Who ya gonna root for?

The World Series is just around the corner, and many bloggers, especially those who run Cubs' blogs, are hoping the White Sox will end their 87-year drought of victories, following in the footsteps of last year's champions, the Red Sox. If both Sox teams end their "jinxes" then maybe the Cubs can too.

In the second game of the ALCS, the Pale Hose managed to eek out a victory against the Angels, seemingly stealing the game in the bottom of the ninth of a tie ballgame, with two out. The home plate umpire failed to make a call of a swinging third strike in a fashion that would indicate that the batter was either out or not out.

Replays of the play finally indicated that the pitch had grazed the dirt just prior to the catcher catching the ball, which meant that the batter, having clearly swung and missed the pitch, was elligible to run to first, and if he arrived before a defensive player with the ball touched the bag, he would be ruled safe. That's in fact what happened.

However, the Angels players were convinced that the umpire had called the batter out, and that play for the Sox' half of the inning was over. The Angel's catcher rolled the ball onto the field, which is the custom at the conclusion of the inning, and the Angels' players began to leave the field.

The runner was ruled safe, the next batter hit a ball off the left field wall, allowing the base runner to score, and the Sox won the game by one run. To many viewers, it seemed the Sox had done something very much like "stealing" the ball game. It just didn't seem "cricket" to borrow a term from our British friends.

The Sox fans at the ball park went wild that night. Commentators for days following kept remarking that they had only seen fans go that crazy when the home town team wins the seventh game of the World Series. They were further puzzled that the fans would be so thrilled at a victory that hinged on a controversial call from an umpire. It seemed the game had been given their team, not earned. (In fact the run was "unearned" in baseball parlence, the runner having reached base on an error.)

But how fitting. This is a team who hasn't won a World Series since 1918. In 1919, this team with some of the best players to ever play the game, sold out the World Series to gamblers. And their owner was almost certainly involved. Worse, he later sold out his own players in order to pinch pennies on his payroll. (It's also a team located on the South Side of Chicago, the same general neighborhood as that occuppied by Al Capone, America's most notorious gangster.)

Of course neither the current Sox players nor the owners had anything to do with that earlier group, except for the name of the team and its history. As Americans, we like to believe we have no history, that we can make ourselves up anew, out of whole clothe, as it were. We start over again, we re-invent ourselves, we go off to college and get an education, we trade ball players and rename stadiums.

I'm sure the Sox players feel this way. They didn't make the call the other night that allowed them to eventually win the game. They just did what they are paid to do. And I very seriously doubt that many of the fans in Chicago that night were around for the Black Sox scandle or had anything whatsoever to do with Al Capone, but there was something very curious about the pleasure the Sox fans took in that victory.

It was almost as if the fans took more pleasure in having "stolen the game" than if the batter who struck out had hit a walk-off home run. It seemed an odd reaction for a team that has traditionally been known as "the working man's team."