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Lamenting Chicago's baseball woes
In honor of Frank (The Big Pain) Thomas' decision to show up at Chicago White Sox training camp on Tuesday, six days after walking out in a huff over his paltry $9.9 million salary, I'd like to offer a modest prediction regarding Windy City baseball. Despite Thomas' burly and surly presence, 2001 will mark the 84th consecutive year that neither the White Sox nor their crosstown comrades in bad arms, the Cubs, will win the World Series. Think about that. Ponder what it must be like to live in a city with two major league teams and, in the course of a long and otherwise happy life, never once tasting World Series victory. Not in your carefree teens, in the midst of the Great Depression. Not in your 20s, when the world was at war. Not in your 30s, when you put away your uniform, discovered the dry martini, and helped launch the baby boom. Not in your 40s, when Sputniks soared across the night sky and the Cold War was at its peak. Not in your 50s, when Vietnam tore the country apart. Not in your 60s, when the plague of disco spread across the land. Not in your 70s, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Not in your 80s, the new millennium's dawn. Through it all, as time marched relentlessly on, one thing didn't change. Wouldn't change. The Cubs and White Sox lost. All their lives elderly Cubs and Chisox fans have waited and hoped that once, just once, those long Windy City winters would be warmed by the memories of October baseball and ticker-tape parades. The last time the Chisox won the Series was in 1917. The last time the Cubs won was in 1908. In a few years, no living man or woman will remember either championship. Boston flogs itself because the Red Sox haven't won a World Series since 1918, when Babe Ruth pitched in Fenway Park. But that's one team, one 82-season drought. Add the Cubs and Chisox years of futility together, and you have 166 championship-less seasons. The Dark Ages ended quicker than that. How could this be? Chicago's not some poor, second-rate burg. It's the third largest city in the U.S. behind New York and L.A., with a vibrant, diversified economy. It loves its baseball. The Cubs, a perennially weak team playing in the second-smallest park in the majors, routinely draw more than two million fans each year. They're owned by a media giant, the Tribune Company, which televises Cubs games over WGN, a cable superstation. If it chose to, the Tribune Company has sufficiently deep pockets to compete with other large-market teams for the game's best players. It could model the Cubs after the Atlanta Braves, a perennial championship contender that's owned by a media giant. Instead, year after year the Cubs trot out a second-rate product, counting on "the friendly confines" of Wrigley Field to lure people through the gate. "Winning isn't everything," Vince Lombardi famously said. The Cubs, who haven't even been to a World Series since 1945, have done Vince one better: Winning isn't anything. At least White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf tries. The Sox have recently put together one of the best minor-league development systems in baseball, and the big club, led by The Big Pain, inarguably can hit. Until last year's playoffs, that is, when Thomas, no doubt brooding about how much money he was worth, went a tidy 0-for-9 as the Sox were summarily swept. Defense and pitching, of course, win championships, and the Sox defense is woeful. And even with the addition of starter David Wells, the Sox pitching can't stand up to the stronger staffs in the league. Neither the depth nor the quality is there to compete in October. So here at the start of spring training, with everyone at last in camp, Chicago baseball fans can start their familiar chant: Wait 'til next century! Patience, after all, is its own reward, and Rome wasn't built in a day. E.M. Swift is a Sports Illustrated senior writer and a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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