The 'Red Line' Series

Yet another bucket list item was crossed off the list for Wendy and me this past weekend. We had the privilege of taking part in not one, but two games of the three-game series between the White Sox and Cubs at Wrigley Field. People refer to this as the Crosstown Classic or The Windy City Showdown, but my favorite nickname for the rivalry is The Red Line Series (Named as such since the city's primary north-south rail, The Red Line, connects the two stadiums).
This is the ultimate north-south rivalry, and people here take it very seriously. I'm not even sure I can begin to appreciate the history of the rivalry between these two teams, and the amount of passion and heart that Chicagoans put into rooting for their Sox or their Cubs.

Let me see if I can break down the two organizations, and why they are so different. (Disclosure: I had no biases prior to moving to Chicago and this is all drawn from my own experiences with a little help from Wikipedia) Wrigley Field is the oldest baseball stadium in the National League (2nd oldest overall behind Fenway). It's tucked away in the beautiful, northern neighborhood of Lakeview. The surrounding area, which is a hub for great bars and restaurants in the city, has come to be known as Wrigleyville. Sox stadium, U.S. Cellular Field (aka 'The Cell' or the stadium formerly known as Comiskey) is located on the Southside in a not-so-great part of town. Coincidentally, the two stadiums are nearly equidistant from Madison Avenue (the north-south 'zero' street') with Wrigley Field being 3600N and The Cell being 3500S.

The Cubby faithful, in my experience, are made up of two types of people: 1.) "North-siders" whose personal or family fanhood goes back to before it was cool being a Cubs fan and 2.) people that aren't from Chicago (and who don't really like baseball) but who have heard of Wrigley Field and like to get drunk at baseball games. It's not quite that black and white but you get the picture. And from what I've seen, the latter "type" tends to be the one you encounter more when you go to Wrigley Field. This video pretty much sums it up. Sox fans are, plain and simple, Chicago southsiders. They are less white, more blue collar, and overall seem to be more knowledgeable about baseball. My dad would refer to them as "salt of the earth."

Why did I become a Sox Fan?

People ask me this a lot. And why wouldn't they? I'm a Texan who has only been living in Chicago for two years. The answer is multi-fold, but the short of it is that I like the Sox because they're the underappreciated, working-class baseball team in this city. They have to win baseball games to put people in the seats, but the people that are there are true fans. In my opinion, moving to Chicago and becoming a Cubs fan is almost a cliche, which is a big reason why I couldn't bring myself to do it. It's also worth noting that it's next to impossible to be passionate about and root for a team if you can't watch them on TV every night, which is why it's hard for me to continue being pumped about a revived Texas Rangers team while I'm living in Chicago.

Friday, we were invited to sit in the Miller-Coors box with some of Wendy's work people. It was a great crowd and a great way to enjoy the game (free food and beer and an awesome vantage point from the mezzanine on the first base line). The Sox scored 4 in the 7th to take it 6-4.

After the game we hit up the Cubby Bear, which is a huge bar caddy corner to the Wrigley Field marquee. This place had all the makings of a great party: wood floors covered in beer and broken glass, a DJ playing mostly 90s hip-hop, creepy dudes around every corner, and drunk people everywhere. It actually was fun for about 30 minutes. Then we decided to move on to a place that was a little more chill where we could get some sun, Casey Moran's. As always, it was an awesome day to be a Chicagoan, we enjoyed the company of some great Miller-Coors friends, and we got to watch the Sox take it down on the north side of town.

After a 28 hour shift in the VA ICU on Saturday-Sunday (and a 5-hour energy), we met up with an old friend of mine from Texas, David Hanss, and his girlfriend Sara. Dave and I overlapped only a couple of years when we were in school in Austin, but we have remained in touch over the years; so I was pumped when he told me he and Sara were coming up to Chicago for July 4 weekend. Sara is from a small Texas town (Santo) a couple of hours south of Wichita Falls, so she automatically earned cool points in my book. We had a great Chicago afternoon. We hit up Benchmark (a new sports bar in Old Town) for lunch and then hopped on the Red Line (Dave and Sara's first 'L' experience) to Wrigley for Game 3. Our seats were in foul territory in right field, right in the warm sunshine on an otherwise cool Chicago summer day (upper 70s low 80s). Other than a beastly Carlos Quentin put out from deep right field to home plate, the Sox were pretty flat and lost 3-1, but still took the series 2-1 and the season series 4-2. There was no shortage of great photo ops that day, and Dave and Sara got their souvenir photo in front of the Wrigley Field marquee.

Definitely an unforgettable Chicago weekend.