Soxual Healing

So I haven’t blogged in well over a month. So much porn, so little time.

Well, there’s that. But the real reason is (aside from I don’t have much to say) that I’ve been distracted by the Chicago White Sox. It’s been almost two weeks since they swept the World Series, a fact I am still coming to terms with.

Now I’m not the biggest baseball fan in the world. In fact, though I do pay attention to the really long season, I treat it most of the year like background music. That is, occasionally I will turn it up for a really good play, much as you would when you hear a cool tune.

But the White Sox had me hooked for good from their August swoon through the playoffs.

First, theirs the fact the team is part of my heritage. I sucked at baseball but liked to listen to it on the radio with my grandfather. It was probably the first sport I was exposed to, the first games I went to - either that or listening to Notre Dame football on my dad’s old Grundig stereo (with a thing that made a shamrock shape when the station was properly tuned).

You can take the boy out of the South Side, but some things stick.

Aside from roots, the team this year was filled with good stories: a manager who should have his own one-man Broadway show or become the next Evita; a relief pitcher, a down and out drunk at the tender age of 24, who got his act together, if not his waist line (and how South Side is that?); a pain in the ass catcher who clicked; two Cuban refugee pitchers; a stellar pitching staff to rival any I recall from my youth (A’s, Orioles) and a United Nations cast of characters.

The thing is, watching them in the play-offs, I acquired a set of quirks to rival anyone on meds for OCD -- which means just about any baseball player (see Houston Astros bad facial hair, for example).

Here’s my list:

As the playoffs wore on, I took to sleeping with the radio on should some late breaking news happen (about the team or otherwise, as this felt a tad like the world changing)

II wore the same pair of gym shorts made out of sweat pants material all month, without washing them, to bed every night.

I tipped my hat to the full moon and my long gone grandpa after the team clinched the American League pennant.

I was celibate. Never mind, nothing new there.

I went out of my way to be nice to people - to keep karma in line.

I played Christmas music in late October, not because I work at a shopping center, but because it feels like Christmas.

Even though I have three White Sox caps, I didn’t wear any of them on game days. I refrained from buying any new team gear until after the World Series, lest I be presumptuous.

While watching the last three games, I sat in the same wooden rocking chair, with my glass on the same side of my chair, and knocked on the wooden arms four times (twice with each hand) when things looked tough.

I teared up on several occasions like a middle aged woman at a Barry Manilow concert.

I made up my own “Sox Love” hand gesture.

I did a drive-by shouting the night the team won the Series, rolling slowly past a bar where the owner, a diehard Cubs fan refused to play Sox games, yelling “ha ha” at the top of my lungs, like Nelson on The Simpsons.

And after it was all over I went on a Sox shopping spree, like some overgrown 12 year old. That included buying things for other people (hey, the karma thing), but also getting a Bobby Jenks jersey online (the first time I have paid full price for a jersey with someone’s name stitched on it). Reason: he was the guy on the mound when the team won it all, and he is the guy I most resemble (which probably is not a good thing for either one of us). The spree included a trip to Grandstand, the mom and pop store down the street from Us Cellular Field, where I waited in line for a half hour to buy my gear.

I bought every magazine I could find about the victory, to give my brother for Christmas. I was a bit miffed that the national press didn’t wet itself like they did last year after the Red Sox finally won it all. Then again, this confirmed the East Coast bias in the media.

Not necessarily an elitist thing, just a lazy thing, as the stories I heard from long-suffering fans here in Chicago were just as compelling as any I heard out of Boston in 2004. But that’s South Side, too, not being appreciated, just going about and doing your business, and even if it’d damn good it ain’t Hollywood glamorous.

Now, two weeks later, as clocks have been pushed back and it’s dark at 4:30, I’m finally getting used to the fact there is no more baseball to watch. Life seems pretty boring, mostly because it is pretty boring out here in the suburbs, among Cubs fans who could care less.

Two weeks on I can still tell you the names of all the Sox starters, by position, even if I can’t spell ‘em (Konerko, Iguchi, Uribe, Crede, Perzinski, Podsednik, Rowand, Dye) the four man starting pitching rotation (Contreras, Buehrle, Garland, Garcia) and much of the bullpen (Politte, Hernandez, Marte, Cott, Hermanson, Jenks).

I am in withdrawal. Is there such a thing as a sports-watchers rehab clinic?