It’s probably not surprising that Chicago is dreaming now that the Cubs and White Sox are in the post-season:
With Tuesday’s 1-0 victory over Minnesota launching the White Sox into the American League playoffs, Chicago can savor something not seen for a century: the thrill of having both the Sox and the Cubs play in the postseason.
Talk about a once-in-a-lifetime event. The last time this happened was in 1906, when there were a mere 45 U.S. states. The Model T was not around yet. And Geronimo still was.
So dare we think the impossible: a Sox-Cubs World Series?
“It’d certainly be unlike anything people in Chicago have witnessed in their lifetimes, unless they’re 112 years old,” says Jayson Stark, senior baseball writer for espn.com and author of “The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History.”
Baseball in Chicago is often defined by the rivalry between the North Siders and the South Siders. Imagine, then, the whole world watching—as Cubs fans and Sox fans go for each other’s throats.
“You know the impact even just from when the White Sox play the Cubs in the regular season, how impressive that is,” said Andrew McKenna, who has straddled both sides of town, having served as chairman of both the White Sox and Cubs. “It’s a real buzz just during the regular season.”
So imagine what a World Series meeting would mean to a rivalry so deep and so heated.
Because of all this history, it would be a bigger deal than when the Yankees and Mets met in the Subway Series in 2000 and unlike anything baseball has seen since the Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers last played each other in the Fall Classic.
The odds aren’t that great — the Sox barely made it into the playoffs, and the Cubs are, well, the Cubs with all the bad luck that entails — but one can dream.
