CHICAGO (AP) -It can’t be coincidence the colors of the city’s baseball teams are black and blue.
Barely a month ago, with both clubs atop their respective divisions heading into Labor Day, a Cubs vs. White Sox World Series was the talk of the town. With the postseason not yet a week old, Chicagoans have been reminded again why the last time that happened was 1906.
So maybe the big surprise on this dreary Sunday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the Cubs’ folded their postseason tent on the West Coast against the Dodgers, is that the White Sox didn’t follow suit at home.
Lefty starter John Danks limited Tampa Bay to seven hits in 6 2-3 innings, long enough for his teammates to deliver some timely two-out hits of their own in a 5-3 win over Tampa Bay that pulled Chicago to 2-1 in the AL division series.
“It would have been nicer if both of us were still playing,” White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf said evenly, though chances are he was smiling on the inside.
for. So fans of both teams return to their long-standing game of one-upmanship: comparing bruises.
North Siders insist they saw yet another disappointment coming – the Cubs’ unofficial motto, after all, is “Wait ’til next year!” – and South Siders counter that they, at least, have the foresight to show up appropriately dressed for their team’s funeral.
And truth be told, the 40,142 Sox fans, nearly all of whom turned out in black for Game 3, weren’t expecting much more. Chicago faced three must-win games last week just to make the playoffs and A.J. Pierzynski conceded he was at a loss to explain why the club is so good with its back to the wall.
“Maybe we don’t like our wives and don’t want to go home,” he laughed, then looked straight into the camera. “Just kidding, honey. I love you.”
A moment later though, Pierzynski started again. “I’ve never seen a team in big games act as normal and as unflappable. No one changed anything,” he said. “That’s a good sign.”
One thing that has changed, though, is the “blacked-out” grandstand at U.S. Cellular Field. Just ahead of last Tuesday’s tie-breaking game against Minnesota for the AL Central title, Sox management took to the airwaves and begged fans to don the team colors. Then, to heighten the effect, the team handed out 40,000 black towels.
de the ballpark look “like a stadium full of bats,” and asked fans to do it again Sunday, hoping that what began as a gimmick could yet become a tradition.
Speaking of haunted houses, meanwhile, the ancient shrine across town known as Wrigley Field stood empty and forbidding in a brief afternoon rain. Locals still wearing Cubbie blue wandered in and out of taverns to top off hangovers and tourists stopped in front of the big neon board on the Clark Street side snapping photos. One out-of-towner told an Associated Press reporter, “There’s always next season. We can’t be fair weather fans.”
Not so White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen.
He’s taken the South Side loyalty oath as seriously as anyone born in Venezuela can. Guillen played for the White Sox before managing them and said often that while he always roots for a handful of his friends on the team across town – manager Lou Piniella and GM Jim Hendry, ballplayers Carlos Zambrano, Derrek Lee and a handful of others – there are limits.
“I feel good because I win one game and don’t get swept,” he said in the aftermath of Sunday’s win. Then, just a heartbeat later, Guillen couldn’t resist adding, “I could care less about the Cubs.”
bed momentum heading into the postseason and never let go.
“Baseball changes pitch by pitch, inning by inning. The bottom line,” he said, “is you have to find a way to win every inning.”
The Cubs compiled the best regular-season record in the NL, but never grasped that sense of immediacy. Piniella left Game 1 starter Ryan Dempster on the mound too long and after more than 100 pitches and seven walks, he surrendered a grand slam to James Loney that sent the Cubs into a tailspin from which they never recovered. Infield errors early in Game 2 proved that, and their hitters proved every bit as jittery the rest of the way in a sweep.
“If we would advance to the ALCS, then we could say we had a better season,” Sox slugger Paul Konerko said. “But if we get knocked out this round, to me, it’s even. They probably had a better regular season, but it doesn’t matter. Both teams want to get to the finish line.”
In a town that knows disappointment too well, the score is one down, one to go.
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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org
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