So happy together
Maybe it is the omen of the brilliant rainbow that appears beyond the right-field wall at Wrigley Field before Sunday night's game. Maybe the trouble-maker drunks already suffer hangovers by the time the game starts, or are intimidated by the police on horseback dominating the landscape after the game. Maybe it is the proactive security guards who throw out the first fan two hours before Hollywood director Rob "All in the Family" Reiner throws out a blazing ceremonial first pitch that is no meatball.
Or maybe fans have done the Cubs-Sox rivalry thing for so long now that people finally have learned to coexist.
Smiling at the woman on his arm wearing her Sox jersey, Cubs fan Pete Simonetti, 22, of Lombard, confesses that "we did the wave together" at a White Sox game at U.S. Cellular Field. Girlfriend Caitlin McBride, 21, of St. Charles, admits she has learned to cheer for the Cubs when they aren't playing her Sox.
"The first couple of games, I did not," McBride says. "And then he started making me."
They met at the Best Buy store where they work in Geneva, and knew each other's baseball loyalties before they started dating.
"I thought maybe I could convert her. That hasn't happened yet," says Simonetti, who wears the jersey of Cubs sub Matt Murton.
But the relationship survives this weekend's three-game sweep by the homer-happy Cubs -- from a dramatic win Friday, to Saturday's pounding, to a thumping on Sunday.
"When it gets to the World Series, it might end after that," a smiling Simonetti says, adding that he'd love to see his team play her team in October.
That October possibility also would thrill (and divide) the Previti family of Bolingbrook. Decked out in Cubs blue, parents Mike and Karen Previti go to Sunday's game with their sons, who wear Sox gear.
"When he first started getting into baseball, the Sox had a terrific year," Karen Previti says to explain 10-year-old Joe's allegiance, which spills onto younger brother Tony, 9, who unabashedly roots for the Sox.
The boys say things could be worse.
"They are at least Chicago fans," Joe says of his parents. "My friends are Cardinal fans."
Honorary batkid Kristen Rehberger, 11, of Buffalo Grove, says she loves the Cubs, but she demurely refuses to badmouth the Sox, saying only that she and the Sox are "not best friends."
On a perfect night with plenty of kids in the crowd, the only noticeable explosives (aside from those provided by Cubs' bats) are a noisy 7th-inning amateur fireworks show echoing from somewhere in the neighborhood outside Wrigley, and the usual suspects.
"They've been drinking shots," a security man says, shaking his head, as two young women -- one in a Cubs hat, the other in a Sox jersey -- are escorted from Wrigley before they even take their seats. Perhaps they were trying to settle that age-old question of "Which team has the hottest-tempered fans?"
As winning Cubs starter Ryan Dempster leaves in the 9th inning to a standing ovation, joyous Cubs fans chant, "Sweep the White Sox!" The Cubs oblige by winning 7-1. "Go, Cubs, Go" echoes through Wrigley. And just like that, this rivalry series is over.
Until the drama begins anew next weekend at U.S. Cellular on the South Side.