Can Chicago support more pro soccer? Does North Side want its own team?

Does professional soccer in this country have visions of playing off the South Side/North Side split that exists in our city – with each side having its own team to root for?

Architectural rendering of new stadium to attract Amazon.com, United Soccer League to Chicago

Some people seem to have such dreams, although it’s questionable whether the baseball dichotomy that exists in Chicago could ever be recreated for another sport.

ADMITTEDLY, THIS IS all theoretical.

It comes about because part of the Chicago proposal for trying to encourage Amazon.com to build their second corporate headquarters here is to erect a stadium at a site along the Chicago River’s north branch on the fringes of the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

It’s meant to enhance the neighborhood that could be the site of the Amazon.com facility – an effort to make it a hip and happening place (and yes, I suspect the only people who would find this upgrade worthy are the types who would use terms like “hip” and “happening”).

Concerts could be held there, and there’s talk of trying to get the United Soccer League to expand its operations with a team in Chicago that could actually play its games there.

IT SOUNDS NICE, except that Chicago already has a professional soccer team – the Chicago Fire of Major League Soccer. Which isn’t exactly an attendance-leader for the league, and usually provides ammunition for the NASCAR-type mentality people who want to think soccer is too foreign to be worthy of any support on the sporting scene.

The existing Toyota Park of southwest suburban Bridgeview

The Fire, when they originally were created back in the 1990s, played their matches at Soldier Field. But when that stadium was renovated into its current state, the Fire used the need to find a new home as an excuse to get their own stadium.

Which they now have out in the southwest suburb of Bridgeview. I’ve been to Toyota Park for a few matches. It’s actually a nice facility, and does the team some credit to have it available at their control – unlike Soldier Field, where the Chicago Park District always made it clear the Chicago Bears were the primary tenant and others would have to play second-fiddle.

But it has created a situation where some people living in the northern reaches of the Chicago area want to believe that a team playing its games at 71^st Street and Harlem Avenue is too distant.

Is 20 years of existence strong enough for Fire?

WHO WANTS TO have to travel south, particularly that far south, to see a soccer match?

Although I’d point out (as someone native to the South Side and surrounding suburbs) that the region stretches as far south as 236^th Street before you reach the southernmost tip of Cook County.

But there’s speculation that a United Soccer League franchise based on the north side, particularly if on the fringe of a trendy, upscale neighborhood, could try to market itself as an alternative. Even though the United Soccer League technically is a minor league that ranks below Major League Soccer on the sporting scene.

Chgo soccer hasn't been same since Sting ceased to exist

Some could argue we have the same scene with baseball, where the Chicago White Sox have been ever since their creation in 1900 a team that marketed itself as the face of the South Side, and with the Cubs upon their moving to what is now Wrigley Field back in 1916 as the North Side team.

BUT LIKE I said, it was a conscious decision of Charles Comiskey that he had the Sout’ Side team. The Fire would become the South Side team of default, with the hoity-toity types of the North lakefront deciding to watch soccer matches in their own neighborhoods – that is, if they ever get such an urge.

Personally, I played a little soccer in high school (no, I wasn’t any good at it), and my own memories also included rooting for the Chicago Sting of old – that now-defunct team that actually won North American Soccer League championships in 1981 and 1984. To me, I’d like to have the Sting back, rather than any of these new teams.

White Sox fans still think "Ugh!"

But that’s not about to happen. We’ll have to see what becomes of this new team talk – particularly if Amazon.com winds up choosing some other city and the motivation for building a new stadium up north withers away.

There would be one interesting bit – since a North Side team would technically be a minor league club, and it would create the state where players would “move up” to the Chicago Fire down south. Similar to when Ron Santo was traded from the Cubs to the White Sox in 1974 and was greeted with fan banners reading, “Ron Santo, Welcome to the Major Leagues.”

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EXTRA: Chicago wins its second World Series title of the 21st Century

It seems the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday didn’t manage to blow it big time. They won a World Series championship – their first in 108 years. Although it took extra innings in the final game to achieve.
 

Did 1st pitch honors 'sted of Charlie Sheen

It’s also the second World Series won by a Chicago baseball team in this century – let’s not forget the Chicago White Sox won a title back in 2005. Even though Cubs fans have been going out of their way for the past week to try to ignore that fact.

THE SARCASTIC SIDE of me wants to say “It’s about time” those lazy slackers on the North Side managed to win something on behalf of Chicago. Quite frankly, I’m tired of dealing with out-of-town crackpots who presume there has to be something wrong with Chicagoans as a whole because we take the loser Cubs seriously.

But some of us do, and I don’t doubt that they’re feeling a certain level of glee that White Sox fans felt some 11 years ago. Hope you Cubbie-fan types enjoy your parade that the city likely stages for you in coming days. Although I somehow suspect that the White Sox title meant more to the city and then-Mayor Richard M. Daley than this year’s Cubbie victory does to Mayor Rahm Emanuel – who did finally deign to show up at the ballpark for Game 7 on Wednesday in Cleveland.

As for the celebration, I’m sure Cubbie-types will get all worked up and think it’s a historic moment. I know there are Sox-fan types who can tell you exactly where along their parade route they stood, and how close they were to first baseman Paul Konerko when he voluntarily handed over the final ball from Game 4 to team owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

Not that any of this is in any way a sign that our city is “united” behind a ball club. That will never happen. The character of Chicago baseball is the very split, and the hard-core of each side would consider it sacrilegious for any kind of unity to occur.

 

Hit a grand slam (not a Denny's breakfast)

HOW ELSE TO explain those Bridgeport types who actually deigned to wear caps bearing the Chief Wahoo logo in recent days. I strongly suspect those caps will be mutilated in coming months – perhaps the first time that arch-rival Cleveland makes a visit to Chicago in 2017 to play the White Sox.

Because seeing the Indians in the World Series was a reminder that the White Sox weren’t, and may have hurt even more than the Cubs’ presence there. Although I did get my kick out of seeing that for Game 7, the Indians used for their first ball ritual one-time White Sox slugger Jim Thome. Thereby sparing us the sight of actor Charlie Sheen, who wants us to think he really played for Cleveland.

 

Hit a more-legendary 4-bagger in '05

I’m sure there are some Cubs fans who felt a tinge of annoyance at having a Sox slugger so prominently displayed – even if he also was an Indian (and a Phillie and Twin).

I wonder how long the resentment will carry out on Jason Kipnis, the Indians infielder from suburban Northbrook who hit that home run in Game Four that put the hurt on Cubbie blue hearts for a little while.

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE the Addison Russell grand slam home run of Tuesday night helped console them. While also reminding White Sox fans about that similar shot Paul Konerko hit back in Game 2 of ’05.

Which brings us around to what will be the lasting bit of trash talk that Chicago baseball fans will now start to engage in for years to come. Who was better – ’16 Cubbies or the ’05 Sox?!?

As much as I already hear that “best team in baseball” nonsense being spewed all year by Cubs fans, anybody with sense knows that the Buehrle/Garland/Garcia/Contreras pitching rotation would shut down the baby blue bears over and over and over again. 

We're long overdue for a rematch, don't you think?

Which is why we need to have an all-Chicago World Series, and soon! Although there are times I wonder if Chicago could handle the stress level that a Sox vs. Cubs series would create in the chill of a Second City October?

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What does Cubs ‘Magic Number’ mean for those fans who could care less?

We’re at that point of the baseball season where teams that have played somewhat respectfully start thinking seriously about the chance that this year could be THE YEAR for their favorite ballclub.

 

Sox fans have had to fantasize about the past

A league championship! Perhaps even a World Series title. There are at least a dozen of the 30 major league ball clubs who are acting these days as though this is THE YEAR.

INCLUDED AMONGST THOSE dreamers are the perpetual fantasizers who follow the Chicago Cubs. Even though it has been 71 seasons since the National League championship banner last flew over the Lake View neighborhood (and 108 years since “Cubs” and “World Series champions” were tied together), we’re getting the talk.

Particularly in the form of the “magic number,” which is the number of Cubs wins and second place team losses needed for the Cubs to prevail with a first place finish for the 2016 season.

As of Sunday, that number was “28.” Which means they’re not on the verge of clinching anything in the next few days. But it is close enough that 2016 could wind up being just like 1984, 1989, 1998, 2003, 2007, 2008 and 2015.

Years in which there was a Cubs playoff appearance but someone else won the rights to call themselves the championship team for the year.

SO IS 2016 destined to be THE YEAR for the Wrigley Field denizens. Or just another season in which they fall short?

Personally, I don’t really care. And I’m not alone.

 

That early season start seems like a century ago

For the reality of Chicago is that the character of our city’s baseball feelings is that they’re split between two ball clubs. There are those of us, myself included, who are going to feel apathy toward whatever the Cubs do.

In my case, it’s largely because I’m a fan of the American League and its ball clubs. Even if by chance the Cubs do win their first National League championship since 1945 and the rights to play the AL champion in the World Series, I’ll likely be rooting for the latter.

FOR THOSE PEOPLE who somehow think that’s disrespectful to Chicago or somehow petty, I’d say it’s only natural. I suspect it is the way many Cubs fans went about regarding the 2005 season when the Chicago White Sox managed to win their first American League championship in 46 seasons, then went on to perform many historic moments in beating the Houston Astros in the World Series that year.

There was that segment of Chicago that got all worked up and held that victory parade that stretched from U.S. Cellular Field through the South Side and into downtown. There also were other people who felt a big “ho hum” towards the event.

Which, if the Cubs do manage to accomplish something in 2016 (personally, I’m skeptical they will), is a sentiment that we will see repeated. Some of us will care. Others of us will already have moved on either to the Chicago Bears or to the 2017 season.

It’s just the character of Chicago – no matter how insufferable some Cubs fans get in believing that everybody on Planet Earth somehow cares what their favorite ballclub does.

IN FACT, I’LL be honest. There is a part of me that wouldn’t mind if the Cubs were able in 2016 to share in the feeling of what it is like to have a ball club that does something worthy of note.

 

The White Sox are 2-1 this season with me sitting in the stands. All photographs by Gregory Tejeda

Because I personally think the “lovable loser” mentality reflects badly upon Chicago as a whole. And while I’ll admit all of our city’s professional sports teams have had their eras of suckiness, it is largely the lengthy stretches of the Cubs that implants that image in the public’s head.

If the Cubs really do win something this year, we can finally move on and quit thinking there is something so special about a ball club that can never win a thing. Then we can get on to the ultimate argument-provoking debate for Chicago sports fans – who’d win a fantasy championship series between the ’05 White Sox (best in the American League that season) and ’16 Cubs?

Of course, anybody with sense could see Mark Buehrle pitching a complete-game shutout and catcher A.J. Pierzynski using his baseball “smarts” to pull off such a fantasy victory for the Sox.

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Did Cook County sales tax hike become political equivalent of Sox/Cubs brawl?

The Cook County Board narrowly voted in favor of President Toni Preckwinkle’s proposal to boost the county’s share of sales taxes, and I couldn’t help but notice the breakdown among how county commissioners voted.




PRECKWINKLE: She got her (or Stroger's) tax hike

All of the African-American and Latino members of the county board supported the idea, along with certain white members who had one thing in common with their non-white colleagues.

THEY WEREN’T FROM the North Side or its surrounding suburbs.

It would seem that Madison Street, the informal dividing line between South and North sides, also applied here. Forget about any support for the increase of the county sales tax from 0.75 percent to 1.75 percent on the North (supposedly more affluent) side of the city.

South of it, it would seem that political people were in line with the thought expressed by Commissioner Stanley Moore, who said that while he doesn’t like a tax increase, he is showing his “faith” in Preckwinkle’s judgment that she’s not guiding the county into a political sinkhole.

It is a potential sinkhole for him, since his county district includes neighborhoods such as South Chicago, the East Side and Hegewisch, along with suburbs such as Calumet City and Lansing that are located directly on the Illinois/Indiana border – where local governments tend to think the sales tax is something meant only for state government to use.

JUST THINK OF how low the Illinois sales tax would be if there weren’t local and county governments staking their own claim to it. Seven percent, to be exact – instead of the 10.25 percent it will be now.

If anyone is likely to feel a direct blow to their political futures for supporting this, it is Moore – who only got onto the county board when he was appointed to replace William Beavers following his indictment and conviction on charges related to his desire to use campaign contributions while gambling at casinos.


MOORE: Will his 'faith' come back to bite him?

I suspect that for Robert Steele (whose mother had a stint as county board president), Jerry “the Iceman” Butler and Deborah Sims, the same faith was a factor, as it would be for Jesus Garcia (how would Rahm have used this against Chuy if the mayoral campaign were still ongoing?) and Luis Arroyo.

As for white commissioners, John Daley of the Bridgeport neighborhood is a political establishment type who likely was consulted before the sales tax hike was even introduced.

WHILE JEFFREY TOBOLSKI of McCook and Joan Patricia Murphy of Crestwood also come from parts of the county that align with the South Side.
 

DALEY: Wound up backing Toni

The only Sout’ Sider, so to speak, who didn’t back Preckwinkle was Elizabeth Gorman of suburban Orland Park, although she was a Republican who had consistently said she would vote against a tax hike – and wound up being the lone abstention on the grounds that she’s quitting her political post next week to take a better-paying job outside of politics. Just like there's always a lone South Sider or two who winds up  going goofy and rooting for the Cubs.

Whereas all the opposition to the tax hike came from the North Side and suburbs.

Even from people like Bridget Gainer and John Fritchey – both of whom are people with urban constituencies that usually think highly of Preckwinkle and her Hyde Park ways. As are Richard Boykin of Oak Park and Larry Suffredin of Evanston.

THEN, THERE ARE the Republicans who naturally would oppose anything that Preckwinkle would put forward – particularly if it was an idea identical to something they dumped all over former County Board President Todd Stroger for.

SCHNEIDER: Voted the party line

Do you know how badly Tim Schneider, who also is Illinois Republican Party chairman these days, would be castigated by his GOP colleagues if he were to back this proposal – no matter how badly the county needs the revenue?

The same likely goes for Peter Silvestri of Elmwood Park, a former mayor, and Gregg Goslin of Glenview, a former legislator. I’m sure some will argue it is a matter of a more affluent North Side not needing to rely on government as much.

Although I’m wondering if it would be easier on all of us to have our South Side vs. North resolved on the ball fields each summer – it certainly would be a lot cheaper on our pocketbooks!

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You know it’s a dead season when a “No. 14” is the “City Series” highlight

This year doesn't come close to matching '06

It was kind of cutesy to learn that the Chicago Cubs felt compelled to pay tribute to Paul Konerko this week – what with him expected to retire from playing professional baseball after the end of this season.

Honored in home of Cubs' No. 14

It’s nothing on the scale of what New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter is getting from every ball club the Yankees play against this season.

BUT SEEING THE Cubs put aside the natural, century-old rivalry between Sout’ Side and North, Sox and Cubs, to acknowledge that Konerko has been a significant figure in the history of Chicago baseball was nice.

I even got a kick out of the “gift” the Cubs gave Tuesday to Konerko – one of the number cards used in their allegedly-quaint hand-operated scoreboard. Specifically, a number “14” – to match up with the uniform number Konerko wore during his 16 years with the White Sox.

It’s not like this year’s version of the Cubs is ever likely to score 14 runs in any given inning; although I suppose it is possible that Cubs pitching will have several instances in which they will give up that many runs per inning.

Konerko retirement cycle not on same scale

I guess the Cubs will just have to ensure that high-scoring rallies by the opposition go to at least 15 runs at a time.

THAT MOMENT ALSO appears to be the highlight of the “Crosstown Classic” between our city’s two ball clubs; even though I still think that label sounds lame and I prefer to think of it as the “City Series” – which technically hasn’t been played since the Second World War.

Much has been written already about the level of apathy expressed by fans toward this year’s four-game version of the series.

A mediocre White Sox team, combined with a truly dreadful Cubs ball club, doesn’t exactly make for a must-see series – particularly since the current ways in which Major League Baseball operates has turned the series into just another set of games (all won by the White Sox, thus far) over the course of the 162-game season both ball clubs will play.

Dull series another reason to bring back Ozzie?

We’re still early enough in the season that the standings don’t mean much. Memorial Day is the date on which we can start to see how well a team is truly playing – there just haven’t been enough games thus far.

SO I WASN’T at any of the games at Wrigley Field (although it has been a decade since I have set foot in that ball park – which I remember because the Cubs lost to the Montreal Expos; who ceased to exist after ’04).

Nor did I feel the need to show up at U.S. Cellular Field Wednesday (although that was quite a catch by shortstop Alexi Ramirez to create that 9th inning double play). Nor will I likely be there Thursday night for the final game between the two until 2015 (because I really don’t see the scenario in which both Chicago ball clubs manage to make it to the playoffs, win their respective league pennants, and wind up playing in the World Series).

I care enough about what happened that I did take the time to look up the box scores. But I have been doing that all season, and would have done so regardless of whom each team was playing.

This series just isn’t intriguing enough now – this is one of the off-years that are bound to come. The kind that test how committed one is to following a ball club.

Remember '98

WE DON’T HAVE Ozzie Guillen going around talking about how rat-infested Wrigley Field was (one of the drawbacks, that and those troughs, of being 100 years old). Nor do we have A.J. Pierzynski trying to rile up the crowd after getting slugged by Michael Barrett following a home plate collision.

We don’t even have shortstop Mike Caruso achieving the highlight of his miniscule major league career during a city series.

We just get to “Wait ‘til Next Year” in terms of a White Sox/Cubs series that is on-field interesting – a concept that we are way too familiar with in this city.

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