Judging by the number of games we’ve seen in person at Sox Park, my cousin George and I aren’t the best White Sox fans around. In the last four years the Sox have played about 320 games at home, and we’ve probably missed about 50 of them.
We get excited about the Sox in April, realistic in June, delirious again in July and August, before dealing with the bleak prospect of autumn. Then we realize that we have families.
Our patient and wonderful wives know that George doesn’t drink and I’ll have one rarely. We don’t play the horses, we don’t play cards or shoot dice. We don’t chase women. (Yes, I fish for fish, but that doesn’t count, does it?) And we remain bitterly faithful to the Sox.
The summers at the ballpark–watching a talented team refuse to play team baseball and instead swing for home runs and their own statistics–should give a person a healthy perspective on pain. It’s what we have, as Sox fans now, and what we’ve always had, without any cute curses of goats or Bambinos.
Cousin George is a former college linebacker, a jujitsu black belt and an oral surgeon. He should be used to handling pain by now. But he can’t take it, the poor guy.
He just called me to say he can’t attend Wednesday’s game, the final Sox home game of the season, against the Yankees, who, as of Tuesday, had their champagne on glittery ice in the vi4sitors clubhouse.
“I’ve got things to do,” he said.
Things? What things?
“Oh, things,” George said.
It hurts that much?
“Oh yeah,” he said. “You know.”
He might be persuaded to show up, but only a barbarian would pressure a man who’s been through this season. We’re friends, and our families go back for untold generations in the village on the mountain plateau in the old country, and he’s earned the right to skip a game.
He’s wise for not wanting to inflict mental torture on himself in public. So he’ll do it in private and watch it on TV. What will hurt will be those disappointed empty spaces in Hawk Harrelson’s graceful play-by-play.
So even if George doesn’t show up at a silent ballpark to hear that terrible silence when the season is over too early, the broadcast silences will be just as final. They are the lousy silences that hurt because they could have been excited silences, with the promise of October in them.
Instead, he’ll hear empty spaces between Hawk’s sentences, which are the bridge to Hawk’s golf bag and the end of another year with winter coming.
And since I’m not wise, I’ll probably show up, sit there and commiserate with fellow season-ticket holders. We’ll shake our heads and shrug, like people at a wake, although at a wake, at least you have the benefit of knowing you’re the one who’s alive. But at the final home game in a season like this, that’s debatable.
The baseball emotion has been cut out of us, in the most disappointing sports season I can remember because this was the Sox’s year. That sounds ridiculous now, doesn’t it?
Of course it’s ridiculous. But it was a reality, once. There was talent and pitching and, for a bit, hitting, but they had serious heart trouble.
Their hearts escaped their bodies finally against the Minnesota Twins. Baseball experts can point to bad base running and a lack of situational hitting and a closer who disappeared, but it was the heart of this team that failed them. Those of you who aren’t Sox fans can’t understand, and why should you?
You’re rational beings. You’re probably Cubs fans, wise and happy and deserving, like my brothers, Pete and Nick.
What’s troubling is the sadness we Sox fans are feeling with the Cubs still in it, and my shameless compulsion to wallow, publicly. If the Sox were in the hunt still, I’d be tempted to insert the e-mail I just received from a young woman in Madison, Wis.
Oh, what the heck. Here goes:
Five Chicago sports fans were climbing a mountain one day. Each was a fan of a different Chicago team and each proclaimed to be the most loyal fan of all. As they climbed higher, they argued as to which was the most loyal. They continued bickering all the way to the top.
Suddenly, the Blackhawks fan hurled himself from the peak, shouting, “This is for the Hawks!” as he fell to his doom.
Not wanting to be outdone in the loyalty department, the Bulls fan threw himself off the precipice, proclaiming, “This is for the greatest team of the ’90s!” Seeing this, the Bears fan shouted, “This is for DA COACH!!!” as he leapt to his death.
The two remaining fans looked at each other in stunned silence. After a minute the Sox fan bellowed, “This is for everyone on the South Side!!”
Then he pushed the Cubs fan off the mountain.
I know that’s mean, but I can’t help it. It’s jealousy talking. Cubs fans, your team has heart. And they’re from Chicago. So, this will kill me, but here it is:
Go Cubs.
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jskass@tribune.com
