From Butt of Jokes to Toast of the Town? Not Exactly

Just east of Wrigley Field, in the heart of the Cubs nation, a Chicago White Sox banner hangs over the banister of an apartment porch.

It’s an unthinkable sight.

After decades of suffering in a town where their team was the butt of jokes, routinely overshadowed by the beloved Chicago Cubs, White Sox fans now find themselves in the position of being envied.

“I have people saying to me: ‘You know, I’ve always thought the Sox were a scrappy team. Think they can win the World Series for Chicago?’ ” said William “Butch” Nelson, 63, a resident of the South Side neighborhood of Bridgeport who as a teenager worked as a White Sox usher at Comiskey Park.

“It makes me crazy, these Johnny-come-latelys,” Nelson said. “Where have they been ... all these years? They don’t deserve to enjoy our win.”

In the Windy City, the baseball team you cheer for says much about your economic status and neighborhood loyalties. And there has been little love lost between fans north and south of Madison Street, the road that physically and philosophically divides this town.

On Monday, none of the bars across from Wrigley Field posted signs congratulating the White Sox, who are going to the World Series for the first time since 1959.

Not that the pubs to the south were much friendlier two years ago. When the Cubs faced the Florida Marlins in the 2003 National League championship series, one South Side bar put up a banner that read, “Go Marlins!”

“The Sox are from the south, where the factories were built and the factory workers lived. The Cubs are from the north, where the factory owners lived in the nicer neighborhoods,” said Richard Lindberg, author and White Sox historian. “Even though the city has gone through enormous gentrification, and the ethnic lines have moved, people here still see things the same way.

“Can we all get along?” Lindberg asked. “I doubt it.”

Suffering has become a way of life for many White Sox fans, as has a bitterness that is oddly comforting.

For more than a century, the Schaller family has nursed broken spirits and baseball dreams at its pub in Bridgeport, about a mile west of where the White Sox play. Comiskey Park was torn down in 1991 and replaced by a new ballpark next door, now known as U.S. Cellular Field.

Owner Jack Schaller still gets teary-eyed when he recalls the last time the White Sox broke his heart. It was 1959. The team was facing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. Behind the dark wooden bar at Schaller’s Pump, Schaller and his patrons listened to a radio broadcast of every strike and every run scored.

“It was grim in here when they lost,” said Schaller, 81. “To be a Sox fan, you have to be very thick-skinned, and you have to be tough enough to be called a second-class baseball fan.”

But cheering the White Sox is a family tradition. Schaller’s grandfather and father were fans. Seven of his children and all of his grandchildren are fans.

Then there’s his youngest child, Jay.

“His mother dropped him on his head, I’m sure of it. It’s the only way to explain why he likes the Cubs,” Schaller deadpanned.

Jay, 42, sighed and rolled his eyes as he wiped down the bar.

“You would not believe how much grief I’m getting these days,” Jay said. “I’m just waiting for next season to hurry up and get here.”

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley is among those feeling vindicated.

Last week, the Bridgeport native proudly walked into a news conference wearing white socks and a Sox baseball cap -- and snarled at the Tribune Co., which owns the Cubs and the Chicago Tribune newspaper. Tribune Co. also owns the Los Angeles Times.

Daley insisted that media bias -- particularly by the Tribune -- is one reason the White Sox aren’t favored in Chicago.

He pointed to the Tribune’s recent front-page recollections about the 1919 World Series scandal involving the team that became known as the Chicago Black Sox.

“Why do they have to bring that up?” Daley asked. “They won’t do it against the Cubs.”

Although similar rivalries flourish in other two-team markets such as New York and Southern California, Lindberg said, “the Sox fans always worry about losing their team to another city because of low attendance.”

The Cubs routinely sell out Wrigley Field regardless of their record, while the White Sox’s attendance traditionally lingers at the bottom in the American League. Owner Jerry Reinsdorf nearly moved the team to Florida in the 1980s.

Even this year, when the White Sox had the best record in the league, the team couldn’t capture the hearts or pocketbooks of fans in the nation’s third-largest city: Ticket sales were 2.3 million, compared to nearly 3.1 million in attendance for the Cubs.

Which may be why the White Sox announced Monday that they would guarantee tickets to one of the four World Series games scheduled for U.S. Cellular Field as long as the buyer puts down a deposit on 2006 season tickets.

To a certain degree, fans complain, the White Sox have caused their own pain.

There was, of course, the 1919 Black Sox scandal. In the years that followed, in terest in the team dwindled. At the same time, the Cubs began winning pennants and attracting new fans.

After the White Sox won the American League pennant in 1959, Chicago’s fire commissioner sounded the city’s air raid sirens in celebration. Unfortunately, “the Cold War was on, and when people heard the sirens, they thought the Russians were invading,” said Studs Terkel, the author and oral historian. “People hid ... waiting for the attack.”

In 1976, the team’s warm-weather uniform included shorts -- and players were reluctant to slide out of concern they might injure themselves. Then there was the infamous Disco Demolition riot in 1979, where more than 5,000 fans who’d brought disco records to toss into a bonfire rushed the field.

“We all want to forget the past,” said David Strouse, 47, who married his wife, Laurie, at home plate at U.S. Cellular Field last month. “Even my friends who are Cubs fans say they just want Chicago to win a World Series.”

Of course, Strouse noted, if that happens, if the city ends its 87-season championship drought, Chicago will have a South Side team to thank.