Gas station trophy can't add fuel to the Cubs-Sox fire

In 1994, the Cubs and Sox met in an exhibition game for charity that provided the most memorable moment in the crosstown series since the 1906 World Series.

Cubs pitcher (and future radio color man) Dave Otto, the pride of Elk Grove High School, was on the mound facing a Sox rookie right-fielder named Michael Jordan. The former and future Bulls star chopped Otto's 3-2 offering into the turf and over the third-baseman's glove for a run-scoring single. An inning later, Jordan doubled in the final run in a game that ended in a 4-4 tie, in part because Jordan struck out to end the game and also made an error in the outfield and a couple of baserunning gaffes.

That Cubs-Sox game was memorable.

But since 1997, when the Sox-Cubs rivalry became an annual regular-season event that counts in the standings, it's been difficult to keep abreast of the situation. There have been a couple of memorable grand-slam homers, a couple of sweeps and a catchers-only fight at home plate. But they play so often, the rivalry seems less intense, especially since Sox fans hold their 2005 World Series championship as a trump card.

Die-hard fans may recall that the White Sox won the series 4 games to 2 last year, giving the Sox a 37-35 advantage in the series. But we aren't even sure what to call the rivalry.

It's been dubbed the Crosstown Classic, the Windy City Showdown, the Crosstown Series, the Crosstown Showdown, the Red Line Series, the North-South Series, Chicago's Civil War and many other monikers that often taxed poor newspaper headline writers' abilities to make games between mediocre teams sound exciting.

On Monday, as so often happens in America, we turned to a petroleum company for answers. BP (the conglomeration of British Petroleum, Amoco Corporation, Atlantic Richfield and Burmah Castrol) officially christened the interleague rivalry the "Crosstown Classic." (You had to figure a company that sells 15 billion gallons of gas a year wasn't going to plug public transportation through the Red Line Series.)

In addition to myriad marketing tie-ins, BP also will award the BP Crosstown Cup to the team that wins the series or wins the final game of a tied series.

"The Cubs and White Sox are BP's hometown teams, so this is a historic day for all of us," said the BP spokeswoman whose name (and I am NOT making this up) is Linda Bartman.

When a Bartman legitimizes the Cubs-Sox series with a gas station trophy, it's-

"It's silly," says longtime Sox fan Howard Jaffe of Libertyville, who recently attended his 48th consecutive Opening Day on the South Side. He compares the new Cubs-Sox trophy to those wacky rivalry trophies popular in Big Ten football-the Little Brown Jug, Old Oaken Bucket, Old Brass Spittoon, the Paul Bunyan Trophy, the Floyd of Rosedale bronze pig trophy, the Illibuck turtle or the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk.

"Yeah, the Sox and Cubs have a rivalry because they are in the same town and everything. But this isn't as unusual now. We know the Cubs and Sox will play each other every year," says Jaffe, 56. "It's six games out of a 162-game schedule and the whole goal is to win the division and get to the playoffs and get a chance to win a championship. As a Sox fan, it's like playing against the Yankees or the Red Sox or Minnesota. The Cubs are just another ball team that we play every year."

As expected, Jaffe's friend and longtime Cubs fan Scott Hezner of Vernon Hills offers a different perspective.

"It's a great idea to have a trophy," says Hezner, 49, who longs for tangible evidence of superiority. "Anything that can provide some kind of lasting chronicled result for the crosstown rivalry is fun."

For both guys, and for fans of both teams, a gas station trophy is a consolation prize at best.

"This is, of course, merely a blatant marketing scheme, and I can't believe that anyone thinks it will actually heat up the rivalry," e-mails longtime Cubs fan Bud "The Budman" Sonoda of Mount Prospect. "I haven't heard of a more meaningless, laughable prize since Pia Zadora won a Golden Globe for best newcomer."

In many years, awarding a trophy to the winner of the Cubs-Sox series would have been the equivalent of bestowing a county fair ribbon on the best-smelling pig.

"We can win 20 'BP Trophies' in a row-we're still not going to shut up the Sox fans until we win a World Series Championship," e-mails Jim Bozikis, an Arlington Heights resident who sits next to Sonoda at Cubs games. "That's the only trophy that matters."