I’ve believed this for decades.
A lot of folks aren’t going to like it.
But here it goes: Cubs fans who claim to “hate” the White Sox are, by and large, full of it.
Hear me out, please. Sox fans have plenty of reasons to “hate” the Cubs. For a long time, the Cubs received outsized attention due to their television deal with WGN. Forever, the Cubs have held massive ballpark-and-neighborhood advantages. Through it all, media coverage locally has tipped the Cubs’ way.
At least as often as not, it was all true, even though the Sox had the better team. And it was all true even though Sox fans viewed themselves — right or wrong — as being far more interested in seeing the game, as opposed to being seen.
I get why bitterness flows from South to North. But why, exactly, does it travel in reverse? The Sox have never had fans from all over the country claiming them. The Sox have never been glorified despite — hell, for — being a bad team. Since the mid-1980s, Sox fans have never really had anything on Cubs fans other than occasional bragging rights in the Crosstown Showdown.
Even the Sox breaking their World Series drought first, in 2005, hasn’t stopped national media outlets from occasionally forgetting about that great achievement when listing the city’s pro sports championships.
Hate the Sox? What’s the point?
I’m not buying it.
Just sayin’
We’re not shy around these parts when it comes to ripping the Bulls’ front office, are we? Often, it’s well deserved.
But Lauri Markkanen was a good draft pick at No. 7 overall in 2017. Wendell Carter Jr. was a good pick at No. 7 in 2018. And as for Wednesday’s Bulls pick at No. 7, Coby White:
If #Bulls stay at 7, I'll be hoping for Coby White. A 6-5 PG with blazing speed. Scored 30-plus in a handful of games and had as many as seven 3s in a game (2x) as a freshman. Lotta turnovers, but, again: a freshman. Often was best player on UNC team that became a 1 seed.
— Steve Greenberg (@SLGreenberg) May 15, 2019
“If #Bulls stay at 7, I’ll be hoping for Coby White. A 6-5 PG with blazing speed. Scored 30-plus in a handful of games and had as many as seven 3s in a game (2x) as a freshman. Lotta turnovers, but, again: a freshman. Often was best player on UNC team that became a 1 seed.”
That’s what I tweeted in mid-May on the night of the draft lottery. Not running from it now.
• Round 7 of the NHL Draft on NHL Network vs. Hour 7 of congressional hearings on C-SPAN.
Discuss.
• Outstanding that the White Sox earlier in the week became the first major-league team to announce plans to extend protective netting down the foul lines. Way to be proactive. Way to be smart. Way to put the fans first. Way to make Chicago look like a thoughtful, evolved baseball town.
Your move, Cubs.
And you know it.
• Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Tobin Heath, Ali Krieger, Julie Ertz — these are some of our greatest champions.
I might not call teams “sides.” I might not swear allegiance to a particular Premier League club. I might choose singular verbs over plural ones, as in “the U.S. is” and not “Spain are.” But I’m nutty for soccer when it comes to international tournaments, and especially the Women’s World Cup.
If you’re missing it … man, are you missing it.
• Reports broke Thursday of the Tampa Bay Rays receiving permission from Major League Baseball to look into the possibility of splitting home games in future seasons between Tampa and Montreal, the former longtime home of the Expos. This led to no fewer than 17.4 billion people on Twitter alone cracking various forms of the same joke with an “ExRays” punch line.
What a bunch of comedians!
And all so original!
I’d rather see the Rays play a bunch of their home games in a location that actually has a bigger appetite for big-league baseball than Tampa does. You know, like Kathmandu, the South Pole or the International Space Station.
• Is Willson Contreras still slow-walking his way around the bases? Asking for a friend whose name rhymes with “Gucas Liolito.”
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• At least one locked-in observer of the Cubs sees major success for the team on the October horizon.
“I see them winning the division, but I’ll keep my playoff prediction closer to the vest so I don’t jinx it,” said Nicholas Blazek, a lead writer for the FanSided site Cubbies Crib. “But they’ve got a chance.”
Some of you will remember a column I wrote on Blazek last Christmas. He’d only days before become a first-time father, welcoming Adeline Blazek into the world — a blessing of light and hope for a man facing Stage 4 brain cancer.
Nicholas and wife Sanekia Blazek celebrated their third wedding anniversary earlier this month. Then came Nicholas’ first Father’s Day as a dad. June 26 will mark one year since he underwent emergency brain surgery after being airlifted from a family party. A real bear of a diagnosis followed.
Yet Blazek’s MRIs have all been stable. He’s still doing chemotherapy one week per month, thus far with no obvious side effects. He’s looking forward to turning 40 on July 16.
“And to raising my daughter, getting back to normal life and not letting cancer stop me from doing it,” he said.
Amen to that.
