial reaction to hearing from my brother, Chris, about the reports that Sosa how had something resembling a positive steroids test was to shrug my shoulders and say, “meh.”

DO I THINK this amounts to some evidence that the whole concept of the Chicago Cubs as a superior baseball franchise back in the late 1990s (the days when the Cubs would draw about 2.9 million per year and the White Sox bottomed out at about 1.2 million) is a fraud? Probably.

But the Chicago baseball fan in me doesn’t really care about coming up with more evidence of the Cubs’ natural inferiority. Perhaps that is the after effect of rooting for a team that actually wins a World Series in my lifetime.

If anything, it is the part of me that takes an interest in Latin American ballplayers that wonders what will become of the Sosa legacy.

For the fact is that from 1998 to 2003, Sosa the ballplayer was, for lack of a better word, Ruthian. It was in that era that he became the only ballplayer to hit 60 or more home runs in a single season three times, and hit nearly half of the home runs that he accumulated during a 17-season career.

IT WAS THAT inhuman era that made Sosa a shoo-in for the Baseball Hall of Fame, where currently there are only 11 members who were born in Latin American countries.

Now that we have to look skeptically (and the fact that some Hall of Fame voters are refusing to back Sosa rival Mark McGwire makes it very likely they will dump on Sosa as well), does this mean a little less recognition for the Latino ballplayer?

Perhaps we should have suspected something was wrong just by looking at Sosa’s achievements. Despite being the only player to hit 60 or more home runs three times, it should be noted that in none of those three seasons did he ever lead the National League in home runs.

Nor has he ever been the Major League home run leader for a single season or a career.

SLAMMIN’ SAMMY WAS an inhuman home run machine (when he wasn’t striking out) who always had someone else (McGwire or Bonds) hitting just a little bit better.

So the part of me that follows the White Sox can smirk a bit at Sosa’s predicament (who now is seriously going to argue against Frank Thomas as the best Chicago baseball player of the 1990s?), while the baseball fan in me is already spent with Sosa criticism.

And the Latino in me wonders how many Latino kids were inspired by Sosa’s image, only to have it crushed these days with these latest reports?

Perhaps as much as seeing my favorite ballplayer as a kid, New York Yankees outfielder Lou Piniella, now wearing that ridiculous Cubby blue on a daily basis.

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Chicago’s “Elite Eight” for ‘08

I enjoy this old postcard image of downtown Chicago, from before the days when the Sears Tower and Hancock Center dominated the skyline. Image provided by Chicago Postcard Museum (http://www.chicagopostcardmuseum.org/).

In the history of Chicago, 2008 won’t go down quite as adventurous a news year as, say 1968, 1929 or 1871.

But the year that will be complete in just a dozen more days did have its share of stories worth remembering. Considering this weblog began its existence one year ago today with a promise to “help people better understand what is happening on the shores of Lake Michigan between Evanston and East Chicago, Ind.,” today is as good a day as any to review the year’s top stories.

8 – MILOROD GETS BUSTED: Some people are going to disagree with me and claim I’m downplaying the legal predicament now faced by Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

I will be the first to admit that moving forward with impeachment of an Illinois governor is unprecedented. So is the degree to which a Chicago public official is accused of such crass (how else do you describe trying to “sell” the former post held by the biggest-name goo goo in politics today?) public behavior.

But I rank it at the bottom of this list for one reason – the real saga is going to come when the legal process progresses to the point where a trial takes place in U.S. District Court (or when Blagojevich enters a “guilty” plea to some sort of lesser charge).

In all likelihood, that will take place some time in 2010 (or 2011, or some year thereafter, if attorney Ed Genson gums up the legal works with enough procedural motions like he did with the criminal case of rapper R. Kelly, whose case took five years to go to trial).

When that happens, I will gladly proclaim the Blagojevich trial the Number One story of the year. Until then, I’ll have to agree that Genson’s characterization earlier this week of the Illinois House committee’s impeachment hearings as “stupid” has an element of truth to it.

7 – SKY-HIGH PRICES GIVE ME GAS: The times I have pumped gasoline in my car this week, I have paid somewhere in the area of $1.60 per gallon It wasn’t all that long ago that the only Chicago-area motorists who paid that much for gas were those stupid enough to use those overly-taxed pumps at filling stations in and near the Loop.

But it comes off as sounding like a bargain basement rate when compared to the more than $4 per gallon we were paying back in the summer months. At one point, Chicago-area motorists were paying an average of $4.24 per gallon (with those downtown pumps charging rates dangerously close to $5 per gallon). We had the highest average in the United States – even higher than isolated places like Alaska and Hawaii.

The end result of this gas price fiasco is that we are now used to paying ridiculous rates for petrol, and are inclined to think of the current price as some sort of bargain for which we should feel grateful. It also has many of us wondering how high gas will go come the summer of 2009.

If it weren’t for the steadily increasing rates (combined with service cuts) for mass transit, I’d be inclined to junk my automobile once and for all.

6 – BASEBALL IS MORE THAN A GAME: It’s a nerve-wracking ordeal.

In one sense, Chicago baseball in 2008 was historic. For the first time in 102 years, both of the major league teams representing the city made it through their six-month regular season ordeal to finish the season in First Place.

Both ball clubs will hold rituals in April to raise banners over their respective ballparks declaring themselves to be “Central Division Champs” of their respective leagues. And the way the White Sox managed to win that division title by winning a string of end-of-season games (with a loss in any one of them bringing their season to a Second Place conclusion) is something that ought to be remembered for decades to come.

Yet what is going to be remembered is the way both the White Sox and Cubs managed to lose the first round of their playoffs (I still see merchandise for sale touting the idea that the Cubs were destined to win the World Series this year). While the Sox managed to be competitive and win a game, the Cubs got swept in such humiliating fashion (for the second year in a row) that many of us wonder what was it about this team that made anyone take it seriously to begin with?

5 – AUCTIONING OFF THE ASSETS: Much has been made of the idea that Rod Blagojevich was selling off a U.S. Senate seat to the highest political bidder. But in a sense, Richard M. Daley did the exact same thing with some of the city’s assets that (if managed properly) can bring in revenue.

I’m talking about the deals made to turn control of Midway Airport from the Chicago Aviation Department to a private company, and another deal to let a private company oversee the parking meters on city streets.

Much has been made of the fact that parking along downtown streets could someday (by 2013) reach a rate of $6.50 per hour.

But what gets to me is why city officials think such income-producing resources are better off in the hands of private companies. While I appreciate the short-term benefit of millions of dollars being pumped into the city coffers, the long-term harm is that there will be nothing left for city government to oversee.

If that’s the case, why don’t we just auction off control of the City Council and Mayor’s office to a private management firm that could do all the actual work of government management? Then, Daley & Co. could sit back and do nothing, which some smart-aleck observers might think is an improvement.

4 – LANE BRYANT BANDIT REMAINS AT-LARGE: It was back in early February that a would-be robber at a Lane Bryant store in southwest suburban Tinley Park got carried away and killed five women (including some who were nothing more than customers).

The senselessness of the slayings caught the national mindset, and people across the country were paying attention to us for a time. It also inspired some of the craziest conspiracy theories (such as the idea that the robber/killer was some sort of homophobe who picked a Lane Bryant store because of the perception that transvestites shop there).

I even remember a few religious fanatics trying to turn the funerals of at least one of the women killed at the store into an excuse to protest against gay people.

But when one puts the mindless nonsense aside, the fact is we still don’t have a clue as to whodunit, or what the motivation for the slayings was (even though we’re pretty sure it will turn out to be something trivial).

3 – SCOTUS BANS FIREARMS BANS, CHICAGO SAYS “NO”: It was earlier this year that the Supreme Court of the United States gave gun nuts their jollies by issuing a ruling that struck down the stringent bans on firearm ownership in the District of Columbia.

The activists who can’t envision life without their high-powered rifles (and view ownership of an AK-47 or an M-16 as the equivalent of the car collector who likes to drive fine sports cars) immediately started filing lawsuits against other cities that try to restrict firearms ownership – including Chicago.

Many of those towns (such as Morton Grove, Ill., the suburb that enacted the original firearms ban) decided to avoid litigation by eliminating their bans, or amending them so as to make them pointless.

But Chicago stood firm, refused to make any changes, and recently got a federal judge to rule that the city’s ban is constitutional. That ruling is now susceptible to challenge in appeals courts, and it is possible that a higher court will try to overturn the local judge’s ruling.

But in my mind, that merely confirms that the high court’s action was a politically partisan move on behalf of a conservative constituency – rather than any serious reservation about the legitimacy of gun bans.

2 – I CAN HEAR THE OLYMPIC MARCH ALREADY: The next summer Olympiad is to be held in 2012 in London, with the next one after that in 2016 still in search of a site.

And there’s a chance that Chicago will become that site, bringing the eyes of the world to our city similar to how the presidential campaign of Barack Obama kept showing off aspects of Chicago life to the nation.

The U.S. Olympic Committee made it official when they officially chose Chicago to be the focus of their efforts to get the Olympics in the United States, rejecting a proposal by Los Angeles.

Now I suppose it’s possible that the International Olympic Committee could be delusional enough to think Madrid, Tokyo or Rio de Janiero is a nicer city than Chicago. Of course, that would mean they’re the same kind of people who think Britney Spears has legitimate musical talent.

The Olympics in our city would have the opportunity to give our city a grand new image, while also pressuring city officials to finally get off their duffs and fix some of those problems (ie., mass transit) that confront our daily lives.

As for those people who claim the headaches of staging the Olympics are not worth it, all I have to say is, “pipe down.” You probably think the Illinois State Fair is a grand old time, instead of the most overrated excuse for a corn-dog fest ever derived.

1 – YES, WE DID: The rise of Barack Obama from the obscurity of Illinois politics to being able to work in the Oval Office without causing the Secret Service to arrest him could very well turn out to be the “Chicago Story of the Decade.”

I can remember after his loss to Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., for a seat in Congress that political people were wondering if the Obama intellect was destined to fizzle out before it ever rose to new levels.

Even at the beginning of ’08, people figured Hillary R. Clinton (the suburban Park Ridge native-turned-Arkansan-turned New Yorker) was the shoo-in for the Democratic Party’s nomination, and Obama was just a pretty face who could give good oratory.

But he gained an advantage with an early win in the Iowa caucuses (where participants don’t view Chicago and Illinois as some alien land), and he ran up a string of primary victories despite the aspects of Chicago culture (Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Antoin Rezko, etc.) that may seem alien to those people not fortunate enough to live in the Second City.

Insofar as the general election, Obama won because a majority of the people decided they liked political newcomer Barack and didn’t care much for the other newcomer – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

In the end, Honolulu-native Obama (who like many others adopted Chicago as his home when he started his adult life) caused people from across the country to converge Election Night on Grant Park to celebrate the fact that he will become the first U.S. president with significant Chicago ties (Abraham Lincoln was a Springpatcher, while Ronald Reagan ditched Illinois for California, and Ulysses Grant didn’t live in our state long enough to qualify, in my mind).

And come Jan. 20, when Obama takes the oath of office to become the 44th U.S. president, this country will have a chief executive with an innate knowledge of all things Chicago, including why it is totally absurd to think one can root for both Sox and Cubs come the Cross-town Classic.

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No ball game today in Chicago!

A question to be pondered by Chicagoans on both sides of the baseball partisan split. Which concept is more depressing?

Is it the sight of all those unsold souvenir books in bookstores and supermarkets proclaiming "This is the Year!" that no one wants because it reminds Cubs fans of just how quickly (and tackily) their ball club failed in the National League playoffs this year?

OR IS IT the lack of a sight of similar souvenir books celebrating the fact that the White Sox also won a division title in 2008, and did so with a truly historic flourish at season's end? But because of the way the White Sox barely lasted longer than the Cubs in American League playoff action, there was no time to put something together.

I can't think of any White Sox fan who's that anxious to buy something now. You can't even find caps with a patch or t-shirts proclaiming the 2008 A.L. Central Division champions. And those Cubs shirts and caps that were mass-produced out of a delusion that this truly WAS the year are already marked down significantly in price.

It just means we're shifting attention to next year.

-30-

1-0? That was nerve-wracking!

I’m looking at a recent copy of the Sporting News, one which features a preview of the Major League Baseball playoffs before it was known for sure who would qualify.

Their cover was meant to be a parody of the opening credits of the 1970s “Brady Bunch” sitcom, with those photographs set up in a tic-tac-toe and everybody looks at each other. Only instead of Maureen McCormick and her ilk, we got to see ballplayers from the eight teams the magazine thought would be part of “The Playoff Bunch.”

EITHER THE SPORTING News was incredibly intelligent, or stupendously lucky. They picked seven of the eight playoff-bound teams correctly (the White Sox are represented by a headshot of slugging outfielder Jermaine Dye).

If only they had dumped the picture of Jose Reyes of the New York Mets for a Milwaukee Brewer (perhaps C.C. Sabathia?), they would have been perfect.

So now, we’re beginning the playoff season for 2008. For the first time ever, both Chicago ball clubs qualified. This is a pet peeve of mine, but it irritates me when news anchor types say this is the first time in 102 years that the Sox and Cubs made the postseason in the same year.

It is true that the last time the two teams finished the regular season in first place in the same year was 1906 – the White Sox led by Hall of Fame pitcher Ed Walsh went on to beat the Cubs, led by Hall of Fame pitcher Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown, in the World Series that year, 4 games to 2.

BUT THAT WAS under a different structure when teams had to win their league championship in order to qualify for “the postseason.” Now, a team only has to have one of the better records in the league to make the playoffs. Winning the league championship comes after winning two rounds of playoffs – with the third round being the World Series itself.

What is accurate to say is that this is the first time ever both Chicago ball clubs qualified for the playoffs in the same year, since playoffs have only been held in baseball since 1969.

Whether they both can manage to win two rounds of playoffs and meet against each other in the World Series for only the second time ever is something I don’t even want to speculate about.

Too much of post-season baseball is a coin flip. Who will get “hot” over the next three weeks? Does the fact that the White Sox played three “win or die” games in a row mean they have kicked off a momentum that could carry them, or did they expend their energy just to make it to the playoffs?

DOES THE FACT that the Cubs finished the regular season with the best won-lost record in the National League mean they will remain dominant? Or does the fact that they have basically been in idle for a week-and-a-half mean that they have lost momentum, and will get knocked out in the first round by Manny Ramirez and the Los Angeles Dodgers?

I’m rooting for the concept of an all-Chicago World Series, just because outside of New York City, it is a rare event. We have only had one in just over a century of competing American and National leagues, while St. Louis only had one. Philadelphia and Boston never had one (although the latter city came so close in 1948), nor has Los Angeles – although in theory they could get their way this year, as both the Dodgers and Angels of suburban Anaheim also qualified for the playoffs and somehow, I think L.A. has a better chance than Chicago to get a City Series in '08.

That doesn’t mean I’m rooting for Cubdom.

I’ll likely follow my usual playoff baseball routine in following the activity of the American League, and will settle for learning who wins the National League pennant once the World Series starts.

THAT MEANS I’LL root in the World Series for whoever wins the American League championship.

So-called civic pride wouldn’t get me to root for the Cubs any more than I would expect any of those blowhards who showed up at Daley Plaza on Tuesday to back the Sox should they make it to a World Series against L.A., Philadelphia or Milwaukee (wouldn’t the idea of a Sox/Brewers World Series irritate Cubs fans?).

So I’ll be following baseball in coming weeks, primarily as a relief from the activity of the presidential campaigns in October, the whacked out attempts in the District of Columbia to resolve the financial crisis and the constant speculation about whether Gov. Rod Blagojevich is on the verge of being indicted by “the feds.”

I’ll leave you with one final thought, and it relates to Blagojevich. He was one of the people who participated in the official MLB-sanctioned fans rally for the Cubs in the shadow of the Picasso (which was clad in a silly blue cap for the occasion). Will being a Chicago Cubs fan help boost Gov. Rod Blagojevich's popularity ratings at a time when some are speculating he will be indicted later this year? Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

OUR GOVERNOR, WHO has never made a secret of being a Cubs fan (just like Mayor Richard M. Daley could be seen sitting in a front-row seat near the dugout at Tuesday night’s tie-breaker game against the Twins) made a point of saying he thinks former third baseman Ron Santo belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Perhaps he thinks that praising the memory of the one-time frozen pizza pitchman will gain him the love of Cubs fans across the state.

Who’s kidding whom? Blagojevich contempt has reached such high levels in Illinois that not even Cub fandom could save him.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: For a team to lose its top player and potential Hall of Fame pitcher and STILL manage to come within 1 game of finishing the regular season in first place is a remarkable (http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/29983084.html?elr=KArksi8cyaiUqCP:iUiacyKUU) achievement, and I suspect we'll be hearing more from the Minnesota Twins in the next few seasons than we will from, say, the Detroit Tigers.

EXTRA: 'Whities' vs. 'Twinkies,' while Cubs fans dream that they own Chicago

One more win, and the Chicago White Sox will be able to forget those horrid memories of last week in Minneapolis when they managed to blow their long-held lead in the American League’s central division.

The White Sox finally finished their 162-game regular season schedule on Monday, and their 8-2 defeat of the Detroit Tigers gave them an 88-74 record – identical to the Minnesota Twins.

SO JUST AS the Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox finished 1948 with a tie, as did the Red Sox and the New York Yankees in 1978 and the Seattle Mariners and California Angels in 1995, the White Sox and Twins will now have the dreaded one-game tiebreaker to qualify for the playoffs.

A 163rd game will be added to the schedule for both teams – to be played on the South Side (thank goodness our Sox won that coin flip held a few weeks ago, or we’d be playing again in Minneapolis).

Now I know some geeky types who root for the Chicago Cubs are going to claim the fact that the White Sox did not finish off the Twins last week is evidence they “choked.” Of course, the fact that Minnesota didn’t then proceed to finish off the season this past weekend – losing two of three to fourth-place Kansas City Royals – is equally bad.

Ultimately, the winner tomorrow gets the AL Central Division title and (more importantly) the memory of their choke erased.

ONE THOUGHT ABOUT Monday’s “do or die” game, which is now nowhere near as important as Tuesday’s “do or die,” I was glad to see that Freddie Garcia did not get the loss for the Detroit Tigers.

The one-time Sox star from that memorable season of 2005 has suffered arm troubles, and hurt his shoulder so that he came out of the game with a lead. It was the Tigers’ relief pitchers who blew the lead for Detroit.

One thought I will have. In recent years, Major League Baseball has created the notion that the cities that host the teams that make it to the playoffs should hold downtown rallies to celebrate their pre-playoff accomplishment.

The White Sox had one in Daley Plaza in 2005, and the Cubs had one last year. They also are getting one this year – as the news anchor team over at WBBM-TV seemed to be wetting their pants with glee as live footage was shown of a giant Cubs cap being put on the Picasso statue in preparation for the Tuesday rally celebrating the Cubs’ division title over in the second-rate National League.

WILL THE WHITE Sox (if they manage to beat Minnesota on Tuesday) get a similar rally later in the week? Or are they just out of luck, on account of how long it took them to finally win a division title?

And would any city officials be bold enough to mention the White Sox and the possibility of rooting for an all-Chicago World Series in front of a crowd of Cubs partisans? Just imagine the “boos” Mayor Richard M. Daley would get if he dared suggest that the world does not revolve around Wrigley Field?

But talk of a second World Series in four years on the South Side is getting ahead of ourselves. After all, the Sox (or the “Whities,” as Twins manager Ron Gardenhire likes to call our team) still need to beat the Twinkies in order to say they accomplished anything in 2008.

If anything, that attitude is the big difference between the fans of the two Chicago ball clubs – both of which have stretches in their histories of losing teams.

I STILL REMEMBER a Cubs fan in 1998 who, on the day that the Cubs won a tie-breaker playoff game against the San Francisco Giants to qualify for the playoffs, said that made the season a complete success, on the grounds that the Cubs ended the season with “a symbolic victory.”

Any actual playoff victories would be a bonus.

By that logic, the White Sox would be able to claim a “symbolic victory” by forcing the Twins to play an extra ballgame.

By our logic, victory only takes place on the field. “Symbolic” wins are what we call losses. So let’s follow the lead of Captain Stubby and his Buccaneers. “Let’s Go, Go Go White Sox.” At the very least, let’s show the nation that this truly is a two-team town.

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Cubs a flop if they don’t win NL pennant, & Sox fans would love to flop them

What are the odds the Detroit Tigers will play here Monday? Or the Minnesota Twins on Tuesday, or Tampa Bay Rays next weekend? Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

To listen to many Chicago Cubs fans, the gods of baseball have been excessively cruel to them. How dare anyone not realize that their team is a fun-loving batch that deserves multiple championships?

They certainly don’t deserve to be the team that has managed to go a century without winning a World Series title, and according to the title of one written history of the ball club, has overcome odds of “1 Million-to-One” by not even winning a National League championship since 1945.

IN SHORT, CUBS fans are becoming insufferable in their belief that they are somehow “owed” a championship this year, since their favorite ball club has managed to win its division and likely will finish the season Sunday with the best won-loss record in the National League.

My personal favorite snit-fit is the two fans who are upset that an elderly man who they usually share a Cubs’ ticket package with during the regular season decided he would keep the playoffs and World Series tickets he was eligible to buy.

Their whining went so far as to result in a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court, claiming the 84-year-old man was cruelly depriving them of their “right” to see a baseball game.

Of course, they managed to resolve their dispute Friday by deciding to share the tickets, and alternate which games they went to.

THERE ALSO ARE the “fans” who are upset that the city wants to impose restrictions on alcohol sales in the taverns surrounding Wrigley Field during the ballgames. For every “fan” who actually gets a ticket to enter Wrigley Field during a playoff game, there will be three or four more who decide to hang out in the Lake View neighborhood bars within a block or two of the stadium.

They will then claim that because they were drinking while hearing the roars of the crowd emanating from Wrigley Field, that they were “there” when whatever winds up happening actually happened.

It probably shows that I’m not a fan of the concept of the Cubs being in the baseball playoffs this year. Part of it is because I have never had any use for the Cubs, or anything in the National League (although this year, I would get a kick out of seeing the Los Angeles Dodgers make it to the World Series in the season after Joe Torre was released as manager by the New York Yankees – who fell short of making the playoffs in 2008).

If the Los Angeles Angels (who likely will finish the season with the best record in the American League) manage to win the two rounds of playoffs, that could set the scene for a “City Series,” although I suppose third-rate baseball pundits will try to call it the “Freeway Series” or something equally lame in a California-ish style.

OF COURSE, THERE’S always the chance that the White Sox will manage to eck out a division title – overcoming their awful play in Minneapolis this weekend. The first City Series in Chicago in 102 years would be an incredibly tense event.

White Sox fans (and anyone who carries the spirit of Chicago’s South Side in them) would view such an event as a life-and-death war. I believe Mayor Richard M. Daley (whose family is long-time White Sox season ticket holders, on account of the fact they grew up about a six-block walk from the old Comiskey Park) when he says a City Series in Chicago would create an ugly mood in the city.

A good part of the reason that such an event would be ugly is that Cubs fans would resent having the White Sox in what they would see as “their” World Series.

The fact is that for a Chicago baseball fan, rooting for one’s ball club includes having a desire to see one’s team come out on top of the other team, even though former Chicago sports broadcaster Mike North recently derided such thought as being “the way 12 year olds think.”

HE MAY BE right in a purely logical way. But if professional sports is a batch of grown men playing a child’s game, then it only makes sense that watching professional sports is a way of turning back the clock emotionally to a simpler time.

Like, when we were 12.

For Cubs fans, part of the joy of the 2008 season is that their team won a division title and could win a league championship and go to the World Series, and could even win it, while the White Sox fall short.

If it turns out that on Tuesday of next week, 2008 goes into the local history books as the second time that both the White Sox and Cubs managed to finish the regular season in first place, it means they’d have to share some of the glory.

SOME WHITE SOX fans I know would be willing to “settle” for knowing that the baseball record books would record both teams as having accomplished something in 2008, and that the Cubs didn’t get all the glory. Meanwhile, Cubs fans would see it as some sort of plot to steal their glory.

Some I know resent the fact that the White Sox actually managed to win an American League pennant and World Series title in 2005. In their minds, the White Sox weren’t supposed to win anything until AFTER Cubs teams took some sort of title.

Of course, there is the White Sox mentality that will enjoy the thought of the Cubs fizzling out in the first round of the playoffs, just as Cubs fans will take pleasure if the White Sox are unable to get into the playoffs.

And if both Sox (Chicago and Boston) manage to get into the American League playoffs, then White Sox fans will take a certain amount of pleasure in knowing that they have robbed Cubs fans of some of the satisfaction they desired from this 2008 season.

SO EVEN THOUGH this season is not yet over, and the playoffs and World Series will stretch the U.S. baseball season into the days surrounding Halloween, I will venture this observation.

I know that Cubs fans will claim they had the better ball club in the first decade of the 21st century – citing the two consecutive division-winning teams they had in 2007 and 2008.

But unless the Cubs manage to win both rounds of the National League playoffs, thereby making late singer Steve Goodman’s song lyric about the last Cubs’ championship coming in, “the year we dropped the bomb on Japan” an obsolete thought, then the Cubs will have fallen short.

After all, White Sox fans don’t celebrate the memory of 2000, when our favorite team had the best regular season record in the American League, but lost in the playoffs. Nor do we go on about the fact that our team usually finishes with winning records (2007 was an aberration).

UNLESS 2008 BECOMES the year the Cubs beat out three other playoff teams to win the pennant and go to the World Series, the year will be a failure.

And even if the Cubs do manage to bring the World Series to the North Side, our local history will always record that it was the White Sox who were the first Chicago baseball team to win a championship of any kind during the lifespan of any Chicago resident currently under the age of 50.

I suppose we could allow the Cubs fans to follow in our footsteps for now. But next year, …

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: “A Dying Cub’s Fan’s Last Request” is one of the few things about the Chicago Cubs (http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/po_cubs.shtml) that doesn’t annoy me.

“Sports Illustrated” is convinced that 2008 is the year that Cubs fans get to be insufferable boobs (http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/po_cubs.shtml) in their World Series celebration. Does this mean the Cubs’ chances of actually winning are doomed?

What combination of White Sox victories and Minnesota Twins defeats this weekend will (http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/whitesox/chi-080926-white-sox-twins-chart,0,2994230.htmlstory) keep alive the chance of the second-ever World Series played (http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080923&content_id=3532201&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb) entirely in Chicago?

EXTRA: We're Number 3!

The Chicago White Sox (after a weekend of historic rainfall) finally get to play some baseball, and they manage to do well.

Winning both games played Sunday (a third game will have to be made up at some point in the future, if it has a bearing on a division race), the White Sox game even produced something historic.

HOW OFTEN DOES one get to see a grand slam home run by each team in the same inning? That’s what happened in the evening game (the one carried nationally by ESPN), and it is the first time it has happened since 2005, which means it technically is a more rare event than a no-hit ballgame.

Just as easily as Marcus Thames deflated the White Sox emotionally with a four-run home run that tied up the ballgame (and cost the Sox a lead that had once been 7-0), they were emotionally re-inflated when DeWayne Wise managed to knock his own four-run homer to put the White Sox back in the lead.

So is Wise the big man of Chicago sports on Monday? Of course not.

He had to up and go and pull his intriguing moment on the same day that Chicago Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano threw a no-hit ballgame against the Houston Astros (played in Milwaukee, on account of Hurricane Ike).

WHEN ONE CONSIDERS that we’re now in football season (which means that every single Chicago Bears game has to be treated like a sacred event), that means even the Bears loss to Carolina 20-17 will get big play.

So sorry, DeWayne Wise.

At best, you’re number three on the list of Chicago sports stories, as they will appear for today.

There’s one person who ought to be thankful for this. Octavio Dotel, the White Sox relief pitcher who gave up the grand slam home run that briefly made Sox fans think they were going to lose (did he ever get booed), will now have his moment of shame forgotten by most, and completely ignored by a few.

WHAT’S THE BOTTOM line?

When combined with the Minnesota Twins’ loss to Baltimore, the White Sox have a 1 ½ game lead for their divisional title. And if they can keep up playing for two more weeks like they did on Sunday, then 2008 will really become the first year since 1906 that both Chicago teams managed to finish a regular season in first place.

That is, unless, the Cubs manage to figure out a way to blow it to either Milwaukee or St. Louis. If it were any other team, I’d say that’s ridiculous.

But these still are the Cubs.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: For one night, the creator of this web site has to eat some crow (http://www.talk-sports.net/mlb/sucks.aspx/Dewayne_Wise). For those who are unaware, Wise (http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/team/player.jsp?player_id=276547) is one of the White Sox spare outfielders.

BALL BRAWL: How serious is Sox vs. Cubs to character of Chicago & Illinois?

When I first heard that a brawl earlier this week outside a central Illinois pizza joint had a baseball overtone, my first assumption was to think that some loudmouth Chicago Cubs fan got what he deserved from a St. Louis Cardinals’ fan.

I was partly correct. It was a Cubs fan who got pushed through a window of a Domino’s Pizza franchise in Normal, Ill. Considering the intelligence level of many Cubs fans (who with any sense roots for a ball club that has gone at least a century between World Series titles?), the guy probably did deserve it.

BUT IT WAS due to a fight with a Chicago White Sox fan that the baseball discussion got ugly.

My time going to college in Bloomington, Ill., and later living in Springfield led me to believe that rural Illinois has some warped love for the National League, and that the baseball fandom of Illinois is a brawl between the Cardinals and Cubs – with downstaters siding with the team from the city that they prefer to identify with.

The White Sox have always been a preference of people from Chicago proper. I’d go so far as to say that to the people who really live in the working class neighborhoods that Chicago likes to think comprise its character, the White Sox’ championship of 2005 meant more than any Chicago Cubs championship would ever mean.

It is only because the Cubs’ fan base is spread out over a larger geographic area that Cubs fans like to think their team somehow “means more” to people than that of the Sox.

I WAS PLEASED to hear that some people from central Illinois have enough sense to, as Harry Caray used to urge us, “root, root, root, for the White Sox” – even though I wish the man who now faces an aggravated battery charge in McLean County Circuit Court could have shown just a bit more restraint.

But it is the nature of sports and fandom that sometimes, love for our favorite ball club makes us do stupid things. And every ball club has fans who go overboard – no team is exempt.

At least this incident, which got picked up nationally and warranted brief mentions in newspapers across the United States, didn’t go so far as a recent incident involving the most intense rivalry in baseball these days – New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox.

Ivonne Hernandez was being heckled by Red Sox fans outside a tavern in Nashua, N.H., when they noticed a Yankees logo sticker on her car. She retaliated by driving her car into the crowd of fans – killing one and seriously injuring another.

HERNANDEZ NOW FACES criminal charges of reckless conduct, second-degree murder and aggravated driving while intoxicated.

The worst that happened to the Cubs fan (who was wearing a Cubs jersey at the time of the incident) was that the back of his neck got scratched, and he’s going to have to endure the shame of his fellow Cubs fans for getting his butt kicked by a Sox fan – who had to come up with $100 to keep out of the county jail while the case is pending.

Now I don’t know who this “Sox fan” is. My guess is that he’s a student at Illinois State University – or perhaps a former student who got a job in the area after graduation – who hails from the Chicago area.

I’d be surprised to learn he was a native central Illinois resident. It usually is one of the characteristics of Chicago baseball that the natives root for the White Sox, while the out-of-towners who adopt Chicago come to root for the Cubs (which is what makes Barack Obama all the more unusual – a Hawaiian-turned-Chicagoan who supports the Sox).

A GOOD PART of it is because St. Louis and Chicago have always battled it out for bragging rights for the designation of Supreme City of the Midwest. The National League has teams in both cities, whereas the American League hasn’t had a team in St. Louis since the Browns left for Baltimore following the 1953 season.

Even then, the Browns were usually so wretched that there was no way a self-respecting White Sox fan would care about beating up on St. Louis. The mentality of the Sox fan always focuses on the major East Coast teams (the aforementioned Yankees and Red Sox) as the teams to beat, even though with the current divisional setup, Midwest and East Coast teams play very infrequently (the Yankees already have made their only trip to Chicago for 2008).

The minor leagues that provide ballplayers the chance to hone their skills before joining the Chicagos, New Yorks or Los Angeleses of the baseball world also reinforce the concept that downstate Illinois is a National League place.

Peoria (the place where everything successful supposedly plays first) has been both a Cubs’ and Cardinals’ minor league affiliate, and I can recall the days when Peoria and Springfield had a budding baseball rivalry going – both because of the proximity of the two cities with mutual distaste for each other AND because they were Cubs’ and Cardinals’ affiliates respectively.

BY COMPARISON, THE White Sox in recent years have come to keep their minor league affiliates in the South, centered around Charlotte, N.C., which doesn’t do a thing to persuade Midwesterners to look to the South Side of Chicago when they want a big-time baseball fix.

Not that those of us Chicagoans who root for the Sox are losing too much sleep over this.

We tend to think of the White Sox as the team representing our specific segment of the city, and we perceived the 2005 World Series title as a long-overdue victory for us – at the expense of all those people who’d rather have had the Cubs win the first baseball-related championship of the modern era (really, the Cubs haven’t had one since 1908, and the White Sox hadn’t had one previously since 1917).

SO A PART of us is going to wonder just what that fool of a Cubs fan had to say to provoke a Sox fan to throw him through a window, particularly since it came in a community that is fairly mellow (no one would ever mistake Normal, Ill., for the South Side) in character.

Now I know some people will argue that this is evidence that we baseball fans take this stuff too seriously. But I’d argue it is a bit of evidence of how much a part of the character of Chicago professional baseball has become.

Our two teams are both charter members of their respective leagues and they have become a part of the character of their respective neighborhoods (how many people forget that Wrigley Field is in the “Lakeview” neighborhood, not “Wrigleyville?”)

IT IS WHY I get miffed when people try to claim that Chicago is a “Cubs town” (as though the large segment of the city that could care less about the Cubs doesn’t matter). It even makes me chuckle when people look at the sports scene here and argue that Chicago is, first and foremost, a football town.

Yes, the Bears are popular. They are a unifying factor in the character of Chicago. But I’d argue that Chicago sports fans care more about their favorite baseball team than they do the Bears.

To one segment of Chicago, the 2005 White Sox are more important than the 1985 Bears could ever be because they won in baseball. To the other segment of the city, the ’05 Sox cause more heartache than the Bears ever could, because the Sox beat the Cubs to the World Series punch.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Last Sunday’s incident was just the latest brawl gone out-of-hand (http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/05/07/news/doc4820fd8a9bbb2586203070.txt) that relates back to baseball.

The central Illinois incident, which one wag suggested should have been headlined, “Normal man attacked by Sox fan,” was nowhere near as drastic as a recent incident in New Hampshire (http://www.courant.com/services/newspaper/printedition/sports/hc-rivalry0507.artmay07,0,473919.story) that resulted in one less Red Sox fan on this planet.

Chicago vs. St. Louis is the overtone usually contained in central Illinois baseball fan (http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/chi-05-cardinals-chicagomay05,0,983276.story) quarrels.

It's way too early to think 'City Series'

Major League Baseball’s scheduling practices occasionally result in some quirks – such as the way the White Sox and Cubs schedules match up this week.

New York is coming to Chicago to play our city’s team. That statement is true, regardless of whether one is talking about the American or National leagues.

THE YANKEES ARE in town through Thursday to play a three-game series against the White Sox – a series that always results in larger-than-usual crowds since the ball club that personifies New York swagger has come to town.

Meanwhile, the Mets came on Monday and will be here through Wednesday to smack the Cubs around (although, somehow, the Cubs managed to fluke their way to a victory Monday night).

This kind of scheduling is unusual because the powers that be who put together 162-game seasons for each of the 30 major league teams usually try to have it so that the cities with two ball clubs (New York and Los Angeles, in addition to Chicago) have one team playing at home while the other is in another city.

A 'shot' of the crowd at the South Side Grounds attending Game 6 of the 1906 World Series - the day that the White Sox got the ultimate one-upmanship on the Cubs. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

To have them both playing on the same day in Chicago is an event that usually happens maybe once or twice per season. But to have them both at home simultaneously to play series against the mighty ball clubs from Gotham? That is probably something we’ll never see again.

One could literally on Tuesday and Wednesday root against the hated New Yorkers (even though some Manhattan snobs would argue that, as the ball club from Queens, the Mets really don’t count) twice in one day – traveling from the North Side day game to the South Side for the superior matchup.

JUST ONE THING – don’t behave like that Cubs fan fool a few years ago who got liquored up during the day at Wrigley Field, then came south and acted like a buffoon by charging the umpire while watching the evening Sox game.

The New York-Chicago baseball doubleheader got me to thinking, though, about the possibility of having two contending ball clubs in Chicago.

Such a concept is not unheard of in New York. I’m sure there are some baseball fans in that city who fully expect the World Series this year to be a New York Yankees victory over the Mets – the first “’subway series” since 2000 and one of more than a dozen that have been played during the century that the American and National league champions have deigned to play each other at the end of the season.

But as of now, Chicago is the city with ball clubs at the top of the standings in their respective divisions.

DON’T GET ME wrong. I realize it is ridiculously early to be thinking about 2008 being the year of the “el series” (or would we call it the Red Line series, in honor of the Chicago Transit Authority line that connects the two stadiums?). Personally, I don’t pay serious attention to baseball standings until Memorial Day.

By then, the fact that both Chicago ball clubs were once on top of their divisions could be a long-forgotten memory.

But one has to admit the White Sox are going a long way toward showing the world of baseball geeks that 2007 (with its 72 victories) was an aberration. The White Sox of the 2000s (the current decade) are a team with consistent winning records and two (thus far) first place finishes.

My mind is starting to run amok at the thought of a third first-place finish in this decade (which would have to be either this year or next). But with John Danks showing that he has the potential to be the worthy starting pitcher that White Sox officials always expected (and that general manager Ken Williams wasn’t stupid for acquiring him a few years ago) and Jim Thome showing he can still hit (even at the advanced – by baseball standards – age of 37), this is going to be a very interesting year on the South Side.

FOR AWHILE, THE White Sox had the best record in the American League. Now, they’re just the best in their division, against four other ball clubs all of which have losing records. I don’t expect that situation to continue for the remainder of the season.

But I could see 2008 becoming a season-long Chicago-Cleveland brawl to win their respective division, then meeting up against the division winners of the east and west and a wild card team.

Who knows, it could very well be the Yankees that the White Sox meet up with in the playoffs – which would literally have baseball commentators looking back on this early April series (the only time the two teams will meet in Chicago, they will play a three-game series in New York Sept. 15-17) for some sort of clue as to which team will prevail to win the American League pennant.

Of course, the Sox could also fizzle out in June and turn this into a fairly forgettable year, much as I expect the Cubs to do at some point in mid-season. It’s probably fair to say that both ball clubs have just enough weaknesses to prevent them from being considered legitimate contenders (and I don’t want to hear about how the Cubs play in a weak division – ‘contenders by default’ is just lame).

SO ALTHOUGH I might want to dream of the 2008 World Series giving us an encore to the 1906 version, my serious thoughts about baseball these days focus on three questions – if anybody can answer them for me, I want to know:

--What is up with White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle? He doesn’t appear to be throwing the ball all that bad, but seems to have some of the lousiest luck when it comes to getting run support or just losing it at the most inopportune moments. I only hope this isn’t like his past lousy-luck slumps of 2003 and 2006 when he managed to go for a couple of months at a time without a victory.

--Why does anybody think it is cute that those goofs who make a living selling unauthorized t-shirts and other junk around Wrigley Field are taking to selling shirts that purportedly feed off the aura provided by Japanese star ballplayer Kosuke Fukudome? But their idea of a “tribute” is to mock the “Holy Cow” saying of late broadcaster Harry Caray with Japanese-type characters and a baseball with slants for eyes. I’d like to think Cubs fans have too much sense to actually wear something like that. But then again, I’d like to think people are too intelligent to root for something as historically pathetic as the Chicago Cubs – I’d be wrong.

--Why did the Toronto Blue Jays really release aging former White Sox star Frank Thomas? The man can still swing a bat, and his past two seasons have shown him to get off to slow starts in April, only to get better and turn into a virtual hitting machine when the weather warms up. Does Toronto merely want to get out of having to give Thomas a hefty raise for 2009 if he were to get a minimum number of at-bats? If it really is the case, then we know for sure why the Blue Jays are the perpetual runner-up in the east division behind New York and the Boston Red Sox. I don’t expect the White Sox to make a bid for Thomas (there’s no room on the team for him), but I do expect him to wind up somewhere this year as an impact player.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Chicago baseball’s best pitcher of this decade (http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/buehrma01.shtml) is off to a slow start this season.

I don’t mean to rub it in, but I don’t recall anything even remotely close to this being sold (http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/cubs/901817,CST-SPT-gordo18.article) in Chicago when Shingo Takatsu or Tadahito Iguchi played on the South Side.

One-time White Sox star (and eventual Hall of Fame member) Frank Thomas is looking (http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/columnists/cs-080421-downey-frank-thomas-chicago,1,6288243.column) for work these days.

It is still kind of early in the year to be seriously talking about (http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080421&content_id=2564365&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb) an “el Series” (Sox vs. Cubs in the World Series). Besides, would it really be fair to put Cubs fans through the trauma of having a sequel to the only other time (http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/history/postseason/mlb_ws_recaps.jsp?feature=1906) the two teams met in the World Series?

I'd rather suffer with the White Sox than sink so low as to root for the Chicago Cubs

I hope to spend a few summer nights this year at U.S. Cellular Field, rather than celebrating the 100th consecutive season without a World Series title. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

(NOT IN) TUSCON, Ariz. – When I look at the baseball club that will represent the image of Chicago’s South Side this summer, I’m not sure what to think – other than to wonder if the White Sox are looking too much to the past instead of the future.

But my baseball attentions will be settled on U.S. Cellular Field this year, just as in past years. The Chicago Cubs might as well not even exist (be honest, the only reason they will contend for a division title is that the division they play in stinks so bad the Caribbean Series champion Licey Tigers of the Dominican League could win it).

I’D RATHER WATCH another White Sox team struggle to stay afloat, than follow the Cubs this year as they officially make it 100 full years without a World Series victory (and 63 years without even appearing in the Series).

But watching the White Sox won’t be easy, particularly after learning the team may try to work out a deal to get Bartolo Colón to pitch for them this season. I remember the season he had for Chicago back in 2003. It wasn’t bad.

Then, I remember that ’03 was five years ago – and that Colón has had his share of physical ailments since leaving the White Sox to pitch for the Los Angeles Angels.

When combined with Jose Contreras, the Cuban exile who back in 2003 was the star of the Cuban national baseball team who was expected to be a star in Major League Baseball for years to come, what I see is a team that is hoping too much for baseball talent resurrections.

WHILE I REALIZE that in a certain sense, the White Sox management made some moves that helped to improve the ball club a little bit, I just am not optimistic about 2008.

I was NOT upset this winter when longtime Minnesota Twins star Torii Hunter chose to take a big-money ($90 million over five years) contract with the Angels, rather than accept a respectable pay contract with the White Sox.

While I respect Hunter’s defensive skills in playing the outfield and realize he would have been an upgrade over the White Sox center field situation, I NEVER thought he was so special as to warrant one of the top salaries in professional baseball.

But in their attempt to make room on their payroll for Hunter or someone of his superstar ilk, the White Sox hurt their one strength – starting pitching.

WHEN THE 2007 season ended, I was initially optimistic for ’08 because I liked the notion of a team built around a Big Three of Mark Buehrle, Javier Vázquez and Jon Garland. No other team would have had a better starting rotation, and only a few could say they were as good.

But I’m still not over the loss of Garland, who was traded away to the Angels on the theory that eliminating his salary demands (his contact expires at season’s end and it likely will take a sizable financial offer for some team – the Yankees? – to sign him in the future) would make it possible for the White Sox to bolster so many other areas of the team.

Instead, the best they could do was come up with Nick Swisher, the Oakland Athletics outfielder who, while bearing some talent, is probably best known in these parts because his father, Steve, played for the dreaded Cubs back when I was a kid. (Swisher the elder and Larry Biittner will always be the quintessential Chicago Cubs in my mind, and that’s not good).

Jose Contreras, the aging pitcher who allegedly is in his mid-30s (but could really be in his early 40s, he had a lengthy career pitching in the Cuban League and for Team Cuba before coming to the United States), is going to have to be a reliable pitcher if the White Sox are going to avoid fighting it out with the Kansas City Royals for last place in their division.

LIKEWISE, THE SIGNING of Colón (if it happens) is now an integral move. Contreras and Colón pitching up to their ability when they were both five years younger, combined with Buehrle and Vázquez, would give the White Sox a respectable pitching rotation. Contreras and Colón showing their age (and in Colón’s case, his weight) leaves the White Sox with a weakened rotation of pitchers who should be spending the Summer of ’08 entertaining the fans of the Birmingham Barons.

I really don’t know what to expect this year.

In theory, the White Sox have a talented heart of the batting order of sluggers Jermaine Dye, Paul Konerko and potential future Hall of Fame slugger Jim Thome (his Home Run No. 500 was one of last year’s highlights). In theory, they are a team that can keep up with the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians in their division and contend with the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and the Angels for the ’08 American League championship.

But then I wake up from my baseball dreams, and realize the ’08 White Sox have the potential to resemble the Sox teams of my youth. Does anybody else remember Harry Chappas and Bill Nahorodny?

HAVING TWO LOSING seasons (’07 and ’08) would undo any emotional goodwill the White Sox developed by actually winning in 2005 the first championship by a Chicago baseball team in 46 years and the first World Series title in 88 years.

I could handle the idea of a crummy ball club if I knew for sure it was going to happen. I came of age following Chicago baseball back in the 1970s when winning seasons were rare, and both teams usually stunk so bad that the real competition was to see which one finished in last place in their division with a worse record.

The concept of White Sox teams that perennially finish the season with winning records and are considered a factor in the pennant race (which has been the case, more or less, for the past 18 years) is an alien concept – one I don’t ever think I’ll get used to.

Perhaps it is just the difference in character between fans of the White Sox and the Cubs. The latter are the eternal optimists. Despite watching their team get humiliated in the first round of the National League playoffs, Cubs fans are convinced that 2007 was something historic in nature that should forever be celebrated. The entire 1969 team (which didn’t even make it to the playoffs) is worthy of Hall of Fame induction, in the minds of Cubs fans.

BY COMPARISON, THERE was a large portion of White Sox fandom that was convinced the whole season would collapse in failure all the way up to the point that shortstop Juan Uribe fielded that hard-hit ground ball and made a sudden throw to Konerko for the final out of the last game of the World Series, preserving a 1-0 win by Freddy Garcia.

Then, we became convinced that something bad would happen in future years – which is why some of us are not the least bit surprised that the Sox played so badly last year and may do so again this year.

Why stick with the Sox?

One-time Cubs employee turned White Sox owner Bill Veeck accurately summarized the character of Chicago baseball fans in his now-nearly-50-year-old memoir, “Veeck – as in Wreck.”

CUBS FANS COME from the suburbs and out-of-town, and view their time spent at Wrigley Field watching the Cubs as a way “to relax.”

By comparison, to White Sox fans, “there is nothing casual or relaxing about baseball,” and that only, “the strong, the dedicated and the masochistic” are South Side baseball fans. Some people might argue that such an attitude is insane.

It’s ridiculous.

It’s immature.

MAYBE CUBS FANS are a more reasonable breed of human being – remembering that a pennant is not a matter of life and death.

But if it is really just a game, then what’s the point of rooting for it?

Spending this summer wondering if Colón will revert to his peak career form and give the White Sox one last great year in what has been a respectable professional baseball career gives us White Sox fans something to take our minds off the serious problems that exist in our lives.

AND WHEN THE White Sox win, it provides an emotional boost for the Sox fan that a Cubs fan who is primarily interested in beer and ivy on the outfield walls can never appreciate.

That’s why no matter how much people want to romanticize the 100-year streak of Cubs teams failing to win the World Series (or even appear in it the past 63 years), no Cubs championship of the future will ever mean as much to the character of Chicago as the 2005 White Sox or any future White Sox champion meant to the city.

And for those who would note the regional character and say a Cubs championship would mean more to people outside Chicago than a White Sox title would, all I have to say is, “Who really cares what plays in Peoria?”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: For those who just have to have a Cubs-related tidbit, all I’ll say is I will not criticize Aramis Ramirez for his weak defense of cockfighting in his native Dominican Republic. My views on Ramirez are identical to what I wrote at The Chicago Argus’ sister weblog, The South Chicagoan, (http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/2008/02/cockfighting-fan-beisboleros-bring.html) about pitchers Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal.