For one, it is the best of times. For the other, the worst.
On the South Side, 2005 is the age of wisdom, the epoch of belief, the season of Light. Southsiders have everything before them, and most coveted is an autumn anticipated with uncharacteristic optimism.
To the north, it is the age of foolishness, the epoch of incredulity, the season of darkness. For Northsiders, there is nothing before them, only the prospect of another long winter in the wait.
We are, of course, in a Dickinsian Chicago — one city, two teams, each from neighborhoods as diametric as their seasons have been.
In the midst of Chicago's North Side along the Lake Michigan shoreline sits Wrigleyville. Upscale streets are lined with pubs and specialty shops and brownstones. It's a pleasant meander from the Chicago Transit's Red Line along West Addison into Wrigley Field. Inside, patrons are treated to ivy-covered walls, baseball nostalgia, and a team whose bumper-boat has kept them between five games in either direction of .500 all season.
Eight miles south, the neighborhood is not as appealing. Here, patrons detrain the same Red Line cars, but move along 35th Street in the Armour Square neighborhood more robustly. Gone are the brownstones, replaced by high-rise subsidized housing. No quaint shops catch the eyes of passers-by. The U.S. Cellular Field is of the modern, calculated breed, a seller of corporate naming rights built for the efficient execution of baseball games.
Here is home to the Chicago White Sox, owners of the best record in Major League Baseball nearly two-thirds through the season.
Descendants of the infamous Eight Men Out and still cloaked by the cloud of disgrace bequeathed to them, every White Sox team since 1919 has been typecast by non-partisan America as the evil stepsister to Chicago's Cinderella Cubs.
But perhaps America has it all wrong.
As the baseball world eagerly waits for the glass slipper to fit their debutant Cubs, it has simultaneously turned its back on the poorer sibling. Each year, the Cubs are lent a shoulder to shed a victim's tears from their plushy uptown 'hood while the White Sox dwell in baseball obscurity in the bowels of Chicago's South Side.
The working class communities of the South Side share with their resident White Sox a similarly tumultuous upbringing. Irish immigrants who settled here during the mid-1800s endured racial epithets and derision from the City Proper, even as the canal they dug was establishing Chicago as a major trade center. Years later, their back yards would serve as catch basins for the growing city's sewage diverted from Lake Michigan.
However, it is this South Side neighborhood scarred by the remnants of a sludge-laden canal upon which the Fairy Godmother has now descended.
Now in his second full season, manager Ozzie Guillen is quietly credited with bringing about the White Sox renaissance. He is regarded as the consummate manager's manager who counsels and seeks counsel, but in the end leaves no doubt as to who is in charge. Long-time broadcaster Ken "Hawk" Harrelson frequently cites the unanimous clubhouse respect accorded Ozzie during his customary pre-game interviews when the ChiSox are on the road.
Wait a minute. Isn't this the same clubhouse that has as members Frank Thomas and Carl Everett? To exacerbate the matter, the two compete for the same at bats as designated hitters.
Believers will point to the peace accord Ozzie brokered between these two temperamental players and the rest of the world as one manifestation of Ozzie's hold over his clubhouse. In Texas and Boston, merely to come away from an Everett encounter without a black eye would have been peace enough for management.
Yet, intangibles like clubhouse leadership have to materialize in on-field performance to make a noticeable difference in the way the world looks at you.
The White Sox arguably have the best five-man starting rotation in baseball, anchored by the majors' first 15-game winner in Jon Garland. Going into 2005, Garland was a career 46-51, including three straight 12-win seasons. In spring training, he heeded Ozzie's advice and established the inside of the plate with hitters. The results are tangible enough — a season-over-season increase in strikeouts-to-walks from 1.5 to 2.4 and a decrease in ERA from 4.89 to 3.17.
To extend his reach beyond the dugout, Guillen vested confidence in catcher A.J. Pierzynski. His offseason acquisition has solidified a rotation rounded out by homegrown Mark Buehrle, ex-Yankees Orlando Hernandez, and Jose Contreras, and 2004's big midseason acquisition, Freddy Garcia.
The full rotation has compiled a 49-20 record. Even more impressive, they have collectively missed only five starts all season, those being filled by Triple-A phenom Brandon McCarthy when Hernandez was injured.
Of all the testaments to Guillen's accomplishments, none resonates louder than the criticisms leveled against him all season. It is the price of success, the same price paid by Joe Torre in New York and Terry Francona in Boston.
While most gripes circulate only within the Windy City, others are carried to a mainstream audience. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley recently critiqued Guillen's decision to use Brandon McCarthy when Hernandez went on the DL: "That was stupid. That was terrible."
Barring a last trimester collapse, the White Sox are primed to bring Chicago its third division championship of the new millennium — the White Sox also won the American League Central in 2000 and the Cubs the National League Central in 2003. In doing so, it can end the futility of finishing second to the Minnesota Twins in each of the last three years and seven times overall in the last nine.
As the blistering sun bakes all of Chicago in triple-digit temperatures these days, North Side cafes are filled with red-and-blue attired patrons who sip their double-chocolate cappuccinos and discuss last night's Cubs win or today's Cubs loss. Anything but the success of their South Side siblings. There is no joy in Wrigleyville.
Tens of blocks to the south, there is discussion, too. It's not over last night's game, but of the coming autumn.
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