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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-kass-cubs-met-1007-20151006-column.htmlHell freezes over! Kass wishes Cubs wellJohn Kass:
Cubs fans deserve that feeling we Sox fans had in 2005.
With the Cubs in the playoffs against Pittsburgh on Wednesday and crazed Cubs fans so amped up, what are White Sox fans to do?
Some people insist they are Chicago fans, loving the Cubs and the Sox equally. And to such people I say, please moutza yourself before someone beats me to it.
You're either a cat or you're a dog. You can't hold two baseball teams in your heart, especially in playoff October.
Your baseball heart should be on your sleeve, beating wildly for just one team on the outside of your shirt for all to see, flapping meatily like some undiscovered primeval creature.
But that's baseball, and the Cubs are in the one-game wild-card playoff. So what should Sox fans do about it?
I suppose we could keep our mouths shut and watch the game with them and not provoke them, particularly if they're within reach of any kitchen utensils, like cleavers. And don't mention a fellow named Steve whom I'm not supposed to name, so I won't.
At morally ambiguous times like this, I rely on the counsel given me by the greatest White Sox fan in Chicago, the Rev. Richard O'Donnell, who is now but a few days shy of 105 years old.
I met him when he was a spry kid of 90, preparing to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before a game at Sox Park years ago.
"I figure I first picked up a baseball when I was about 5 years old," Father O'Donnell, the retired pastor of Our Lady of Good Counsel church on the South Side, told me in 2001. "I was born in 1910, you know. Oct. 15, 1910."
The Cubs didn't win the World Series in 1910, or any other year for more than a century afterward. Back then, most Cubs fans still knew the meaning of Tinker to Evers to Chance. And the Sox were nine years from the great Black Sox scandal of 1919 that almost killed baseball.
Father O'Donnell was about the same age as that little boy in legend, the one who said, "Say it ain't so, Joe."
"I'll stand out there and throw my stuff," said Father O'Donnell. "This heat is good for my old soup bone."
Naturally I had to ask him a Cubs question, because I was terrified that the North Siders just might win a World Series before our Sox got their rings.
Yes, I know it is a sin to use a priest in such a way. But I had good reason.
So what about the Cubs, Father O'Donnell?
"They're on the North Side. So they are out of our world," the South Side priest said with a gentle little smirk. "Wish them well, but that's it. They are not of our world."
His is the wisdom of the ages. The Cubs are not of our world. But still.
My younger brothers Peter and Nick are of my world. And they are crazed Cubs fans.
How crazed?
Don't even talk to them on Wednesday. They won't hear you.
And I could tell you how, when they were little boys, they'd talk over each Cubs game batter by batter, for hours before falling asleep. "Santo, Kessinger, Beckert, Banks, the infield third to first!!!" or "Would Ernie ever come over to our house after he retires?"
They'd sometimes play hooky to go to games at Wrigley. And early in the season, during Lent, they'd eschew hot dogs for their own Lenten fare.
Tarama sandwiches.
Tarama is a bright pink salty spread made of fish eggs and olive oil served at Greek restaurants. When they'd start slapping great dollops of tarama on bread in the morning, I knew.
"Game? What game?" they'd tell our parents, their pockets bulging with tarama sandwiches.
My brother-in-law David is also of my world, too, so in love with baseball that he still plays and manages in a serious hardball league in Florida. And Cubs fans like Mary Ellen, the Number One Cubs Fan at the Tribune, and others here like "Old School," who helps me with the column.
"Every other team has won their rings," Old School said. "The Bulls, the Sox, the Hawks, the Bears. Every team. Every team has won except the Cubs."
The Fire won, too.
"The Fire? Really? Oh, so every team except the Cubs."
If they win Wednesday, who knows? They could make a nice run, perhaps claim their destiny as it was foretold in "Back to the Future II."
Sox fans remember how it felt in 2005. We'll never forget.
So call me a heretic, but I'd like Chicago to know that feeling again. The city needs a break from death and taxes. And Cubs fans like my brothers have waited their entire lives.
I want to them to smile the way they did when Burt Hooton threw his no-hitter. When Billy Williams would spit it and hit it in the on deck circle, when Ernie would wiggle his fingers and Santo washed his hands with dirt. And Sandberg with his two home runs off St. Louis.
Yes, we're of different worlds. But these worlds float in the same Chicago baseball universe.
Sox fans won't wave a big blue foam finger or the "W" flag. We won't play the cat-dog. But Cubs fans, we wish you well.
Cubs, beat the Bucs. You can take these guys. You weren't expected to be here, but you are. So take them.
And once you do, go on that run. Do it.
_________________
You know me like that.
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