The World Series champion Chicago White Sox!
Seven words and an exclamation point strung together in a combination that seemed an agonizing eternity in the making.
There is a sweetness to the White Sox championship that doesn’t accompany a title win in cities more accustomed to such feats.
The sports legacy of Chicago is deep and proud. For parts of the last century, the Bears dominated football as the Monsters of the Midway–and then shuffled off to the Super Bowl in 1985 with one of the most fearsome and colorful pro squads ever assembled. The Jordan-era Bulls were unparalleled in NBA annals.
But the missing link in those memories has long been baseball. Chicago’s two teams have become known not for their success but for their unparalleled record of futility. Between them, the Sox and Cubs until Wednesday had logged a combined 185 years without a national championship. The last Series win by the Sox came in 1917; the Cubs’ in 1908. No major league city has known a drought as long.
That, thankfully, is now behind us.
At the dawn of the 21st Century, the baseball fates seem on a mission to erase the game’s oldest curses. Last year’s champion Boston Red Sox shook off the Babe Ruth trade hex. This year it was our Sox, who hadn’t won a Series since before that difficulty in 1919. Next year, who knows? Will the Cubs unburden themselves of the bad karma from that goat?
There’s a tendency to overintellectualize pivotal moments in sports, to reach too hard for deep meaning and symbolism. But at its heart, the Sox victory speaks to nothing more complicated than running out each play, pitching surgically, and bunting runners along rather than always swinging for the fences–and the glory. Grinder ball, they call it. Blue-collar style play (despite the millionaire paychecks) in the shadow of the old stockyards.
With their abundance of great pitching, the Sox could become a dynasty. Or the whole thing could fall apart next year if free-agent slugger Paul Konerko departs, or manager Ozzie Guillen carries through on a once uttered threat to quit if he wins the World Series, or if any one of a dozen other dark possibilities occurs.
But whatever happens, the Sox have given their fans immense pride and a trove of memories to tide them over through the winter cold and the fallow baseball seasons that will come. Years from now, Chicago baseball fans will still be recalling the light-hitting Geoff Blum–yes, Geoff Blum, the seldom-used utility man who won the longest game in Series history with a 14th-inning home run.
We wish the White Sox many happy, and speedy, returns. A child born Wednesday night shouldn’t have to wait another 88 years, until 2093, to utter those seven delicious words: The World Series champion Chicago White Sox!
