GET YOUR HAPPY ON! - a meliorist worldview

The big story TODAY is the Crosstown Classic here in Chicago. That’s the weekend when the Cubs and the White Sox compete in one of the world’s greatest sports rivalries.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of rivalry and competition. When you set out to make someone else look bad, the person you will hurt most is yourself, but most sports enthusiasts don’t understand that. Every year the local media likes to play up this rivalry that upsets so many Chicagoans.

Even if you’re not a local, you might be aware of the decades old tension between Sox and Cubs fans. It’s all about geography. Chicago is a long city, about 40 miles from north to south. The distinction is so great that Chicago has three main populations — Northsiders, Southsiders and Westsiders — and among them, a 19th Century socio-economic cold war exists to this day.

The wealthiest neighborhoods are on the North side; the South side has the most ethnically homogenous neighborhoods; and the West Side has some of the country’s poorest ethnic neighborhoods (though poverty and violent crime exists all over the city). For many years, there was only a North and a South side, engendering a strong rivalry between the two prior to baseball’s arrival.

The Cubs’ Wrigley Field was nestled firmly in the heart of the wealthy Northside, and the Southsiders did not feel welcome on “the other side of the river.” Early on, Cubs’ fans garnered their reputation as snobs, and there may have been some truth to that if the Northsiders sense of entitlement overshadowed their better nature.

For many years of Chicago’s early baseball history, the Cubs was the only team. The White Sox is known as “the Second City’s Second Team.”

When the American League finally came to Chicago in 1901, the Southsiders swelled with pride that they finally had a team that they could call their own — over a hundred years ago!!! — and that was before the American League joined the Majors, so Cubs’ fans were still condescending to Sox fans.

In defense of Cubs’ fans, American League baseball isn’t big boy baseball. They use a designated hitter. (Painfully, I must confess that I was born a Cubs’ fan — and I’ll probably die one — but that doesn’t mean that I condone snobbery or the ill will between the fans.)

Chicago needs to leave all this nasty unnecessary bickering behind in the 20th Century. This is the Dawning of the Age of Acquarius!

I used to have a friend who is a White Sox fan. We drove across the state together to attend a friend’s wedding, and he would go out of his way to pick fights with Cubs fans. He believes that anger and hatred are good emotions, that they kick-start social evolution.

I told him that engendering anger in another human being is bad karma, but purposefully doing so is in the very worst category of bad karma. He said that I was a pussy, and I told him that his psychopathic gangland mentality would get him shot someday; we haven’t spoken since, which is unfortunate because our rift parallels the odii that North side and South side Chicagoans might hold for one another for many generations to come. Healing has to start with the self, but I don’t think his mind and soul are open to healing.

Love one another as you yourself would choose to be loved. To quote another prophet, “Be excellent to each other, and… party on, Dudes!!!”

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