Let’s face it. The Cubs-White Sox rivalry, which resumes Tuesday and Wednesday night at Wrigley Field, is still hot but not as hot as it was during the 2000s when both teams were making the playoffs and Cubs catcher Michael Barrett was sucker-punching Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski at U.S. Cellular Field.
It wasn’t as fun when Pierzynski was having the last laugh during that 2006 season, with a game-winning homer at Wrigley Field weeks later.
“When I was there both teams were trying to win every year,” Pierzynski told the Sun-Times this week. “There was no rebuilding, no reloading, ‘let’s play for draft picks.’ One of the big things with the White Sox was ‘Beat the Cubs.’ It surpassed any regular-season games I ever played.”
Pierzynski hit 188 career homers over 19 seasons with seven teams. Where did that game-winner in the ninth inning July 1, 2006 against Ryan Dempster?
Number one.
“I hit walk-off home runs, I hit home runs in the playoffs. But from just a personal moment that was my favorite regular season homer,” Pierzynski said. “Hitting that home run in that situation after what had happened before was as good a feeling as you can have.”
Unhappy Cubs fans littered the field with trash, delaying the game and only heightening Pierzynski’s glee.
Playing the villain suited him to a T. Playing the Cubs, Chicago’s most popular baseball team, did too.
“I don’t know if hate is the right word. Just playing for the Sox, it was more a disrespect kind of thing,” said Pierzynski, who played on the South Side from 2005-12. “Not from the Cubs players, I always respected them, even Michael Barrett. It was always fans, that being on the White Sox it was the ugly step-kid. Nobody wanted to admit they were a fan of the White Sox until we won [the World Series in 2005]. Once we won, people were like, ‘I’ve been a White Sox fan my whole life.’ It was always like an inferiority complex with the Cubs.”
Sox players fed off that.
“Sox fans were treated like lower-class citizens because they were White Sox and not the Cubs,” Pierzynski said, “and we were going to show them.”
After two games at Wrigley, the crosstown series shifts to Guaranteed Rate Field July 6-7.
Pierszynski, an ambassador for the Sox, and a broadcaster for Fox, will man the Fox booth with Cubs play-by-play voice Len Kasper on July 6. Pierzynski called a Cubs-Cardinals game with Kasper June 1 in St. Louis.
