By Donald G. Evans

We hated them. I was too young to intellectualize the matter, and nobody else in the neighborhood had enough school to do so. We just hated them. There weren’t any on our street, none that ever went to the park, not even a single one at school. There were a bunch of them on the job, and at dinner Dad griped, “Don’t get me wrong; you get one by himself they’re nice enough people. But you put a group of ‘em together…” He held up a forkful of mashed potatoes and made a vague gesture we took to mean, “TROUBLE.”

At the annual church carnival, there’d be groups of them that would come after dark, and the inevitable trouble that ensued was part of the fun for the older guys in the neighborhood who liked to fight. Finally there was a stabbing and they stopped doing the carnival for a couple of years.

In retrospect, we obviously weren’t an enlightened neighborhood, but we were proud and the way it was was the way it had always been.

One moved next door.

We’d known for a while that the Fazzianos were leaving---Mr. Fazziano’s mom had died and they were keeping her house and selling their own. The block was in a bit of transition. In the past year three of my school friends had moved out to the suburbs, never to be seen from again. In those days, you moved to Wheaton or Westmont or Woodridge, you might as well have gone to Siberia—my friends never returned, and I never visited. Keep in mind, our annual family “vacation” was to Crystal Lake, which was an hour and a half drive, and twice (once when I was four and once when I was ten) we went to the Wisconsin Dells. Mom claims we went to Lamb’s Farm all the time, but I don’t remember that and neither do any of my brothers and sisters.

The time came. Mr. Fazziano got Dad and a few of the other dads to help him load the U-Haul, while Mom helped Mrs. Fazziano clean the house. Two days later, a beat-up Cadillac pulled up in front of our house. This Cadillac was covered in dust, the bumper rattled, the engine wheezed, and rust flecked off it like red confetti. With all the gray duct tape and cardboard and clothes hangers, it looked like a science project on how to avoid the auto parts store. A crack divided the front windshield in half.

Out of the Cadillac came one boy, then another, then another, a fourth boy. They all wore identical close-shaved haircuts we called “baldy cuts”; they all wore raggedy oversized gym shoes with the laces wrapped around the heels; they all had three-quarter length pants rolled up to their knees.

They all wore White Sox jerseys.

Our house went silent—probably the only time, other than maybe the middle of the night, that had ever happened. Two of the boys had loud red pinstriped jerseys, another one had the new navy jersey with a batter silhouetted over the Sox logo, and the oldest kid had a white jersey with CHICAGO written across the front in bold, modern font. Finally, the dad rolled out of the Cadillac—a big, round, sun-burned, paint-speckled man chomping an unlit cigar: he was covered, from head to toe, in White Sox gear. He had a bright red White Sox hat, a green shirt rolled over his shoulders, White Sox wristbands. The shirt…we couldn’t make it all out from the window, but it seemed to champion both the South Side Irish and the White Sox at the same time. He might as well have carried a billboard saying, “Go to Fuck!” which in time we would learn was one of his favorite expressions.

There were five of us kids peeking, along with Mom and Dad. It would have been quite the family portrait, all those shocked, horrified noses pressed against the dirty screen. Mom had baked brownies to welcome the new neighbors; Dad was planning to go over there and see if they needed a hand. Everything just went silent.

“Goddamn motherfucker!” Dad said first, though we were all thinking it.

The dad noticed us piled against our window and saluted us with his cigar, which might as well have been his middle finger.

This was 1977, and both the Cubs and the White Sox, by some miracle that hadn’t happened in any of our life times, were hovering near first place. We all knew, without being told, that we weren’t to play with the new neighbors, which would be tough, given that our houses were so close together our window-unit air conditioners nearly bumped halfway through our shared gangway.

At first a lot of the anger was directed at the Fazzianos, but eventually we got around to cursing the new neighbors, whoever they were and whatever they were called. While the dad unpacked the Cadillac trunk, the new neighbor kids chased each other around—up and down the sidewalk, across the street, between parked cars. It was like they owned the street already.

This was our new reality, and now we had to deal with it.

“I’m going out there,” Dad said. Mom touched his arm, said, “Don’t do this!”

Dad charged out the front door of our brick bungalow without buttoning his shirt or fastening his belt buckle. He got to the porch, cigarette behind his ear, hair disheveled, and glared. He held his glare until it was acknowledged. The new neighbor dad tipped his Sox cap and said, “Jesus fucking Christ! Stopped at a beef joint on the way over here. I get my hot dog: no fries. No fucking fries: that’s some balls. Why not be honest about it? They know and you know: if you’re getting the hot dog you’re getting the fries. You add it all up, this little hot dog gets close to where you coulda got a steak sandwich on the South Side.”

The new neighbor stood behind his open trunk, his head bobbing over it. “I’m Woody,” he ended.

A couple things here. One, this would become a theme—Mr. Woody complaining about the ridiculous prices on the North Side versus the South Side. He seemingly could not buy anything in our neighborhood, which was a blue-collar neighborhood, without making a big deal about what it cost, and citing a litany of places on the South Side where you could get the exact same thing at significantly cheaper prices. The implication seemed clear to all of us, especially given Mr. Woody’s tone, which managed to be both jovial and insulting at the same time: the South Side was better. Second, the Sox roster that summer included an aging, rotund knuckleballer named Wilbur Wood who everybody called Woody. Everybody called Mr. Woodruff Woody. Coincidence, or just a dark foreshadowing of things to come?

Dad nodded in such a way it could not have been interpreted as friendly. We were all still staring out the window, waiting for some sign—a blueprint, perhaps—on what to do, how to act. The new dad shuffled back to his trunk and that’s when we saw the license plate: NO1SOXFAN. As an afterthought, Mr. Woody, unflappable, looked at the window, yelled, “I get the grill going I’ll have yous all over.”

* * *

The 1977 Cubs had Ivan DeJesus and Manny Trillo up the middle, Bill Buckner at first, Bobby Murcer and Jerry Morales in the middle of the order, Big Daddy Rick Reuschel as an ace and Bruce Sutter as its closer. It was not a Hall of Fame cast, exactly, but there were enough good players having good enough years that by the time the Woodruffs moved next door the whole neighborhood was convinced this was our year. We were in first. None of us, to that point, gave much thought to the White Sox, except during the City Series. The Cubs were on WGN and the White Sox on Ch. 44. We didn’t get UHF in our house, and the same was true of most everybody else. I mean, you could get it a little, with a lot of fuzz, if you played endlessly with the rabbit ears on the top of the set, but basically it was futile.

The fact was, the White Sox were in first place, too.

The Woodruffs immediately hung a huge White Sox flag over their front porch, where most of the houses put their American flag or their Cubs flag. The four boys all had the same initials—DAW—and I constantly confused Dave for Donny for Danny for Doug. They all spouted off about Eric Soderholm being better than Ron Santo ever was; building Richie Zisk up to be a Hall of Famer; thanking us for Steve Stone, Don Kessinger and Oscar Gamble; going on and on about Ralph Garr, Jorge Orta and Chet Lemon. It seemed as though the DAW boys were not born into the Woodruff family so much as recruited, much like a gang. As White Sox operatives, they were informed, tough and relentless.

The Woodruffs did not rent a van or truck, but rather Mr. Woodruff made countless trips back and forth from the South to the North side in his falling-apart Cadillac. Nobody was outright mean to the Woodruffs and some of the neighbors were even civil, but it had to be clear to the Woodruffs that they were not wanted. Mr. Woodruff, though, was relentlessly jovial. He seemed unfazed by the neighborhood’s cool reception of he and his family, and continued right on telling his profanity-laced stories and laughing heartily at their conclusion.

Mom took her cues from Dad, and Dad outwardly hated the Woodruffs, so Mom kept her distance from cheery, beer-drinking Mrs. Woodruff. We took our cues from Mom, who was around all the time while Dad spent most of his time at the job or in the local gin mill or sitting with his white socks propped up on the ottoman in front of the TV set. Mom advised us to be nice to the new neighbors, though it was clear to both her and us that there was a line we weren’t to cross.

Danny wound up in Miss Imbergia’s class, and was also in the Robins reading group, and on top of that he sat right in front of me. It was that time at school when the weather had already turned, and everything around us screamed summer, but due to snow days and other nonsense I didn’t understand we were stuck in that stifling classroom months after everybody, including the teachers, it seemed, had ceased to care. The beautiful sunshine, on full parade through ancient, paint-sealed windows, taunted us through long, dreary sweaty days.

When we got together in our reading group, Danny, unlike the rest of us who muttered the words of our reader dutifully, read passages with flourish, like he really enjoyed it. All day long I tried to look past his bristly haircut to the front of the class, but I couldn’t help becoming interested in the frenzy of activities taking place on, in and around his desk. It was strict law in Miss Imbergia’s class that you focused on the lesson, but Danny was constantly lining up spitballs in the pencil groove, or making little army guys out of eraser heads, or pushing a triangular paper football from one end of the desk to the other. Then, at all the right moments, Danny would make things disappear and either answer Miss Imbergia’s question right or miss it in a way that seemed earnest and hopeful. He never got in trouble and it was clear Miss Imbergia, stern though she was, had a soft spot for the new kid.

At home, we never invited the DAW brothers to play softball behind the alley or Kick The Can on the street, and even though everybody cut through everybody else’s yards, with exceptions for The Barneys and their huge German Shepard and Mrs. Ragdale and her wasp spray, we never stepped foot in the Woodruff’s backyard. With the weather turning sultry, Mr. Woody spent every evening after work either out back barbecuing or on the front porch. Either way, the White Sox were on the radio, if they were playing, and the early summer buzz of the neighborhood was punctuated by the long, screeching epitaphs that emitted from Mr. Woody’s foul mouth and the sound of flesh slapping flesh in the unmistakable tones of high fives. The DAW brothers screamed along, too, and they also swore like adults, though not so much around Mr. and Mrs. Woody. On the playground, Danny swore all the time—his favorite phrase was “jagoff motherfucker,” said, ala Mr. Woody, in a tone both insulting and jovial—but had this uncanny adult radar that helped him clean up his language most reverently at all the right times.

As we scurried around our house and yard and alley and street, I found myself thinking about Danny, and sometimes sneaking peaks into his yard, which seemed full of life and fun in ways that I hadn’t quite experienced. What it was, partly, I think, was that Mr. Woody, tough as any other dad at times, seemed to treat his boys with a certain respect that the rest of us kids, second-class citizens all, were not allowed. Like, Mr. Woody would ask the DAW kids a question to which he did not know the answer, fully expecting or at least allowing for the possibility, that his sons knew more than him on that subject. Or when one of the DAW kids messed up, Mr. Woody was more inclined to tease rather than lecture, as adults did with friends they accepted despite their imperfections. I don’t know how I knew or thought all this, given the unofficial ban on all things related to our neighbors, but I did.

We were counting down the days until school let out when I got caught staring dreamily out the window. Mr. Imbergia asked me a math question but I’d lost my place in the text book, plus I hadn’t really done my homework, plus math wasn’t my thing to begin with, and she let me stumble around like a complete idiot before turning it into a lecture on focus to the whole class. All my classmates looked at me disapprovingly during the entire length and breadth of the speech, which seemed to spin endlessly into the sticky horizon. While this was happening, I noticed Danny shuffling something on his lap and as soon the coast was clear I inspected more closely to discover that he had baseball cards arranged on his lap in about six separate piles.

“Dad let me get two packs yesterday for going for cigars,” Danny said later at recess, while he waved to Mr. Schulze, the gym teacher, monitoring proceedings from a distance. “Three more jagoff cocksucking Cubs!”

I didn’t know then that this combination of bitterness and admiration I felt toward Danny amounted to envy, but I could feel his draw.

“Which ones?” I asked.

My baseball card collection was expansive, but I was really only interested in Cubs and stars, that year especially, and frankly Steve Ontiveros excited me more than Pete Rose any day of the week.

“Willie Hernandez, Mick Kelleher, Larry Biittner,” he ticked off.

I had Kelleher, but needed Hernandez and Biittner. “I got some Sox I can trade you,” I said.

“Who do you got?”

“Clay Carroll, Mike Squires, Richie Zisk…I’ll have to check, I’ve got more.”

This exchange seemed innocent enough, but in retrospect it was the first domino. We were logical trade partners not only for Cubs-Sox, but also National League-American League. We started bringing our cards to school, and our recess and lunch time bargaining sessions relieved, like a morphine drip, a little of the relentless pain of those last excruciating days. I organized the cards at night and invented trade scenarios, the possibilities endless since both me and Danny were buying up new packs at a decent rate and I never knew who he’d bring to the trading table next. Meanwhile, the Cubs were winning and I remember, with the fondness one later has for an old girlfriend, the speed at which I’d race home to watch the final innings of those day baseball games.

Meanwhile, the Sox kept winning, too, and I started to pay more attention, in part as research into the value of my bargaining chips. One night, Dad caught me fussing with the rabbit ears to get some kind of picture and he said, “What the hell are you trying to do?” I’d already seen enough: a backup infielder named Jack Brohammer had had a three-hit night, and I knew how Danny thought and knowing how Danny thought I knew, as I thumbed through my shoebox to find my Jack Brohammer card, that Jack Brohammer’s trade value might never be higher than tomorrow at recess.

“Nothing,” I said.

My card collection grew, and as it did so too, I suppose, did my friendship with Danny. The last day of school arrived, finally--a half day, no work, just a bunch of kids celebrating the end of something we all wanted to end, and the official beginning of summer. The outdoor public pools were filled, the beaches sweaty, there were rumors of cookouts and block parties, advertisements for neighborhood festivals and church carnivals, and plans were underway for our Crystal Lake “vacation.” Softball and little league seasons were off and running, big-release movies out in theatres, and the trajectory of the baseball season had angled vibrantly and spectacularly in an upwardly Chicago way. Our days now could be devoted to everything that seemed important.

I was more ambivalent than I should have been. I had wanted more than I’d ever wanted anything, for that school year to be over, but still there was a dead feeling I couldn’t explain. I suppose I knew there’d be little chance to interact with Danny, that though we lived right next door our baseball card trading sessions would necessarily end. I missed that already, and I missed, too, the exposure I’d had to a kid who seemed incredibly sly and genuinely nice at the same time, the time I’d spent with somebody who was a natural complement to my own personality, whatever that was.

The last day of school coincided with the City Series between the Cubs and White Sox, a one-game exhibition contest played, that year, at Comiskey Park, and in all the giddiness of that final half-day celebration, with kids laughing and cleaning blackboards and laughing some more and receiving rare praise from Miss Imbergia, Danny invited me to come with his family to the game and I accepted.

This impending event weighed on me immensely. There wasn’t much time for me to invent a plan and when I saw Danny around the house he, as well as Mr. Woody, took it for granted I was going. There was no conversation between Mr. Woody and Dad; Mr. Woody just took me at my word that I could and would take the last ticket. I’d started to play with Danny some during the day while Dad was at work, and there was a tacit understanding with Mom that it was okay so long as we wrapped it up well before Dad came home. Trading baseball cards had been our way in; soon we were picking each other as teammates for lob league games in the park, rattling our bikes over plywood and brick ramps in the alley, and conspiring to get fireworks for the Fourth of July.

I don’t remember all the details about how it happened that I got permission, except that I put off the awkward request until the night before and that I tried to think as Danny thought, since Danny had such a knack for easily turning things his way, and that I used my final good report card as leverage. The one tactic I’d thought up in those days leading to the conversation with Dad, one that I think worked, was deliberately and only referring to it as The Cubs Game and making no mention of the White Sox whatsoever. I wanted Dad to see it as his son taking advantage of the new neighbors, a son so beholden to the Cubs that he would put up with anything, even that.

Mr. Woody dressed in a Number 28 Wilbur Wood uniform. Not just the jersey: the whole uniform. He had the cap, the jersey, the pants, the stirrups. He had a paunch, just like the real Wilbur Wood. The only difference was that he wore gym shoes with the shoelaces tied around the heels instead of spikes. He looked, depending on your angle, like a Wilbur Wood impersonator or a player suited up for the game. Nobody, including Mr. Woody, found this that remarkable.

The car ride down to Comiskey was like a roller coaster ride. Nobody wore seat belts back then, and I don’t think car seats had been invented, and the four DAW brothers were piled into both the front and back seats, and they played a game, while we were driving, in which they tried to fight their way up or back. DAW bodies were slinging every which way and the danger as we sped down the Dan Ryan seemed intensified by the fact that we could see the highway zip below us through a big hole in the floorboard and, to a lesser extent maybe, that the interior was covered in about 80 percent fur.

I’d never heard of a tailgate party until we pulled into the lot. Mr. Woody, practically a professional griller, made brats, passed out beers and RCs, and talked to everybody around us or even just passing us. Everybody was his friend: that was the way it seemed. He laughed and he teased and he pretty much let the DAW brothers and me do whatever we wanted so long as we didn’t leave the parking lot.

I had a Cubs hat perched on my head. The teasing and cajoling intensified as we got closer to game time and as Mr. Woody got deeper into his cooler of Falstaff. I don’t know who started the movement to douse my hat in lighter fluid and throw it in with the burning charcoals, but I suspect it was one of those situations where Danny instigated the whole mess and got off scot-free. The moment it happened I was horrified, but everybody was so great about it, like a ritual hazing in a kind fraternity, that by the time the red “C” turned to ash I was no longer angry or sad, just resigned.

The fireworks! When that scoreboard exploded, and it did so three times, the raucous night sky, ablaze in red, blue and green, seemed like an embodiment of the perfect Chicago night. As the last colorful streaks of the last colorful explosion fizzled in the night sky, somebody from the tailgate party started a movement to replace my hat and before I really fully comprehended the magnitude of what was happening a navy blue White Sox hat lay askew on the top of my head.

At the end, the crowd swayed in unison, and I swayed along with them, singing, “Na, na, na, na, Na, na, na, na, Hey, Hey, Hey, Kiss Them Goodbye.”

The party continued all the way back across town. We were up to our chins in cotton candy and Cracker Jack, and I felt a part of it all, if only as the good-natured antagonist, and I swear I’d forgotten all about that White Sox hat that sat, still, on my head.

“What the GODDAMNED HELL!”

I immediately understood my error. Dad could not have been more disappointed or irate had I come home with a tattoo or an afro, or wearing gang colors. I think he could more easily have understood if I’d wanted to dress in drag. This, though…it was the ultimate insult to him and everything for which he stood, and the only recourse, in his mind, was to somehow reverse this blight on the family crest. He stormed over to the Woodruffs’ yard, where Mr. Woody, still dressed as Wilbur Wood, was guffawing amidst swirling cigar smoke, and said, “What have you done to my son?”

Mr. Woody chuckled, which was the wrong thing to do. I don’t remember it all, but the part that stands out is Dad and Mr. Woody wrestling but not throwing punches on the Woodruffs back lawn, and me, all this in the deep part of the night, watching from over the fence in our backyard, half-hoping Mr. Woody would win. They trampled a poinsettia plant and toppled a tomato plant, and finally a bag of peanuts, presumably left over from the game, fell to the ground, ruined, it seemed. Mr. Woody stood up, brushed dirt off his pinstriped pants, pulled up his stirrups, and said, “Go to fuck!” He picked up a peanut off the ground, deshelled it, tossed it in the air, then maneuvered his mouth below the descending legume, into which it landed. He announced, “You can stay and have some peanuts and beer or leave, but I’m not going two out of three falls with you.”

Nobody needed to tell me, as glow turned to haze in the pitch-black summer sky, that our neighbors were officially and absolutely the enemy. There would be times, over the ensuing months, when I managed to sneak a few minutes with Danny, but not many. He had a subscription to Sports Illustrated, and when he showed me the cover featuring both the Cubs and White Sox (the headline was, “Chi, oh my!”) it seemed, momentarily, like an olive branch or an omen or an overture, something that meant enemies could live in harmony; but it would never be so without the consent of my dad, and I would never get that.

The Cubs imploded, relinquishing first place in early August and free-falling all the way to .500 and a fourth-place finish. The White Sox clung to first until late August, when Milwaukee wrangled away the prize. I found myself sadden at both demises. It was the Yankees and Dodgers in the World Series, with predictable hero Reggie Jackie standing in the spot we’d dreamed would be occupied, depending on which side of our fence you lived, by Buckner or Zisk.

By the end of that summer, White Sox flight had fully infected the neighborhood. The moves – the Carbonellis went west, the Prichards north, and the Cincinellos east – were often blamed on bad schools or crime or small backyards, but it couldn’t have been a coincidence that in each case the families hated the Woodruffs and were convinced more like them were on the way. The theory was that the Woodruffs had greased the way for more White Sox lovers to congregate, and Dad fully bought into this theory, spouting off at dinner that the bastards always arrived in groups, that they were most comfortable around each other, and that once this happened property values would plummet. By the time we’d moved to Elmwood Park, where, I’d later learn, our neighbors included fringe Mafia players, the For Sale Sign had been posted on the Woodruffs lawn, making, I suppose, the move unnecessary, except that for Dad and others like Dad the plague had descended and the neighborhood would never again be safe from it.

I of course never saw Danny again, as I never saw any of my friends from the place I still consider the old neighborhood, and it would be another decade before I openly rooted again for the White Sox. I wonder, to this day, if Danny thinks about me as I sometimes think about him, and whether regret is possible in a world, childhood, in which all the bad decisions are made by others, and in which bad decisions are basically irreversible.

Donald G. Evans, author of Wrigleyville sports gambling novel Good Money After Bad, is the Lovable Losers emcee. His stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Pinyon Review, The Journal and Narrative Magazine, among others, and he will soon have a story appearing in the Xavier Review.

By Randy Richardson

Ticket demand for Cubs' games is measured before opening day, even before the crack of the bats in Arizona's Cactus League, on a February morning when the team's most loyal and faithful fans come out of hibernation for one day and test their will and hardiness against the harshness of Chicago's winter. It is the day that individual game tickets go on sale and wristband-wearing devotees converge outside Clark and Addison clinging to hope as only Cubs' fans can do. The hope that next year is finally here. And the hope for a favorable lottery number.

On each and every wristband is a number and it is that number that determines who will strike the Cubs' version of a ticket gold mine. A bad number means you'll literally be left out in the cold and dreading the thought of spending the season clicking on StubHub looking for the best deal on tickets, which usually means paying double or triple the face value. Or, worse yet, the thought that you'll show up ticketless on gameday and find yourself bartering with the scalping vultures that hover around Wrigley Field just waiting to pounce on the likes of you.

Next to the home opener, no tickets are more sought-after than the three games against the Cubs' South Side counterparts, the White Sox. On a day when ticket sales begin at 9 a.m., you can pretty much be assured that the series with the White Sox, known as the Crosstown Classic, will be sold out by the time the noon bell rings.

A collective moan predictably follows when the word gets out that there are no more tickets left for the Cubs-Sox series. For most, it was the first series they circled on their Cubs schedule and the first to get crossed out. But not me. When a new Cubs schedule comes out, the first thing I do is cross out the Crosstown Classic.

I've got a self-imposed boycott on ticket purchases for any of the games between the Cubs and the Sox and it doesn't matter if the two teams are playing on the North Side or on the South Side. You won't see me clamoring for a ticket. You can offer me tickets for any of these games, but I won't take them. Not even for free.

It wasn’t always this way for me. Since interleague play began in 1997, the White Sox and Cubs have routinely played each other six times each year (one three-game series at each stadium). I attended a number of those early games between the two Chicago baseball teams and, at first, I thought them to be fun. But with each passing game that I saw, whether it be in Wrigley Field or U.S. Cellular Field, the fun level seemed to drop a little bit. Until, for me, there was no fun left in the games.

My suspicions are that I'm in the minority in taking this rather extreme position on boycotting the Crosstown Classic, but that I'm probably not alone. One of the joys of watching a ballgame, particularly one in your home ballpark, is to be surrounded by your own kind. It's a collegial atmosphere of fans who groan and boo with you when your team is down and cheer and high-five with you when it is up.

The problem with the Crosstown Classic, for me, is that the rivalry has become too heated. Not between the teams. But between the fans. At these games, it has become routine for Cubs fans to taunt, jeer and insult their counterpart Sox fans, and vice versa. I'm not indicting one side's fans over the other. Each is equally guilty. Some fans seem to revel in this atmosphere. I am not one of them.

Civility is not being championed by the Crosstown Classic, which seems to be drawing a more divisive line between the fans of Chicago's two baseball teams rather than bringing them closer together. In other words, the Crosstown Classic is becoming increasingly more cross.

The owners of the two teams of course see nothing but dollar signs and seem perfectly content with the series as it stands now. As long as the ballparks continue to sell out for the series, it's going to go on. But for me it won't be the Crosstown Classic. It will be the Cross-Out Classic.

Randy Richardson, author of Wrigleyville murder-mystery Lost In The Ivy, is a Regular Loser. He is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent magazine and his work has recently been anthologized in Chicken Soup for the Father and Son Soul and Humor for the Boomer's Heart. He serves as president of the Chicago Writers Association.

By Mike Danahey

I harbor no ill will toward the Cubs and their fans. But you guys get all the publicity. Your team's cute and cuddly and lovable, yet losers. Everyone pays attention to you. And the frat boys fill the bars by your park, which you call quaint, which is just a euphemism for having to piss in a trough owned by a billionaire.

Sorry, but I am a White Sox fan, and there is not a damn thing you or I can to about it.

Though I am pretty sure it's not a genetic condition--like being bald or having a full head of hair, or being straight like George Clooney or gay like Elton John--it's close. No, not close to being Elton John, Cubs' fans. Besides you guys are the ones who idolize a guy with funny glasses.

While not in your blood, maybe the team you root for is imprinted, like what happens to a baby duck that sees some goofy-ass grad student instead of Mama Duck and winds up getting a degree in biology rather than being killed by a hunter in Wisconsin, which would be its true fate.

But fate had me go to my first game at old Comiskey Park; seeing that grass for the first time through the tunnel leading to the seats…it had me hooked. It might be why I live in the suburbs and have a lawn that one day I swear I will cut to have cool geometric patterns in it.

Actually fate had it that my Lithuanian immigrant grandfather took to baseball, courtesy of friendly neighbors who brought him to his first game. Sure, Chicago's the city of neighborhoods, but back then that meant you pretty much stayed among your kind, segregated by parish, ethnicity, race or the side of the city which you called home. In other words, the Cubs might as well have been playing in a different country.

As a very young boy I would sit in the back room of the Tumsis grocery store in Roseland listening to Sox radio broadcasts with Grandpa Joe. I'm no Frank McCourt so there is no photo-like certainty to any of these memories of a not-so-miserable (spoiled, in fact) Irish childhood. But I have been reminded by my mom that Grandpa Joe would get very nervous when the Sox were losing and would actually turn off the radio at such points in the game. He was jinxing them: as if Luis Aparicio was unable to concentrate because he was thinking about some immigrant who escaped the Bolsheviks because his parents were able to send him to the United States and his brother to Argentina.

Me, I knew little of this. I was a fat and happy kid, glad to be eating smoked fish, sweet rolls and sour cream with my grandpa. The hell with the candy store--I had access to the full range of groceries. And, yes, I should weigh 300 pounds by now.

Which reminds: one of my favorite players was Wilbur Wood, the rotund knuckleball pitcher who, of course, went by the nickname of Woody, and who would amble to the mound to the sounds of the theme from the Woody Woodpecker cartoon. Actually, Wood probably wasn't any fatter than I am right now when he was pitching - he just seemed that way - and, like many Americans, wound up chubby.

I was as much a Sox fan for bat day and other freebies as I was of Tommy John and Tommy Agee. And I loved Bobble Head dolls, the old fashioned ones with the round faces, NOT the new kind that are supposed to look like a player but seem like some type of quasi-Satanic ritual item.

I was the little nerd who brought a painting to the park I made on cardboard with Tempura paint of Woody Woodpecker wearing Wilbur Wood's uniform in the hopes of getting on TV or that Wood would notice me. Neither happened--and to this day I am surprised I didn't get teased more as a kid doing stuff like that. I even made a groovy painting of slugger Dick Allen that I have somewhere in my basement to this day, and which I must have worn on earth shoes to create.

It is the only vestige of my support for the Pale Hose, being raised to think that toys were to be played with then discarded, not stored away as investments. Silly parents. They even let me play outside, by myself --a lot.

Thus, without an ancient scorecard to my name I just have my vague memories of when the good guys wore red or royal blue, then, egad, clam-diggers.

The Cubs--they really only entered my consciousness when we moved to the suburbs and got our first color TV. Out there, one of the nuns at school was a Cubs fan, which did make me wary of liking them. You just couldn't enjoy something a nun did. Plus, for some reason I recall she was glad Joe Frazier once beat Muhammad Ali, which is neither here nor there, but raises all sorts of questions about her judgment--and why she was talking to grade school kids about this is beyond me.

Way beyond, being even further south and out of the city, was Wrigley Field. These days I frequent the North Side. I have napped in the bleachers, even taken field trips with busloads of kids to the friendly confines. Still, the Cubs still seem distant to me and my Sox-uality.

Mike Danahey, a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times News Group and Detached Retina, is a Guest Loser. He's working on his first novel, "Landlocked," a comedy about ill-fated love, the Internet, ghosts, autism and all sorts of strange things that happen in Chicago and its ever-expanding suburbs.