Dad never bothered with the South Side-North Side stuff

Dad never bothered with the South Side-North Side stuff
by BeijingIrish (2024-02-15 10:06:22)

In reply to: My dad was a Cardinals fan also posted by sprack

He was a fan of all the Chicago teams. When I say "fan" I refer to the CWS and the Cardinals. When it came to da Bearss and the Cubs, he was a fanatic. He grew up on the North Shore after all. But he didn't like Northwestern because it was in Evanston, the home of New Trier's hated rival, the Evanston HS Wildkits. He rooted for the Fighting Illini.

My dad was from the West Side, but

my grandfather when he first arrived in the US in 1907, lived on the South Side for a few years with his brother (who stayed on the South Side). That decade was the glory years for both teams - the Cubs won the World Series the following year, only 108 years before the next time - and he became a Sox fan due to proximity after embracing baseball. By the time he moved to the West Side, the Cubs had moved from the West Side to the North Side.

And on the West Side, it was divided and of course as kids the Cub fans (including his two closest lifelong friends) would jab my dad mercilessly about being a Sox fan when they were terrible and the Cubs were good. Of course that's the age when it all gets solidified, as it was for me growing up in the western suburbs.

The Cardinals were secondary (he was always primarily a Notre Dame fan as any Catholic kid was then), but since they played in Comiskey Park they were part of the package.