Dateline: 04 October 2005; Chicago.
The White Sox have won their first home playoff game since the 1950s. They defeated the Boston Red Sox 14-2. I'm sorry, did I say "defeated"? They didn't just "defeat" the Boston Red Sox. They stepped out onto that field and completely obliterated the Red Sox. Eliminated them—unraveled them to their base molecular structure and erased any record of their ever having existed. The destroyed them so badly that even their relatives began disappearing, like in Back to the Future.
It wasn't just the score. It was every aspect of the gameplay. Contreras' pitching was absolutely spot-on, an all-time classical performance, one for the ages if it had been in an elimination game. He did give up hits, to be sure—it wasn't that. It was the aggressiveness and imagination of his pitches, the remarkable variation of his repertoire. There was the hitting, everybody contributing. But even take away the homeruns, and the hitting was still superb. And don't get me started on the aggressive, fundamentally flawless fielding.
The White Sox are very, very good. Yes, the Chicago White Sox. But now is not the time for them to become "Chicago's Team."
Cubs Fans! Pay attention. I know you all have the attention span of — well, of Dusty Baker, so I'll make this quick. Cubs fans! Hate the White Sox!
The last thing we need is for you to start mucking up our inexorable march to the World Series with your "Oh, I'm a Chicago fan" garbage. There is no such thing as a Chicago fan. Understand? No such thing. Cubs or Sox. Pick your team. Hate the other one. That's Chicago.
It isn't just newcomers that make this "Chicago fan" mistake. Long-time residents do it, too. These are the kinds of people who have coffee mugs with clip-art baby seals on them because they made their fourteenth $15 donation to Greenpeace. Have minimal social intercourse with these people. If possible, cross the street if you see them coming. At least during baseball season.
The White Sox, although clearly an indestructible juggernaut who are sure to crush all of their American League opponents into a fine powder to be blown away by the winds of Zephyr as they bestride the baseball world like Colossi, cannot win if casual Cubs fans are cheering for them. You people are poison — army of King-Midases-in-Reverse, sprouting donkey ears and turning everything you touch to wilting ivy flakes. For the love of God, don't cheer for the White Sox!
In 2003, every White Sox fan I know cheered like a lunatic for the Atlanta Braves, and then the Florida Marlins. We threw Marlins parties. White Sox fans wore Dontrelle Willis jerseys for Halloween — we swore off seafood as a paean to the sea-dwelling namesake of our new favorite team. I personally threw a big party for the final game, with chilled Champagne and everything. We didn't band together to cheer on the Chicago team. We didn't feel a shred of remorse for our friends, girlfriends, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters who had been waiting their whole life for a Cubs World Series. We laughed in their faces — your faces. We snickered and cheered. We emailed pictures of the Bartman interference to you with witty captions like, "Mua hahahahaha!" Look, let's call a duck a duck, OK? We hate you. We rubbed your faces in your team's inevitable failure, like an abusive drunk with an incontinent dog.
Really, on a base level, it doesn't make sense, does it? I mean, we could bring it back to philosophy. Contained in the definition of the property "Cubs Fan" is subproperty "Hates the White Sox." It's one of the things that defines being a Cubs Fan. If there were to be a Cubs Fan, therefore, who insisted that they were in fact a Cubs fan, and yet were cheering for the White Sox in a regular season game, do you know what would happen? I'll tell you what would happen. The entire City of Chicago would collapse in on itself and turn into Scranton. So imagine how this is amplified in the playoffs! Ask yourself this, "Chicago fans." Do you really want the city of Chicago, already spontaneously transformed in Scranton, to then double reverse itself back into the City of Chicago for a brief moment before turning into a black hole that begins to suck all matter into itself, except for Frank Thomas who is so dense he is expelled somewhere into the Oort Cloud? Do you really want to be responsible for that?
Look, I know this all sounds very desperate. Perhaps part of it is guilt. And redemption. We Sox fans were so mean, so wicked and evil during the Cubs playoff run that really, we feel guilty about all the negative energy we collectively created in an attempt to destroy your hopes and dreams. Maybe this is just a cry for help, maybe we're just trying to get disciplined, because we were bad.
(Not really. I was just saying that to get sympathy out of you all. Really, you're all a bunch of losers and we don't want your loser juice dripping all over our unstoppable baseball team.)
Dan / October 5, 2005 11:10 AM
What kind of name is Ramsin Canon? You sound like a total stroke.
I'll remember this column when you strokes get eliminated. From the front office, players and down to the scumbag fan base, there is nothing worse then White Sox baseball.
Class is something that will never be used in the same sentence with you idiots. Unless we are talking lack of it.
Get bent, "Ramsin".