The Few, The Proud, The Handful of White Sox Fans

 Because of my father, I’m a Sox fan, and because of me, so is Clare.  Judging by attendance figures, we wouldn’t be a crowd in a phone booth (or redesigned Volkswagen Beetle).

Only Cleveland draws fewer fans to home games.  What does that mean?  I can’t speak for Indians’ fans, but in Chicago part of the problem is fatigue.  Ever since Jerry Reinsdorf bought the team in 1981, it’s been one overlong soap opera: Harry Caray, fired; Tony LaRussa, fired; Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, hired and fired as a general manager, hired way too many times as an announcer; Larry Himes, hired and fired as GM; Ozzie Guillen, hired and fired as a manager; Kenny Williams, hired and retired after a career of threatening to take on the world, Guillen included; and Comiskey Park, badmouthed and razed.  Oh, and Reinsdorf also threatened to move the team to Florida.  An ownership with that track record needs to generate more than one World Series win in 34 years.

The Chicago fan base may be unique in the world of professional sports; it really is a zero-sum game, with my team taking the most hits.  In general, Sox fans stay at home unless the team is winning; Cub fans aren’t in the habit of travelling to the South Side to get drunk; Bear fans count the days down to preseason, sometimes while attending a baseball game, sometimes not; Bulls fans are pretty upscale but they can’t fill a ballpark; and Hawk fans have only recently crawled from out of the woodwork thanks to two Stanley Cup titles in four years, and a fifth looking likely.  I wonder how many of them used to spend their money at baseball games. 

Of the above, the Cubs and Bears have the most loyal fans, based on attendance.  Actually, the Bears are more of a mass cult; never has a franchise underperformed to such profit.  The team finished 8-8 last year, and they still dominate the sports’ scene, into spring and summer.  Do you want to see video of last week’s NFL draft picks working out with their new team?  We do in Chicago.

My daughter is one of the sharpest fans I know; she played the game before having to move onto another.  We talk strategy and roster moves all the time, but Clare can’t afford to go to 20 games a year the way I could at her age.  Something’s got to give, or one of Chicago’s teams is going to come close to going belly up.