You can tell a lot about a team and its fans by its promotional schedule and the crowds they draw for them, and you can tell a lot of what you need to know about the Sox by this one, the Big One, the promotional night every other Bobblehead giveaway and union workers’ celebration all merely lead up to.
Tonight, of course, is Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day, a South Side baseball tradition dating back to before this writer’s time and an actual South Side tradition dating back to God Only Knows When. The hats turn green, the uniforms turn a little cheesy, the crowd turns a little drunker and a little more fistfight-y. The beer signs glow a little brighter, and the yellow shirts of the liquor vendors shine like beacons in an ocean of O’s and Mc’s seeking refuge from persecution by evil property barons in their homelands of Kilarney and Orland Park.
Obviously Chicago isn’t the only city with a large Irish population – Savannah, GA, of all places, boasts the largest actual St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the world – and it’s not even the only city to celebrate the halfway point to that third Holiest Day on the Irish-American lush’s calendar (the other two being Halloween and New Year’s Eve); yet Chicago, for all its mighty standing in the Irish diaspora, has only one team that celebrates the halfway point.
It makes sense the Sox would be that team, considering the large Irish-descendant populations in Beverly, Bridgeport, Morgan Park et al. For a white person to say the words “South Side” in regards to any kind of kinship or origin is to say “I’m Irish” without actually saying it. Mind you, this is the same team that also celebrates Latin Music Night, Polish-American Night, African-American Night, Caribbean Night, Mexican Heritage Night, and Pan-Asian Night – a veritable United Nations of goofy fireworks displays and borderline offensive scoreboard graphics.
Across town at the other ballpark, they’re giving away skateboards and more Bobbleheads, and all this on the heels of American Girl drawings and Beanie Babies. One club celebrates our identities, while the other celebrates the crap our kids put on their shelves. “Chicago’s Team” has never been more insulting a nickname.