Baseball, like life, not fair

LOS ANGELES - This isn't fair, but life and sports rarely are.

If life were, our stock portfolios wouldn't be dropping like the Cubs and the White Sox have.

If baseball were, the Cubs and the Sox wouldn't have dropped like our stock portfolios have.

Listen, we're accustomed by now to our baseball teams losing during the postseason, with the obvious exception of the Sox' 2005 world championship.

But that World Series title represented only the second in 100 years, meaning in 200 tries between the Sox and Cubs.

As passionate as Chicago fans are, they should be repaid with a championship at least once a decade and probably twice a decade, once on each side of this big-market town.

But, hey, even the bad times are good because it's still baseball. What isn't good is that the teams the Cubs and the Sox lost to are from Los Angeles and Tampa Bay.

Don't get me started on that because I already am.

The L.A. Times' news front Sunday had me wondering whether the Dodgers eliminating the Cubs on Saturday was a big deal out there.

In Chicago, the playoffs are important enough to fans that Page 1s have huge photos and cutesy stories and graphs and exclamation points.

Out here there was one clinching photo on Page 1. After the Dodgers had won Game 2 in Wrigley Field, the one photo wasn't even above the fold.

Silly stuff like Congress' financial fix and illegal immigration and O.J. Simpson's conviction took precedent.

"We have a life out here," a friend said, implying we don't.

Dodgers fans are infamous for arriving in the third inning and leaving in the seventh. As opposed to Cubs fans arriving early and leaving in tears.

Also as opposed to Rays fans, who arrive infrequently and now leave with their team a legitimate World Series contender.

Rays fans are considered long-suffering after their team was terrible its entire first decade. A decade? Long-suffering? That was a blip to Sox fans before an 88-year drought ended in '05.

Until last week Dodgers fans whined that their team hadn't won a playoff series in two decades. Two decades? That's a burp to Cubs fans after 100 years.

Another L.A. Times headline said, "Dodgers win first postseason series since the 1988 World Series -"

Please, stop right there. The operative words are World and Series. The Cubs haven't put them together since 1945 and haven't put them together in celebration since 1908.

"All the old feelings come rushing back this night," was another L.A. Times headline over a Sunday column.

The feelings rushed back for Cubs fans, too, in the form of another frustrating disappointment over another frustrating flameout.

Listen, losing to Philadelphia or Boston or Detroit would be OK. Even losing to New York - OK, that isn't OK, but it's better than losing to L.A. and Tampa Bay.

Los Angeles and Tampa Bay have suffered? No, I don't think so. Chicago is long-suffering and a baseball town and the two don't mix very comfortably right now.

If life were fair, the Cubs and the Sox already would be in their respective league championship series on the way to an intracity World Series.

But life isn't fair, as Chicago baseball and my stock portfolio are proving.

mimrem@dailyherald.com