Play ball: Confession of a Sox Fan, Part 1

Yeah, I am a White Sox fan. Though I am pretty sure it's not a genetic condition- like being bald or having a full head of hair, or being straight like George Clooney or gay like Elton John - it's close. No not close to being Elton John, Cubs' fans. Besides you guys are the ones who idolize a guy with funny glasses.

While not in your blood, maybe the team you root for is imprinting, like a baby duck that sees some goofy ass grad student instead of Mama Duck and winds up getting a degree in biology instead of being killed by a hunter in Wisconsin, which would be its true fate.

But fate had me go to my first game at old Comiskey Park - and seeing that grass for the first time through the tunnel - it had me hooked. And it might be why I live in the suburbs and have a lawn that one day I swear I will cut to have cool geometric patterns in it.

Actually fate had it that my Lithuanian immigrant grandfather took to baseball, and as a very young boy I would sit in the back room of his grocery store in Roseland listening to radio broadcasts with him while eating smoked fish, sweet rolls and sour cream. Yes, I should weigh 300 pounds by now.

Which reminds: one of my favorite players was Wilbur Wood, the rotund knuckleball pitcher who, of course, went by the nickname of Woody, and who would amble to the mound to the sounds of the theme from the Woody Woodpecker cartoon. Actually, Wood probably wasn't any fatter than I am right now when he was pitching - he just seemed that way - and, like many Americans, wound up chubby.

He also was a workhorse, one season going 24-20, which is a lot of throwing toward mediocrity, especially by today's standards. And I'll be honest - I just looked that stuff up. I am not a stats geek. I have no cards stashed away in a safety deposit box.

I was as much a Sox fan for bat day and other freebies as I was of Tommy John and Tommy Agee. And I loved bobble-head dolls, the old fashioned ones with the round faces, NOT the new kind that are supposed to look like a player but seem like some type of quasi-Satanic ritual item.

I was the little nerd who brought a painting to the park I made on cardboard with Tempura paint of Woody Woodpecker wearing Wilbur Wood's uniform in the hopes of getting on TV or that Wood would notice me. Neither happened - and to this day I am surprised I didn't get teased more as a kid doing stuff like that. And I even made a groovy painting of slugger Dick Allen that I have somewhere in my basement to this day, which I must have had on earth shoes when I created it.

It is the only vestige of my support for the Pale Hose, being raised to think that toys were to be played with then discarded, not stored away as investments. Silly parents. They even let me play outside, by myself - a lot.

Thus, without an ancient scorecard to my name I just have my vague memories of when the good guys wore red or royal blue, then, egads, clam-diggers.

And though South Side by birth, I harbored no ill will toward the Cubs. One of the meaner nuns was a Cubs fan, which did make me wary of liking them. Plus, they just seemed farther away as we migrated to the south suburbs.

Now the Cubs still seem that way, distant to me and my Sox-uality.