Chicago – The World Series came to Bad, Bad Leroy Brown’s neighborhood. And survived. It gets dark early on the South Side of Chicago. This part of town has always carried a reputation, but never for winning baseball.
“When I first came to the South Side? I wanted to turn around and go home,” admitted Billy Pierce, a pitcher traded to the White Sox from Detroit in 1948. “The stockyards down the road from the ballpark had a distinct aroma. And it was a powerful smell.”
The Sox don’t stink anymore. Chicago defeated Houston 5-3 in Game 1 of the World Series.
But it takes more than one sweet Saturday night to beat an inferiority complex, especially in a city of broad shoulders that holds its nose at any mention of the South Side, where little shines unless the White Sox turn on the stadium lights.
The Bridgeport neighborhood that’s home to the American League champs can be rougher than the grittiest line of any classic Jim Croce song. Pour me a shot and a beer and I’ll tell you a grim statistic of life around here, where there are 20 liquor stores for every supermarket.
“Is this heaven?” asked a sign held by a female Sox fan behind the visitors dugout. “No, it’s the South Side.”
Ever notice how all the postcards of the Chicago skyline seem to be snapped with the big lake on the right?
The photographer forever turns his back on the South Side, where cattle once came to slaughter and the Daley political machine was born, but long was considered a place you want to be from rather than live in.
“The neighborhood gets a bad rap. It’s kind of like Mayberry,” said Bob O’Malley, a lifelong Bridgeport resident who cannot walk 90 feet of sidewalk without recognizing a friendly face and vows the lone way he will leave is feet first in a casket.
“OK, so maybe it’s Mayberry with a rough edge. But it’s home.”
The elementary school where O’Malley learned to read and fear the atom bomb sat in the shadow of the old Comiskey Park. In 1959, the year this American League franchise last crashed baseball’s biggest party, an Irish kid scaled a chain-link fence during recess and sneaked past an usher’s benevolent neglect to slip in the World Series through the side door.
“Never missed a game,” said the 58-year-old O’Malley, his grin as wide as if he had played hooky yesterday.
But as the Sox came to bat at the Series for the first time in 46 seasons, O’Malley was stuck seven blocks from home plate, cleaning the grill of the family hot dog stand. He loves the Sox. Forever will. And stout South Siders do not expect a Purple Heart for their decades of suffering, the way fans across town at Wrigleyville do.
In a city big enough for only one lovable loser, it’s difficult to tell whether this Sox team has inspired civic pride. Or a jealous rage.
“The die-hard Cubs fan, if we were playing the St. Louis Cardinals in the Series, would commit suicide. Or go to Aruba,” White Sox owner Jerry
Reinsdorf said. “What really would be nice is if we could stop the crosstown hatred.”
Sure. When pigs fly. And a Wal-Mart opens a store in the Sears Tower.
Could these White Sox, a franchise unable to grab a World Series ring since 1917, put the shine back on the South Side? Swinging a wrecking ball at the neighborhood stereotype, pawn shops are being replaced by renovated townhomes.
Ozzie Guillen, the loud, irreverent manager of the Sox, might be just crazy enough to transform unappreciated, ignored Bridgeport into the Land of Oz.
Standing on the stoop of a house in the ‘hood, 20-year-old Angelo Sanchez could not hear the bat crack with a fourth-inning home run by Joe Crede that put Chicago in the lead to stay. But he stared in wonder at the fireworks exploding over the ballpark.
“This is my team. This is where I live,” Sanchez said. “This is all good.”
In celebration, cars rolling down the street past Sanchez blared their horns.
It sounded like love.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
