That Toddlin’ Team Should Stay That Way

In most cases, I believe, a baseball fan’s favorite team is the team of his or her childhood. The team you grew up with. The team that meant the most to you back when you were small enough to think that baseball players, musicians, movie stars and politicians were bigger heroes than soldiers, explorers, educators and inventors.

Baseball lovers of all ages form attachments to their favorite teams, and refuse to let go. Year after year, they expend an awful lot of energy rooting for their darlings to win the World Series, and do an awful lot of moping around the house when they do not.

Like old Joe in “Damn Yankees,” they would do anything to see their team win one lousy pennant. Even sell their souls to Satan, maybe.

Ask around. Ask around show-biz, for instance. Ask Donald Sutherland what he would offer for one pennant for the Montreal Expos, or Jonathan Winters what he’d give to get the Cincinnati Reds back to the Series again. Ask Barry Levinson or Joan Jett how they feel about the Baltimore Orioles being closer to the bottom of the standings than the top.

Check with Tom Selleck, George C. Scott, George Peppard or Jeff Daniels and see if they can ever get enough of the Detroit Tigers winning ballgames. Ask President Reagan or Raymond Floyd or Seka--hardly ever mentioned in the same sentence--about their undying devotion to the Chicago Cubs, or Stephen King and John Updike about their words of love for the Boston Red Sox.

There is a big shot with a recording company in Los Angeles who gets dressed up in a full Philadelphia Phillies uniform and serves as their batboy when they play at Dodger Stadium. Tom Dreesen, the comedian, does the same thing for the Cubs. Now, that’s loyalty.

These people hate it when their favorite teams fail. Less famous fans feel every bit as bad, or worse.

They ache.

Well, fellow sufferers, my favorite team hasn’t won the World Series since 1917.

For the last 70 years, my boys have gone out there and done their best, which usually turns out to be about as good as somebody else’s worst. In 70 years, they have won one pennant, and one division championship, and that is it.

I thought things could get no worse.

But now, things are just about as bad as they can get. Two gentlemen who happen to own my favorite team are threatening to move the entire franchise--lock, stock and bottle-barreled bats--to another city. They sound perfectly serious, too.

Color me nervous.

Throughout recent seasons, there have been misconceptions, even among my closest friends, as to the identity of my favorite team. Some figure Cleveland, because hanging on the Indians’ stadium walls are giant reproductions of my columns in the Sporting News, picking them every year to win the pennant.

Others figure Detroit, because I used to live there. Some figure Los Angeles, because I live there now. Some figure the Angels, because they doubt that I am cool enough to like the Dodgers.

Most assume it is the Cubs, because they know that I grew up near Chicago. They also know that I hold membership in the Emil Verban Society, a loyal order of Cub fans, with my official membership number falling right between Justice Harry Blackmun and Tom (Happy Days) Bosley.

Sorry. Afraid not.

I must fess up at this point that my team is the Chicago White Sox, and has been since my boyhood. Probably 24 of the first 25 ballgames I ever saw were Sox games. We were South Side types.

I was a paperboy, and our circulation manager used to treat the carriers to free trips to Comiskey Park, not Wrigley Field. The Cubs might as well have been in Wisconsin. My idea of a hero was Nellie Fox, not Ernie Banks.

When the White Sox--never Chisox or Pale Hose, by the way--won the American League pennant in 1959, we went wild. The mayor set the city’s air-raid sirens off, scaring little old ladies into thinking the Martians had finally landed.

I was a little, fat, happy kid. Being fat in Chicago has never been a handicap, so don’t feel sorry for me. Chicago has always loved the fat. Back then we had Mayor Daley, Sherm Lollar, Ray Meyer and Early Wynn.

Later years would bring William Perry, Roger Ebert, Rick Reuschel, Oprah Winfrey, Wilbur Wood, LaMarr Hoyt, Greg Luzinski, Steve Dahl, Harold Washington and Herman Franks. Chicago is fat city.

We went to Comiskey and ate the great fried chicken and the tostadas and the hot, sugared fried dough and the Italian ices and the sausage-and-pepper sandwiches, and we jammed ourselves into our seats to cheer for the Sox. Usually, they’d lose. Sometimes, they got hot.

They had a team in 1977 that was as much fun as any club I have ever been around. They had Oscar Gamble and Richie Zisk and Roadrunner Ralph Garr and Francisco (Frankie) Barrios, and they kicked butt. They won 90 games that season, and turned the town upside down, introducing curtain calls after home runs, and singing “Na na na na, hey hey hey, goodby!” after every win.

In time, I lost track of the White Sox, and they became just another team. My professional objectivity grew. By 1983, when they won 99 times, I was almost blase about it. Their loss to the Orioles in the league championship series didn’t upset me at all.

It was only the other day, when Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn, the owners, threatened to take the franchise from Chicago to St. Petersburg, Fla., that my insides caught fire. Maybe that’s the trouble. Maybe people should care more. Maybe we shouldn’t wait for a businessman to come along and treat our favorite team like a business.

Rein & Ein, whom George Steinbrenner once referred to as Abbott and Costello, want a new stadium built. If the thing doesn’t go up in a hurry, they are going to pull a Phoenix Cardinals and move the team to St. Pete, where a fancy new 43,000-seat palace awaits.

In the most calm, understanding, sophisticated manner possible, let me just say this to the two owners:

Over my dead body. Just try to move the White Sox, you dirty dogs, and I will personally come to St. Petersburg and throw oranges at anybody who enters the on-deck circle.

Don’t you dare move my team. You leave the White Sox right where they belong. You can put them in some suburb, if you have to, but don’t go to Florida. It’s too hot down there. The spring’s OK, but not the summer. Fans will rise to their feet for a 7th-inning stroke.

What is Chicago coming to? First lights at Wrigley Field; now the St. Petersburg White Sox. Madness.

If this keeps up, I am going to start telling people I grew up in California.