The A’s moved on to Oakland and in 1966 I moved on to Chicago and the Cubs, which will make Mets fans instantly–and gloatingly–understand why I’m not crazy about them, either. I fell in love with the ardor of men like Ron Santo and Bill Buckner–who is remembered for one blunder and not for a decade of brilliant fielding, where he made one extraordinary catch after another on ankles so damaged he had to soak them in hot salt for two hours before taking the field.
So this year’s World Series has me in a dilemma. Usually, if the team from Queens or the one from the Bronx is in the series, I root for whoever is playing against them. Now I don’t know what to do. Basically I’m suspending my subscription to The New York Times so I won’t have the self-anointed paper of record screaming the story at me every morning–I can get Mideast coverage from NPR.
Don’t get me wrong. I like a lot of things about New York–I don’t share the national prejudice that the city is strictly flyover country between Chicago and Paris or London. But it’s the attitude, the “if it’s happening here it’s of paramount importance to everyone else” mentality that gets me down.
A couple of years ago I went into New York to see my publisher, who kindly gave a dinner party for me. While I was flying in the Knicks beat the Bulls, and my lovely, ultrasophisticated editor greeted me at the door by saying, “We beat you! Isn’t that wonderful? Aren’t you happy?”
When Chicago had its brief moment of sports glory, during the Michael Jordan years, the New York papers wrote condescending stories on how excited Chicagoans were about the Bulls. It’s ludicrous when it happens in the heartland, but it is front-page news when it’s in New York. In 1985, the media capital dismissed the I-70 series (Royals versus Cardinals) as having only regional interest. The rest of us are supposed to care when two boroughs clash? Of course, except for the Knicks and the Rangers, Manhattan itself doesn’t have any sports teams. The Jets and Giants are from New Jersey, and the baseball teams are from Queens and the Bronx, so maybe it’s a sense of being a second-rate sports town that gives Manhattan its attitude. Even Cincinnati and St. Louis, with less than half Manhattan’s population, have their very own ball teams. What Upper East Sider wants to admit that they have to go to Queens to watch baseball?
I suppose my bitterness stems–as bitterness so often does in this world–from being a have-not who’s looking with impotent envy at the haves. Now that Michael Jordan has retired, Chicago has virtually nothing (except for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, I mean, and the Art Institute; oh, there’s abundant well-built housing and the lakefront, but these are meaningless frills). Our football team is an embarrassment, our American League team couldn’t convert the season’s best record into a single victory in the postseason. And we have the Cubs. Who last won the World Series in 1908, but whose legendary friendly confines make even great players like Mark Grace want to stay in Chicago. Remember Rick Reuschel, Yankee fans? He cried when Cubs management forced him to go to New York.
