Saturday, September 17, 2005

And now for something completely different

The Chicago White Sox lost today to the Minnesota Twins and one of the best pitchers in MLB, Johan Santana. The loss shaves another half-game off a diminishing lead that looked unsurmountable four weeks ago.

As I mentioned in my profile, I grew up a Cub fan. Now here in greater Chicago, the general response of Cub fans is "Sox suck!" But au contraire, mon ami!

First of all, let me set the stage. I am old, very old (as of Wednesday, a painful 48). I grew up in Illinois' version of Appalachia, a town of 300 people, a high school of 137, where you were either a Cub or Cardinal fan. My kids (the oldest not a kid any more, a sophomore at DePauw University and a contributor to this blog) look at me like I have an axe in my head when I tell them I had two TV channels to watch growing up (hey, I didn't meet a Catholic until college or a Jewish person until law school). We had NBC's "Game of the Week" which was ALWAYS the Yankees, Red Sox or Dodgers, and then on Sundays, and the odd night game on the (WAY before cable) we would get the WGN Chicago Cubs Continental Broadcasting Network (Anyone from Champaign, Springfield, Des Moines, the Quad Cities, South Bend, etc. of a certain age knows what I mean) on one channel and the Cardinals on another.

And those folks like me generally didn't give much thought to the White Sox, because unfortunately UNTIL RECENTLY the Sox did not market properly and did not understand the power of television. But as a downstater moved up here, I want the White Sox to win every game they play except against the Cubs. I want playoff baseball in town. So my long-winded point is this...CHICAGO WHITE SOX, WIN THE %^^&**ing division!

p.s. Cardinals suck

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Even Chicagoans born circa 1960 remember "Continental Broadcasting." I just wonder if it existed because Tribune Company actually had to employ a "buffer" between themselves and WGN-TV in order to satisfy some ancient FCC rule.....