Baseball and Me

I figured now would be the appropriate time to do a post on my personal relationship with baseball. Let's get some of the facts out of the way. I'm from Chicago, a town with two MLB teams. Well, we once had the Chicago Chi-Feds/Whales but that was a few years before I was born. Interestingly, despite the collapse of the Federal League in 1915, they've won a championship more recently than the Cubs. The Cubs and White Sox (hereafter referred to as simply "Sox") have an intense rivalry between their fanbases. Not only do Chicagoans swear allegiance to one team or the other, they actually cheer for the other team to lose and revel in their failure as much as their own team's success (if not more).

I grew up in a household with a father who is a Sox fan and a mother who is a Cubs fan. My maternal grandfather used to take me to Cubs games as a kid. My dad took me to Sox games at the old Comiskey Park. We even used to go up to Milwaukee for Brewers games against the Sox back when the Brewers were still in the American League. A lot of fun? Yes, but confusing as hell for a kid to pick one team to swear allegiance to. So instead, I grew up being a fan of certain players, rather than choosing a team. When I think of my childhood baseball heroes I think of Carlton Fisk, Ryne Sandberg, Harold Baines, Lee Smith, Andre Dawson, and Jody Davis. To this day when people ask me if I'm a Cubs or Sox fan I simply reply "neither" since this is a much more acceptable answer than "both".

Being a Chicago baseball fan was viewed throughout most of my life as perennial disappointment. Both the White Sox and the Cubs having endured championship droughts not seen anywhere else in sports (except maybe the Red Sox). Then the White Sox won the Chamionship in 2005. I rooted hard for the Sox, I wanted to see them succeed for their long-suffering fans (including my father), more than anything else. I even went to game 2 of the World Series that year which was cold, rainy, but a lot of fun too. My companions at the game? Two Cubs fans and a Cardinals fan, all of them rooting for the Sox.

Which brings me to my point. I like baseball. I'll watch it on TV sometimes, rarely non-Chicago teams outside of the post-season. On the other hand, I love going to games. I've been to probably 40-50 Cubs games in my life (I used to live 2 blocks from Wrigley) and about 15 Sox games. But I just don't have one team I ride for. I want the Cubs to do well this year. I'd love for them to win a championship (although it's not going to happen this year). When the Cubs made their run in 2004 I went to 3 playoff games including Game 7 against the Marlins in the NLCS. It was a heartbreaker but incredibly fun. But I just can't get into baseball like I do the NFL. Is it the game itself, the fact that the sport is perfect for fantasy gaming, growing up with the 1985 Bears? It's probably all of that and more.

So to wrap this up what do I think of Bonds' record-breaking performance? I think it's a shame that performance-enhancing drugs have tainted ALL of sports. It's his record, no asterisk, until someone else breaks it or he is proven guilty. He deserves to be congratulated on a career that was impressive even before he may have taken steroids. Only he knows what he did and all of us can't be 100% sure of anything unless you actually physically witnessed him injecting. I'm sick of hearing about it all, I want it to go away. And it does absolutely NOTHING to affect how much I like professional baseball.

I laughed at how Bonds barely acknowledged his son at home plate after he hit #756. Records are over-emphasized anyway. Michael Jordan is viewed as one of the best, if not the best, to ever play in the NBA. Yet, how many significant records does he hold? It's time for all of us to move on. Well, except for Cubs fans, they have to still wallow in self-pity. At least for now.