Insulted? Wait till October
On an unseasonable warm October afternoon, the Chicago Cubs staged a thrilling comeback and used a dramatic walk-off homer by hero Aramis Ramirez to beat the White Sox 4-3 in the first game of the 2008 World Series.
The shot to the shrubbery beyond the center field ivy was Ramirez' second …
What's that? Oops, my bad. Intoxicated by Friday's heady atmosphere at Wrigley Field, I jumped the gun a bit and started writing the story I plan to write four months from now.
The real story is that the Cubs simply win game No. 74 of a 162-game season to stay in first place, while the Sox lose and still stay in first place.
But the 41,106 fans rocking Wrigley Field and hundreds more jamming rooftops outside the ballpark sure make it seem like a playoff game. A Sox fan throws back Cubs slugger Derrek Lee's homer. Cubs fans explode when Kerry Wood strikes out Sox villain A.J. Pierzynski in the ninth inning. Fans for both teams are full of hope and love and fear and loathing.
"I love the Sox, and I hate the Cubs," says Mike Watrakiewicz, 17, of wholesome Wheaton, explaining his brassy "Cuck the Fubs" T-shirt, which exhibits just enough swear-ambiguity to sneak into a family newspaper.
Standing in the bleachers to "cheer every Sox run, every Sox hit," Watrakiewicz is labeled "the one bad apple in the bunch" by his gang of Cubs-backing buddies, and he hears it from the fans long before and after Ramirez's homer ends it.
"There's always tomorrow," Watrakiewicz says. "I was a die-hard Cubs fan until fifth grade. I didn't know anything about the Sox. And then I started watching the Sox."
That Cubs 2003 post-season collapse and the 2005 World Series championship on the South Side probably helped complete his transition from Cubs to Sox.
Vendor Joseph Dauber, 17, of Lincolnwood wears a T-shirt under his work vest that offers a different explanation for how people become Sox fans. His shirt tells the story of a kindergartner reprimanded by his teacher for blindly wearing a Cubs hat just because his parents are Cubs fans.
"What would you do if your parents were drug-dealers and hookers?" the teacher asks.
"Well," the boy replies, "then I would be a White Sox fan."
A lanky teen, Dauber and his brother Ben know the shirt could aggravate some burly Sox fan.
"It's a good thing the Sox fans can't read," Dauber says.
That sort of ribbing is money in the pocket for vendors outside Wrigley.
Wearing his Wood jersey, Cubs fan John Frushour, 28, can't resist buying a $20 "Sux" shirt that mocks the Sox. A Marine who lived in Naperville when he was attending Benet Academy in Lisle, Frushour says he doesn't hate the Sox, but being a Cubs fan means "I support my team and screw the other guy," he says.
Among the biggest sellers at one stand are shirts that show Harry Caray saying, "Holy Crap! Sox Still Suck!" and a shirt listing Chicago's three greatest disasters as "The Fire," "The Flood" and "The Sox."
"It sells even when the Sox are out of town," says vendor Brian Champion, 23, of the North Side. "That's because, and I quote, 'Sox Suck.' "
A season-long vendor outside Wrigley, Angelo Avina, 28, of Cicero clearly relishes a chance to wear his Sox jacket and Sox hat as he sells "Friends don't let friends be Cubs fans" T-shirts. A true capitalist, he also sells an anti-Sox shirt. To ease his conscience, the Sox fan says he sells the anti-Cubs shirt for $15 and charges Cubs fans $20 for the Sux shirt.
Hawking a variety of Sox-bashing options, vendor Joe Sienk, 45, of Carol Stream says it's all about making money to support his four kids.
"I'm a Sox fan even though I sell this stuff," Sienk says, holding shirts that read "Sux: They Gone!" and deriding U.S. Cellular Field as the "World's Largest Ghetto."
"Doesn't that burn your fingers holding that stuff?" chides fellow vendor and Sox fan Josh Soich, 28, of the South Side.
"At first, it bothered me," Sienk admits. "But the T-shirts don't change whether they win or lose. The players have got to feed their kids. I've got to feed my four kids. It's all about the money."
Soich understands. Even while talking up his shirt that shows the World Series trophy on one side and two male Cubs figures standing under a rainbow on the other ("Wrigley has the gay parade. We host the World Series parade"), Soich confesses that he has an inventory of "Sox Suck" shirts.
"It's my business," he shrugs.
Fans from both teams are hoping there will be a market for negative shirts come October.
"This will be big during the World Series," Sienk says of his prospective Cubs/Sox sales. "That's what I'm looking for."
I'll be ready.