I don’t follow sports. At all. Well except I do follow Lance Armstrong…but that’s another story for another time. First time I lived in Chicago was during the 2001 World Series, played between the Yankees and the Diamondbacks. Everyone wanted the Yankees to win after all that the city of Manhattan had been through the month prior. I did too, however I was a bit torn. I was homesick after the Sept. 11 attacks and the fact that my team…from my home town was playing? well I had a bit of a heartbeat when I would hear that they were doing well. Perhaps that’s why, even though the Yankees ALWAYS seem to win the series, that my heart was torn…I wanted New Yorker’s hearts to keep on beating.
A few years later I was back living in Chicago. I had gone to see the Cubs play many times. And although I had never been to a Sox game, when they played the final games of the series, you could feel it…you could see it in the face of the “everyman”. The White Sox are a working man’s team who have dealt with their share of scandal. But they were playing ball…my goodness, They. Were. Playing. Ball! That final game I was in my apartment. My roommate had been watching the game from a downtown Chicago hotel lounge. He called me up and said meet me at Quencher’s. That was our local neighborhood bar. And me…no sports enthusiast, said…”you bet”! I had my snow boats on before I hung up the phone.
The crowd at Quencher’s, on Fullerton and Western is an artistic crowd, full of musicians and poets and painters. But when I walked in, all eyes were glued to the TV sets brought in for the occasion. No one there that night gave two thoughts to sports, but this was something more. This was the spirit of a town, that was rising up against all odds, against everything that was supposed to happen. When the game was called, and the White Sox won the World Series, everyone in that small pub hugged each other with tears in their eyes. It was just a brilliant night. A brilliant, a cold, and a wonderful night to be living in the city of Chicago.
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