Rams to L.A. don’t mean nuthin’ to Bears, but maybe to pro baseball?

Let me say up-front that all those professional football fans from the greater St. Louis area who now are in search of a new team to root for aren’t going to mean diddly-squat to the Chicago Bears.

St. Louis' football history came from Sout' Side ...

In fact, while I have heard from many St. Louis sports fans speculating on a new team to root for now that their ‘home town’ team has moved to Los Angeles beginning this season and some say they’re considering shifting their allegiances to the Bears, I just can’t see it happening.

PERHAPS IT’S MY own experience in living in downstate Illinois where the two major cities near that region are Chicago and St. Louis. There are those people who are willing to root for a Chicago ball club. But others who will NEVER consider doing such an overt act.

Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of those former St. Louis Rams football fans now take on the Green Bay Packers just so they can explicitly say the root against Da Bearz!

So if anybody is delusional enough to think the Chicago Bears franchise now gains a larger territory that includes the entirety of Illinois and Missouri, guess again.

It’s funny the way things work with professional sports franchises, who operate under the illusion that the represent the populace of the communities in which they are located.

WHEN THE BEARS won that championship for the 1985 season and the Super Bowl for 1986 (Super Bowl XX, in preferred NFL-speak), it was a victory for Chicago! It was evidence of how superior our city was – or so said any of those people who used to bark like dogs while going on and on and on about “The Refrigerator.”

So the fact that an NFL franchise was so eager to dump all over the city that would like to think it is the major focal point of the Midwestern U.S. becomes evidence to some, and a slur to others, on the very place that Redd Foxx’ “Fred Sanford” character used to pine on and on about.

... and from Los Angeles. ...

Personally, I don’t think it’s a blow to St. Louis’ reputation. If anything, it may show that city officials had enough sense to not be blackmailed by professional football.

If only more cities would stand up to their sports teams’ demands, perhaps we’d all be better off.

ALTHOUGH IT IS humorous that the city whose own professional football history was based on stealing teams away from Chicago and Los Angeles (the Rams are merely returning where some think they belonged all along) is now getting all worked up over the loss of the Rams.

Perhaps there is something to be learned from the Chicago Cardinals, who left for St. Louis in the early 1960s before relocating to the suburbs of Phoenix, Ariz., some three decades ago.

... Maybe they'll try to take from N.Y. next?

There used to be a phenomenon of Green Bay Packers fans in Chicago because the Cardinals fans of old couldn’t bring themselves to “bear down” for the Chicago Bears, and blamed George Halas for strong-arming their preferred franchise out of existence.

By now, however, those people are long gone – either deceased or perhaps suffering from Alzheimer’s disease to the point where they can’t even remember what football was.

OR MAYBE IN their own minds, the Cardinals are still roaming the grounds of Comiskey Park and continuing to fail in their drive to bring a championship to our city’s Sout’ Side.

I don’t know what those St. Louis sports fans are going to wind up doing in the long-run. Maybe they’ll continue on with some other team – or maybe even a few will want to keep rooting for the Rams until all the current players have moved on.

There may even be those people who will take the loss of football as continued evidence of the dominance of the St. Louis Cardinals fans in baseball and the idea that the “Gateway to West” is the ultimate baseball town.

A fact that ought to further infuriate Chicago Cubs fans, and may become the ultimate local impact of the Rams’ return to the City of the Angels.

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29 days and counting ‘til World Cup; and Chicago gets included in festivities

We’re just under one month away from the World Cup – the international sports tourney where the best national futbol clubs of the world convene to compete for something as significant as the Super Bowl fantasizes itself to be.

A local dose of pre-World Cup action on June 3

This year, of course, the action is in Brazil. Anybody from Chicago is going to have to spend some big bucks to make the trip to the southern hemisphere if they want to be able to say they saw world-class soccer.

TRUST ME, I made the mistake of going to see Major League Soccer matches during the last World Cup tourney in 2010. The level of play of the Chicago Fire and the teams they compete against just isn’t the same!

But it’s not like we in Chicago are totally cut out of the festivities.

I found it interesting that the Mexican national team that will compete is including a few last-minute exhibitions (“friendlies,” in soccer-speak) to warm up – with one of them scheduled for Soldier Field.

It will be right on the shores of Lake Michigan that Mexico’s Tri-colors will take on the national team from Bosnia-Herzegovina come June 3.There’s the potential for 50,000 or more people to pack their way into the bowl to see the two teams make whatever final adjustments they feel are necessary to avoid embarrassing themselves in Brazil.

NOT THAT I’LL be among those on hand.

For one thing, I have some work these days that will keep me busy that night. Although I also was appalled at the $240-plus price for a single ticket for the match.

Maybe I could scout around and find something a bit cheaper. But I just can’t envision paying that much for a friendly between two teams that have little chance of winning the whole thing. And I wonder about the sensibilities of anyone who has no problem paying such money.

The World Cup itself is being played this year between June 12 and July 13. The U.S. national team plays its first round matches on June 16 (against Ghana), June 22 (against Portugal) and June 26 (against Germany).

LOCALLY, PEOPLE WILL be able to gather at Grant Park, where Crain’s Chicago Business reports that the U.S. Soccer Federation plans to erect giant video screens so people can gather in large crowds and cheer endlessly (or so they hope) for U.S. goals.

Envisioning a video screen supplying soccer, instead of a band

 

Perhaps some people would find such a crowd to be an ample substitute for being in the stands at the real match. Personally, if I’m going to do nothing more than watch television, I suspect I’ll do it in the comfort of home.

Which is how I suspect I’m going to follow the World Cup. Don’t be surprised if – come next month – I have the television tuned in the background to the matches while I write about whatever issues of concern take place in Chicago.

I recall the same sentiment some 20 years ago – which was the one time the World Cup tourney was held in the United States, with the opening ceremonies and first few matches played right here at pre-renovation Soldier Field.

OF COURSE, THAT was during my stint working and living in Springfield. So even then, I was watching televisions at the Statehouse, trying to catch a few minutes of action here and there while everybody else went about the business of trying to govern the state.

RAUNER: Four more months to talk

As for this year, it all makes me wonder if for the upcoming month, I will be among those who find the plight of the United States and Mexico national teams (both of which could find themselves eliminated following the first round) more intriguing than anything that comes from the mouths of Rahm Emanuel or Bruce Rauner.

They’ll both have several months after the World Cup to spew their rhetoric that will anger so many people in so many ways.

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