After two nights of raucous, Sox-fueled celebration in Chicago, Tuesday saw a mellower Windy City fan base cheering Game 3 around televisions at home or in the comforts of favorite neighborhood spots.
At the flashiest end was River North’s ESPN Zone, the two-story, three-bar, two-restaurant complex where White Sox fans began appearing by 4:45 p.m., happy to pay the $10 per hour, per person, minimum bar tab.
By 6 p.m., the place was packed. The weekday crowd sported little in the way of White Sox paraphernalia but cheered loudly for the Chicago team while watching on the seemingly endless array of screens.
Standing out even in that crowd were Ed Nykiel, 54, who drove from suburban Plainfield with his wife Barb, 53, and their two children and their children’s friends. The whole family was decked out in White Sox garb and began hollering at the television during player introductions.
“Let’s go, Paulie!” Nykiel shouted as Sox first baseman Paul Konerko was introduced.
He was among the few shouting, and wondered aloud if the place wasn’t filled with Cubs fans.
“I could sit home in my living room and watch this, but you want to enjoy this time. This is an occasion you never have in Chicago. It’s like, don’t pinch me–I don’t want to wake up,” Nykiel said.
He looked around.
“It seems subdued,” he said. “Or maybe I’m too excited.”
At game time in Bridgeport, the neighborhood was a ghost town compared with the raucous activities of the weekend. White Sox pennants, flags and signs stood proudly on side streets, competing with Halloween decorations for prime window space.
The only people in sight seemed to be those who had to be out. Ellisse Solis, the 23-year-old owner of Hot Spot Wings on 35th Street, said pickups and deliveries had skyrocketed Tuesday, with many in the Sox’s home neighborhood obviously choosing to watch the game at home.
Nearby, it had been nine days straight at work for Bob O’Malley, 59, co-owner of O’Malley’s Hotdogs on 35th Street.
“Business would be great if there was a Game 7, but I just want them to win it,” he said. As tired as he was at the beginning of the third game, he doesn’t know if he can make it to seven games. He closed an hour early, during the first inning.
“Everybody’s on lockdown, and I want to watch the game,” he said.
Home was the last place that Jackie Endeman, 21, of Cicero wanted to watch the game. She had plans to hit the Bridgeport taverns. But she didn’t make it much farther that the Bridgeport Diner at 35th and Halsted Streets.
She sat on a stool sipping coffee at the low, wrap-around counter, peering up at a 24-inch television perched on a refrigerated pastry cabinet, her chin in her hand, her elbow on the linoleum countertop, a thin wisp of smoke curling up from the ashtray beside her. The game’s early innings weren’t helping her mood.
“I can’t take this,” she declared in the bottom of the third inning.
“Garland looks nervous. He really needs to relax,” she said. The spoon in her coffee cup tinkled as she twirled the half-cooled dregs left in it.
The mood was barely more buoyant at Bud’s Place in Tinley Park, where the waitresses and waiters wore black restaurant T-shirts with the year 1959 crossed out on the back. The restaurant was full but somber, the television sounds crisp in the near silence of the bar and off-track-betting rooms.
“Right now, nobody knows what to do, because we haven’t had a loss in, like, two weeks,” said a nervous Tammy Goldstein, the 35-year-old co-owner of the bar, and a Sox fan.
“I never think the Sox will lose,” she said. And then came the fifth inning’s five-run Sox rally, and anything seemed possible.
