Cipherdom (deprecated)

Curse of the Scapegoat

My heart goes out to die-hard Cub fans today. Some of my best friends, as the saying goes . . . They probably wonder how some White Sox fans can take such glee in their neighbors' misery. Peter Gammons of ESPN made an interesting comment after Game Six. He was repulsed by the over-the-top hand wringing about this latest manifestation of "the curse." Forget about the billygoat -- the sportswriters (who should know better) found a scapegoat in that poor sap who did exactly what almost anyone would do in reaching for the ball. Gammons bemoaned how Cub fans' well-documented miseries through the years have become a bigger story than the games and players themselves. The guy is from Boston, so he knows whereof he speaks. All month HBO has run the self-pitying and shoddy "Curse of the Bambino," narrated gravely by Ben Affleck, who has suffered through, oh, 20 years or so of agony in following a team that has been pretty respectable, lack of world championships notwithstanding.

It's the old people whom I feel for, following bad teams for year upon year. When their club implodes as the Cubs did, they know time could literally run out before they get to see a World Series win. In the grand scheme, it doesn't matter, I know. But an undeniable emotional investment results from living in the same city your whole, long life and never getting the kind of gratification that Yankee -- hell, Marlin and Diamondback -- fans can take for granted. It all boils down to class for me, I guess. I empathize with the working stiffs whose hearts broke this week, and I'm pitiless where the fat cats are concerned. Their number is many at Wrigley, and you can spot them as the tv camera pans across the crowd. Elitism is what's ruined baseball, or sports in general, or the whole damn country. A winning team's bandwagon is inviting to people who think nothing of dropping a few grand on tickets or, worse, have corporate contacts to take the tickets as a write-off we all pay for. (I'm going all Molly Ivins here, without the humor . . .) An average blue-collar worker can't afford to take the family out to the game anymore, blah blah.

Anyway, that class consciousness is key to understanding why some of us don't identify as strongly with the Cubs as the Tribune and WGN would indicate. Sure, it's petty as hell. But the media's soft-pedaling of death threats directed at Steve Bartman contrasts with the ridicule directed at White Sox fans after a couple of incidents involving drunken fans in the past two years. To the rest of the country, the Cubs may look like underdogs. But in Chicago, they're the Establishment. Imagine being a fan of the White Sox, a team that plays second fiddle to the worst sports franchise in history. We don't complain as loudly or have such a compelling mythology as Cub and Red Sox fans. We also don't have the studied self-pity. Unfortunately, on rare occasions when the White Sox play in October, you'll see nearly as many rich, scene-making faux fans at Sox Park as at any other winning team's park. And I loathe them even more than I do the Wrigley scenesters, lest you conclude I'm biased.