Chicago Anguish-Chicago Baseball

Forget about poetry and politics. Forget about other things it is mid July and Chicago matters in Baseball.

To be a Chicago baseball fan is to share a collective anguish.

Cubs fans are rich and tragic. They are kind of like a beautiful young woman who get cancer at 25 and dies unfulfilled.

Sox fans are less rich and more angry. They are kind of like a fine cabinetmaker who had had a hand chopped off and wonders what might have been?

Only once have our two tragedies met in the World Series, 1906 102 years ago. That is so long ago that Los Angeles had only 67,000 residents and Model T cars were the latest technology to be developed.

Having said all of this it is July 7th and our two anguished teams are in first place. Each day all of us- fans of the north and south open our papers and see that we are still on top.

Chicago our great city is the best in many things. You can keep New York or Los Angeles-- if you dont know the corner of Clark and Addison or 35th and Shields you do not know what anguish feels like. New Yorkers swagger, Los Angelinos coif Chicagoans are filled with dread that we are not good enough because of our two baseball tragedies.

Boston, New York--- maybe only Brooklynites could understand the way we both feel.
and we hate each other also by the way. The hatred between Cubs and Sox fans is old and deep but like an abusive couple we understand each other and when it is cold and dark in February we react the same way- yearning for sun and baseball.

We are the teams of Ron Santo and Minnie Minoso of Ernie Banks and Luke Appling.

We are the city of mud and muck and home made mountains of architecture. But we are still in first place. Could it be? Could we play each other in October. I have been graced with a World Series in my lifetime for my team in 2005. But it would be something to play THEM in a World Series. To have the whole thing to ourselves-- Cubs-Sox World Series, President Obama......

Nelson Algren is slapping Richard Daley somewhere and Ida B Wells is giving Marshall Field what for....

Could the Tragic Cubs win?
Will they Beat us?

Anguish will not allow such speculation.