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Constable: Even a Cardinals sweep can't faze Cubs fans

The Cardinals trying to sweep the Cubs at Wrigley Field brings a crowd to the North Side. That applies to the suburbs, too.

“This is the closest you can get to Wrigleyville,” says Kari Littlejohn, 41, wearing her Cubs hat as she watches her favorite team on one of the TVs at the North Side Sports Bar & Grill in Glen Ellyn.

“The no-hitter's gone already so I'm a little disappointed,” jokes Jeff Sojka, 49, another Cubs fan, as Cubs ace Jake Arrieta gives up a hit in the first inning.

The mood is a little less jovial in the fifth inning, when a groan follows a botched double-play that allows two Cardinals runners to score.

“It's the little things,” Sojka says, explaining how the Cubs have a big enough lead in the standings to work on improving the flaws in their game. “I care more about the play-by-play than I do the outcome of this game - playing the game the right way so the postseason can come.”

Ah, the postseason. The Cubs have the best record in baseball, and fans can't be blamed for looking ahead to the playoffs.

  Wednesday's baseball game on TV is a bit of a downer for Cubs fans, but Nikko Chamopoulos, who, with his brother, owns the North Side Sports Bar & Grill in Glen Ellyn, makes customers comfortable. Burt Constable/bconstable@dailyherald.com

The North Side Sports Bar & Grill will be fully remodeled in time for fans to watch playoff games, promises Nikko Chamopoulos of Streamwood, who owns the place with his brother, Chris, of Elk Grove Village. They are remodeling the bar and have a new patio out back. “We had that patio enclosed because it can get a little chilly in October,”

As an official Blackhawks bar, the North Side features the audio for the hockey game inside and the baseball broadcast in the patio, and both games on multiple big-screen televisions.

“Oh, nice throw, Bryant,” teases a possible White Sox fan, who relishes another Cardinals runner sliding across home plate a moment before the arrival of a throw from Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant.

  While he roots for the White Sox as well as the Cubs, daytime bartender Sal Quintero says he works to make everybody enjoy their time at North Side Sports Bar & Grill in Glen Ellyn, including a few St. Louis Cardinals fans. Burt Constable/bconstable@dailyherald.com

“I like them both - 51 percent Cubs and 49 percent Sox,” offers peacemaking daytime bartender Sal Quintero. ”I'm one of those guys.”

“Isn't there soccer on somewhere?” Sojka moans as his Cubs fall behind 5-0.

“I've got a more objective view,” says Bob Cornwell, 66, who moved to Glen Ellyn from Detroit 30 years ago and can root for the Cubs without the baggage that comes with being a lifetime Cubs fan. “It's a long season. But I hope the Cubs win. That would be good.”

Now, it's 7-0 Cardinals.

“Isn't there any golf on?” another fan cries.

“A little blip in the road,” Littlejohn says of the Cubs' three-game losing streak.

A dental hygienist, the Glen Ellyn woman stopped by Wrigley Field during her birthday celebration on Tuesday to snap a photo of the iconic marquee. “But the score was 4-1 Cardinals. I didn't want to take a picture of the marquee with that score,” she says, “So I waited until the ninth inning.”

That game ended with no photo op in a tense 4-3 victory for St. Louis.

“The team from Missouri,” says Sojka, who refuses to use the words St. Louis or Cardinals. His cellphone screen boasts a photo of his dog, a wheaten terrier named Ernie, wearing a Cubs hat.

“Ernie Banks was my dad's favorite player, and Billy Williams is my mom's,” Sojka says.

The lopsided game allows patrons the luxury of talking about the Derrick Rose trade, their jobs, the TV shows of seventh-inning stretch singer Bob Odenkirk of Naperville, and whether he sang, “I don't care if I ever get back” or “never get back.”

Weather messes with the satellite signal for a minute, and that's OK, too. The focus isn't on this 7-2 loss to St. Louis, or even the shock of the Cardinals sweeping the Cubs in Wrigley for the first time since 1988.

  A Cubs fan all his life, Bill Miller has been a Glen Ellyn firefighter for 35 years. He's not worried about a three-game losing streak. "It's a different management, a different Cubs team," Miller says. Burt Constable/bconstable@dailyherald.com

“I don't want them to lose games, and I really don't want them to lose to the Cardinals, but this team now is built to win for a long time,” says Bill Miller, who has been a Glen Ellyn firefighter for 35 years and a Cubs fan for his whole life.

“We'll be ready for the playoffs,” Chamopoulos says. “But let's get the Cubs to the playoffs first.”

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