Business interests still come to Chicago despite Trump trash talk. Maybe he doesn't know of what he speaks?

I remember during the times of my life I lived in downstate Illinois (Bloomington, while in college, and Springfield for a stint working at the Statehouse), the locals would always refute my Chicagoness by pointing out the major corporate entities that considered central Illinois to be home.

Could this road symbolically lead to Chicago for Caterpillar?

There was Archer Daniels-Midland in Decatur. Then, the big gun, Caterpillar, in Peoria, the manufacturer of farm machinery and vehicles used by agriculture interests the world over.

ANYBODY INTERESTED IN farming or food or eating ought to know of Caterpillar. Or ADM, which processes grains and soybeans into products that can be turned into food.

I don’t deny those are significant corporate entities in their own right. But I can’t help but note that ADM left Decatur a couple of years ago; following the lead of the central Illinois city’s one-time National Football League team, which came to Chicago and became the Bears many decades ago.

Now, Caterpillar seems to be following their lead.

Corporate officials said this week that their top executives are moving from their offices at the main plant in Peoria to a yet-to-be-determined site in Chicago. They want access to life in a large city like Chicago, rather than small-city life of Peoria. They also like the idea of being a short drive away from O’Hare International Airport, from which they can go anywhere in the world!

IT MAY ALSO be that corporate types want to be able to follow the Chicago Cubs themselves, rather than rooting for their local Midwest League ball club and spending their time reminiscing of the days when it was a Cubs’ minor league affiliate (it’s now with the St. Louis Cardinals).

 

No longer dreaming of Cubs' one-time affiliate

One bit of consolation for the Peoria people – corporate officials say it’s just the corporate offices. The actual plant in Peoria where equipment is made will remain there. Few of the 12,000 people employed in Peoria will be out of work because of the move.

Who knows? They may come to like having the top brass located elsewhere. While we in Chicago will love being able to say we’re the corporate offices of yet another business entity. Not bad at a time when President Donald J. Trump, for purely partisan political reasons, seems determined to come up with weekly attacks on Chicago.

As though he wants the world to think that our fair city is as ugly as that 1,389-foot tall building he erected along the Chicago River.

If Chicago Bears could once play a season at Memorial Stadium, why not Fighting Illini games in Chicago?

ALTHOUGH THE MOVE makes me wonder now what business entities rural Illinois types will be able to cite when they tout their region? Perhaps they’ll start boasting of the many state universities located in the rest of Illinois – particularly the University of Illinois.

Though one could argue that all you’d have to do is move the Big Ten athletic programs of the Fighting Illini to the Chicago campus, and the UI-C would take over that school’s niche in the state.

Although I’m sure that to the people of Urbana-Champaign (or should it be Champaign-Urbana), that very notion constitutes “fightin’ words” worse than the notion of Caterpillar sending a piece of itself to Chicago.

Could one-time U.S. Steel plant along the lakefront ...

Yet this isn’t the only outside interest we’re seeing these days. I couldn’t help but notice the talk this week of a company ultimately based in Barcelona, Spain, wanting to take the one-time site of U.S. Steel’s Southworks plant and convert it into homes.

SPECIFICALLY, SOME 12,000 homes, to be built in four phases of 3,000 each – with certain communal amenities meant to try to create a spirit of community.

Not that the area, which is adjacent to the South Chicago and South Shore neighborhoods, couldn’t use some freshening up. South Chicago in particular (the neighborhood I was born in, for what it’s worth) has old housing stock.

... truly become the 8080 Lakeshore housing development.? Image provided by Barcelona Housing

But any chance this project by Barcelona Housing Systems (with offices in San Francisco) and WELink has of succeeding depends on whether they can make the existing surrounding working-class residents feel like they’re not being rejected for potentially upscale newcomers. That is a large part of why a past developer’s talk of turning the 430-acre site along Lake Michigan from 79^th Street to the Calumet River never got off the ground.

Yet still interesting to see that at a time when Trump wants to undermine our city by making it appear too much of a hell hole to want to have anything to do with, interests as diverse as Caterpillar and Barcelona see money to be made in Chicago; which makes me think we ought to be questioning Trump’s own business instincts – instead of taking anything he says all that seriously.

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Ivanka does Chicago! Donald does Bolingbrook? Trumps in Chicagoland

We won’t be seeing Donald Trump anywhere within the Chicago city limits anytime soon, if ever, during this campaign cycle.
 

Trump sends 'better half' to Chicago for campaign cash

There’d be far too many people inclined to mock him mercilessly for his initial debate performance – particularly from those people who are convinced the lousy microphone system was, in reality, a case of a candidate with “the sniffles.”

AFTER ALL, ISN’T Hillary the one who toughed it out on the campaign trail while suffering from pneumonia, continuing to make appearances at a time when ordinary people would have been staying home in bed and whining for their spouse to bring them another bowl of chicken soup?

Trump likely will have to do more debate prep for his next appearance Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis, and probably will put the squeeze on his vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, who has his lone debate event Tuesday at Longwood University.

But we in Chicago may get a taste of Trump this week – for it seems that daughter Ivanka is scheduled to make several stops in Illinois on Wednesday.

Those include an evening cocktail party/fundraiser in the city, along with a breakfast-type/coffee event in Quincy and lunch in Peoria.

MUCH IS BEING made of Trump’s recent comments implying he thinks Chicago’s homicide rate makes it a far-more-dangerous place to visit than reality reflects.

Is Donald scared? Actually, he’s probably more realizing that any assault he’d face in Chicago would be in the form of verbal harassment and insults. As we saw quite clearly during his first debate performance Monday night, he doesn’t like being questioned or criticized.

He likes to be the one who dishes it out.

Besides, I do find it somewhat odd that Trump may be in the metropolitan area (as in outside the city proper) on Wednesday. Supposedly, he’s going to show up in Bolingbrook for a political luncheon that twice already has been cancelled.

SOMETHING KEEPS COMING up that knocks the event off the schedule. Will Trump finally honor this commitment?

Considering that Bolingbrook, is some minds, is nothing more than the municipality that once employed Drew Peterson as a law enforcement officer, you’d have to question the idea that the community is all that safe.

After all, not many communities can claim to have one of their officers now serving a lengthy prison term (he’d have to live to at least 93 to ever be free again) for murder. Although it seems that Peterson is only a threat to the young girls who fall for him, thereby leaving Trump safe.

Anyway, back to Ivanka, who could be an interesting persona. There is evidence that she may be the one of all the Trump kids (the jury is still out on Trump’s youngest son, Baron) who amounts to anything – what with her corporate role with the Trump Organization and the fact she plays a significant part in the business.

HOW MANY WILL come out to see Trump’s eldest daughter? Will they bring their checkbooks and make donations to try to give Trump a campaign fund that comes close to approaching the many millions that Democrat Hillary Clinton will have access to?

And what kind of crowd will Trump himself garner. Politico reported estimates from Republican party leaders that some 400 supporters will be on hand for the suburban event. Although there’s always the chance that some activist types will want to show up to cause a ruckus.

We’ll have to see if Trump has a sufficient explanation for his less-than-stellar debate performance Monday night.

Or will it amount to little more than a gruff demand that the questioner “Stuff it!!!!” up a certain bodily sphincter? Ouch!

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Thome helps keep Legislature busy

So just what DO our state legislators do with their time when they’re not addressing the lack of a state budget for the current fiscal year?

There was a bit of a stink a few weeks ago when the General Assembly managed to pass the measure that declared corn to be the official state vegetable for Illinois. Some from people who argue corn isn’t a vegetable (it’s a grain), while others just think it is a totally pointless thing to do.

WILL THESE SAME people come crawling out of the woodwork in coming weeks when the state Senate will be asked to consider a measure designating a portion of U.S. Route 24 in Peoria as the Jim Thome Highway?

As in the same Thome who included a few seasons of his professional baseball career with the Chicago White Sox and hit his 500^th Home Run of his career in the White Sox pinstripes – although the 600-home run milestone was achieved while he wore the dingy and dumpy uniform of the Minnesota Twins.

The measure already has come before the Illinois House of Representatives – where it was approved without opposition earlier this week. Hey, the legislators had to do something to justify their per diem payment to cover their living expenses to be in the Illinois capital city to NOT approve a state government budget.

Unless Chicago Cubs fans who serve in the Illinois Senate decide to get more ornery and cranky than usual (that’s what a century of losing does to you) and refuse to vote for anything that honors a White Sox player?

WHO’S TO SAY!?! Although it should be noted that the general concept of the Thome Highway was already in a separate measure the Senate considered – one sponsored by state Sen. Darin LaHood, R-Dunlap. He being the Republican nominee to replace Aaron Schock in Congress.

Does anyone think Chief Wahoo looks better in bronze than Old English "Sox"

I doubt he wants to have his final Springfield act be a dissing of Thome’s reputation. That could cost him big-time in the Sept. 10 Election Day.

Not that this measure was meant to honor Chicago in any way. Thome is a Peoria-area native who graduated from a Bartonville high school and played baseball briefly for Illinois Central College before signing with the Cleveland Indians organization where he played a significant portion of his career.

600 home runs not enough for Hall?

Which means, sadly enough, that if Thome’s 600-plus home runs is good enough to get him into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., someday, his bronze plaque likely will depict him in a cap bearing that ridiculous-looking “Chief Wahoo” head instead of the Old English “Sox” logo.

IF YOU THINK I’m kidding that 600 home runs isn’t enough for recognition, keep in mind that Sammy Sosa’s Chicago Cubbie glory days are no longer considered Hall of Fame-worthy, even though he also achieved that immortal standard.

But even if Thome doesn’t make it, he now will be able to say he has a highway named in his honor in his hometown. It may even be an excuse for White Sox fans to find an excuse to visit the city – if only to get their pictures taken with a Thome Highway sign in the background.

Thus far, Thome seems to have a reputation for being a ballplayer who didn’t use anabolic steroids to bolster his strength and baseball career.

Unlike people like Sosa and Mark McGwire, the one-time St. Louis Cardinals star who back after his 1998 stretch of 70 home runs that season had the interstate highway that leads from Illinois into downtown St. Louis named in his honor.

THAT IS INTERSTATE 70 (Get it!), and I remember when St. Louis officials were tickled pink (the same color that Cardinals uniforms turn once they fade due to age and/or poor laundering) to have the McGwire Highway.

No longer worthy of a highway in St. Louis

But the steroid stories connected to McGwire caused that highway to become the “Mark Twain Highway” back in 2010.

It would seem that the “Thome Highway” will be longer-lasting in Illinois.

  -30-

Cubs pick up yet another ex-Sox minor league affiliate for organization

I couldn’t help but chuckle when I learned this week that the Kane County Cougars of the Midwest League were no longer going to be a minor league baseball affiliate of the Chicago Cubs.

 

It was with such fanfare that the far west suburban-based ballclub announced it was going to be a part of the Chicago Cubs organization. It would be a chance for Cubs fans to see the future stars of the organization. It would strengthen the brand of the Cubs in the metro area.

 

YET AFTER JUST two years, the Cougars have decided they are better off with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Cubs didn’t renew their agreement, but instead have chosen to be affiliated with the South Bend Silver Hawks – also of the Midwest League.

 

Which amuses me because I can remember when professional baseball returned to South Bend, Ind., in 1988 – as an affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. In fact, for eight seasons into the mid-1990s, South Bend was a part of the White Sox organization.

 

I can remember when the talk about how decrepit Comiskey Park had become centered around the fact that South Bend’s Coveleski Stadium had nicer clubhouse facilities than the allegedly “major league” ballpark.

 

Many White Sox fans would make the trip to South Bend to catch an occasional game; which is what I’m sure the Cubs are hoping will happen. They want to think it will help them cut into the one part of the Midwest – northern Indiana – where the White Sox have a fan base.

 

WHAT I FIND funny is that this now makes the Cubs an organization with a top-level minor league team in Des Moines, Iowa (the Iowa Cubs) and another affiliate with the Tennessee Smokies of Knoxville, Tenn.

 

I recall the 1970s when it was the White Sox who were affiliated with Des Moines (the team was called the Iowa Oaks back then) and the Knoxville White Sox (the Knox Sox for short, to local baseball fans).

 

It makes me wonder if the day will come that it will be the Cubs will be the ones with affiliates in Charlotte, N.C. and Birmingham, Ala. – which have been combined as a part of the White Sox system since 1997.

 

It also makes me wonder the logic of the Cubs organization – which thought it was making a significant move for the organization by ditching their long-time affiliate with the Peoria Chiefs two years ago.

 

HAVING A MINOR league ballclub in Peoria benefitted the Cubs by appeasing those fans living in central Illinois. It gave them a sense that they could catch live baseball without having to make the trek all the way to the Lakeview neighborhood.

 

They gave that up for Kane County, where the Cubs already had a strong fan base. They gained little to nothing with that move. Although I’m sure if the Peoria Chiefs weren’t completely satisfied with their St. Louis Cardinals affiliation, they’d be eager to have the Cubs back.

 

Instead, the Cubs are now setting up a system that they say is meant to build championship ball clubs, but instead is seeming to be one consisting of White
Sox cast-offs.

 

How long will it be before the Wrigley Field scene includes a shower head or two erected in the bleachers, or long-time (and now retired) White Sox organist Nancy Faust to play at selected games?

 

  -30-

Free speech is a terrible thing to waste

I suppose I’m supposed to be up in arms and united behind a lawsuit filed by a Peoria man whose attempt at political parody managed to tick off the local mayor to the point where he sicc’ed his police department on the guy.

Yet there’s just something about this whole affair about a man who created an account on Twitter that purported to be the personal thoughts and expression thereof of Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis that would make me feel absurd to be in support of it.

FOR IT SEEMS that rather than offering any serious criticism of the policies of Ardis, or any attempt at humor related to those, this account usually portrayed the mayor as a drug-using buffoon who said things that were not so much outrageous, but stupid.

To my mindset, the account @peoriamayor was solely about defamation of character, and could have been the subject of a lawsuit by Hizzoner against Jon Daniel.

Instead, Ardis seems to think he is King Louis XVI (or at least Mel Brooks’ interpretation of him in “History of the World, Part I). “It’s good to be the mayor,” it would seem went through Ardis’ mind.

Because the end result was that municipal officials investigated and used subpoena power to force officials to disclose who was the source behind @peoriamayor.

THEN, THE POLICE went in. A raid, that wound up getting national attention a few months ago for its comical nature. The house was trashed. Police really didn’t find anything related to the Twitter account.

Daniel wasn’t even home at the time. He told the Chicago Tribune that he eventually went to the Police Department in Peoria, admitted the Twitter account was his, but wound up being charged with nothing.

After all, it’s not a crime to write nonsense and gibberish. I’m sure some clowns out there would argue I do it here every day.

The only person who wound up getting arrested from this police effort to be the mayor’s thugs was a Daniel friend who happened to be at the house at the time. And he only got arrested because police found marijuana in his possession.

PEORIA POLICE GO through all this trouble to investigate dissent and all they get out of it is a cheap drug bust!

Yes, Peoria city officials in this case are worthy of some embarrassment. And the lawsuit they’re now facing from Daniel may well be justified.

Yet that doesn’t mean I’m all that enthused about having to take up his cause and claim he’s some great defender of free speech – even though it seems that he regards himself as such.

When the gag that keeps getting repeated over-and-over in news accounts is the line from the Twitter account that had the Ardis character saying he was going to snort lines of cocaine while atop the Peoria Civic Center, it makes me wonder about the overall level of the site.

FART JOKES AND doody (or do you call it poo?) get old after one surpasses the age of six. Was this a site for people who mentally and emotionally can’t get over that hump? Freedom of speech really is just like the United Negro College Fund and the mind. It’s a terrible thing to waste!

For all the rhetoric we’re getting about how Daniel and his efforts were part of a great effort toward freedom of expression, I wonder about a site that tried to deceive people to think they were hearing from the actual mayor. I’d hope anyone with intelligence realized it wasn’t. But you never know with some individuals.

One final point – the ACLU attorneys who are representing Daniel in this case are comparing him to Thomas Nast and Jon Stewart and claiming that @peoriamayor was just another step in the great history of political parody.

Nast is long gone, and you can’t libel the dead. But if I were in Stewart’s position and had someone like this comparing this trivial work to that of The Daily Show, I’d give serious thought to filing a lawsuit claiming defamation of character!

  -30-

When it comes to adoption & Catholic Church; are we moving forward?

Is this at least one segment of the Catholic Church coming to its senses? Or is it one group figuring that someone else will pick up the legal costs, and that they will be able to benefit from someone else’s fight?

I’m not quite sure how to interpret the fact that Catholic Charities’ chapter in Peoria, Ill., is no longer a part of the court fight that is trying to keep the Catholic Church in the business of adoption of children.

THE CATHOLIC DIOCESE for Peoria, which covers a large segment of central Illinois, said it is dropping out of a lawsuit that says the state’s policies concerning adoption and gay couples is wrong, and they shouldn’t have to follow it.

What the Catholic organizations that are involved in adoption want is to be able to continue their long-standing policies of only providing children for adoption or foster care to heterosexual couples.

While state laws concerning civil unions give a legitimacy to the idea that gay couples are as legitimate as a married heterosexual couple. Which would pit the Catholic Church and the state at odds with each other.

That is what caused the Catholic dioceses of downstate Illinois to file their lawsuit challenging the state order that tells the Department of Children and Family Services to quit using Catholic Charities when it comes to placing the children that are in state custody.

AT LEAST ONE court has ruled that the state is right in such an action, on the grounds that if the church wants to be involved in adoptions and foster care then they have to play by the state’s rules (ie, the law).

That is what has the Peoria Diocese thinking that this legal fight is over. They decided last week to drop out of the fight, leaving it to the dioceses of Springfield, Joliet and Belleville to keep this battle going in court.

Reports are that by Jan. 31, the state will have transferred its contracts from the diocese to a new organization – although it’s not clear yet which group will get the contract to handle the children of central Illinois.

Although you know that whenever a government contract goes up for bid, there is always the potential for mischief and for somebody to get rich off the public tax dollar.

IT ALWAYS IS possible that if the remaining dioceses (it seems like the Springfield Diocese is most eager for this, although the Joliet Diocese that oversees Will and DuPage counties also is involved) find a court willing to reverse the sentiments of a judge in Springfield that the church has to follow state law just like everybody else, Catholic Charities in Peoria could decide to try to get back into the business of placing children who don’t have parents.

Then again, maybe they’re taking the attitude of the Catholic Charities for the Chicago Archdiocese – which decided a few years ago for completely-separate reasons that handling adoptions and foster children was just too much of a headache.

The reason this issue hasn’t gotten bigger play in Chicago is because our portion of the Catholic Church isn’t directly involved.

But it still does come down to the issue of whether or not groups can claim their own personal beliefs can allow them to get around certain portions of Illinois state law.

ALLOWING PEOPLE TO decide which laws they want to follow and which they don’t creates way too much potential for chaos in our society. I’d like to think that even the Catholic Church would agree with that latter statement.

And perhaps that is why this particular legal fight over adoption is no longer, to use the old cliché, playing in Peoria.

  -30-

Anti-abortion activists want to pressure United Way to score political points

It was a few years ago when the city council in Lockport, Ill., was set to give formal approval to a resolution praising the charitable work done by the United Way when one of the aldermen insisted on turning the symbolic gesture into a political stink.

That particular alderman in the Will County city of nearly 24,000 people was heavily influenced by his religion – he was Catholic. He also was determined to use the resolution to make a public statement against the concept of abortion being legal in the United States.

HE ADAMANTLY REFUSED to let his colleagues take a vote on the measure until he was personally given assurances that the United Way chapter that served his hometown did not provide any financial support to women’s health clinics that made abortion of pregnancy available.

In the end, the resolution passed (the chapters in Will County did not provide any financial aid that could be tied directly to abortion-related services) and the alderman in question piped down – having made his point.

What makes me recall this moment from my reporter past (I was writing for a newspaper at the time and I covered the hearing when this happened) is that there’s a good chance we’re going to see similar outbursts all across Illinois in coming months.

The Glen Ellyn-based Illinois Family Institute (somehow, I’m on their e-mail list) distributed a commentary written by a Peoria-based pastor who wants everybody to start cracking down on the United Way chapter in their hometown to make a statement against abortion.

REV. JAMES McDONALD, in his commentary, said his problem with United Way is that local chapters across Illinois make donations to Planned Parenthood – the long-demonized group that operates health clinics (some of which make abortion-related services available) and provides other services meant to help women who are pregnant.

Since United Way chapters provide their financial help to a common Planned Parenthood fund for Illinois, that means indirectly, every United Way chapter is providing aid to the local Planned Parenthood facilities that offer abortions, even if the ones in their local hometowns do not.

Or, as McDonald chooses to see it, financial donations to United Way from rural residents are being used to support the, “large abortion clinics in Aurora, Champaign and Chicago.”

“I encourage you to end your support of any organization that gives monies to the cause of darkness,” McDonald wrote. “Should a Christian support any organization or any candidate who endorses this modern-day holocaust?”

I COULD NITPICK against the attempt to dredge up Third Reich imagery through use of the word “holocaust” by pointing out that in Nazi Germany, the government of Adolf Hitler was vehemently opposed to abortion, and actually considered it to be a capital crime by doctors and (on occasion) the pregnant women themselves.

But giving in to the overly hysterical rhetoric of the anti-abortion right does not accomplish much.

What really disgusts me about this plea couched in religious terms is that it is a blatant attempt by rural activists to impose their view on the issue across the state. If anything, that viewpoint is already too prevalent.

Many health care professionals see the issue of abortion access as being one of it not being easy enough to obtain. Abortion services are not equally available to all of Illinois’ residents.

ANY WOMAN WHO lives outside the Chicago area (with the exception of those living in Champaign, or perhaps Bloomington/Normal or Springfield) is going to have a hard time finding a local clinic where the medical procedure (and that’s exactly what it is) can be obtained under safe conditions.

A woman who desires to end a pregnancy is either going to have to make a lengthy trip to a strange place, or accept the fact that her rights deriving from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in “Roe vs. Wade” do not apply to her because of where she lives.

Too many of the local officials in rural communities are willing to use their political influence to keep women’s health clinics and other services out of their areas. Perhaps that is their right. But it is silly for them to start thinking they can somehow impact the services made available in those “wicked places” such as Aurora or Champaign.

THEY WANT THE pressure put on United Way chapters to make their abortion-related statement, even though many do not provide any direct aid to women’s clinics. And the idea that ties between various chapters of a common organization is somehow insidious strikes me more as being ridiculous.

If anything, I wonder how much these people would be complaining about Planned Parenthood if their chapters in different cities and towns made no effort to work together. I can already hear the rhetoric lambasting the organization’s fundraising efforts as doing little more than paying for wasteful administrative expenses.

The same thing can be said about the limited cooperation that takes place between United Way chapters across the state. Reducing money spent on bureaucracy does not mean a scary organization is looming over the Land of Lincoln.

I’M HOPING UNITED Way chapters manage to stand firm against the verbal barrage they will be hit with in coming months. Because I have no doubt the rhetoric will become ugly. For what it is worth, Rev. McDonald has copy written that he will make available to anyone who wants to use it to write nasty letters to their local United Way chapter.

I recall the Will County United Way officials from a few years back thought it incredulous that anyone seriously thought they were providing direct assistance to abortion.

I would hope that same attitude prevails today.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Perhaps I need to quit reading my e-mails from the Illinois Family Institute (http://www.illinoisfamily.org/news/contentview.asp?c=33945) so as to avoid reading rubbish such as this commentary.

Access to abortion related medical (http://www.abortionaccess.org/content/view/59/62/) services depend heavily on where one lives.

Mention the name “Planned Parenthood,” and you are destined to provoke a verbal (http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19751893&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8) brawl.

Planned Parenthood relies on far more than the United Way to raise money to pay (http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB121417762585295459-lMyQjAxMDI4MTI0MzEyNzM3Wj.html) for the services it makes available to women.

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.

-30-

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.