Lately, on my regular rides on the “L,” I have seen a curious sight on the North Side.
There are gaggles of Red Line riders wearing Chicago White Sox hats, T-shirts and jerseys — and more than those sporting the paraphernalia of their crosstown rivals, the Chicago Cubs.
I have been doing double takes. “Holy cow!” as an erstwhile baseball icon might have said.
It’s a quizzical moment for this rabid Cubs fan. Chicago’s North Side has always been Cubs country. I know that from the time I was a wee Cubs fan, traveling on the CTA from my family’s South Side apartment to the West Addison Street stop at Wrigley Field.
I was born and bred on the South Side but have been a lifelong Cubs fan. It is a lifelong anomaly.
How could a Black girl from the South Side dare to be a Cubs fan? The team of the North Shore to Lakeview, communities so far and distant, in so many ways, from my own?
Michelle Obama can explain. The former first lady is also a native South Sider. She had a crush as a girl on then-Cubs player José Cardenal, she told talk show host Jimmy Kimmel last year.
“He was my hero,” she recalled. “And I think a lot of it was tied to my relationship to my dad, because he was a shift worker, and there would be times he’d get home in the afternoon, and the Cubs played on WGN at 3 o’clock, and I come home from school and sit down on his lap, and by the time I got home, José was up to bat.”
My father was a postal worker. Daddy would come home from work in the midafternoon. We would spend my summer afternoons in our apartment in Washington Park gleefully watching the homers fly from Wrigley, as Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse’s classic “Hey! Hey!” blared from the black-and-white TV.
I also had a Cubs crush — on the great pitcher, Fergie Jenkins.
Former Chicago Cubs pitcher Fergie Jenkins is introduced at the Cubs Convention at the Sheraton Grand Chicago on Jan. 16, 2026. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
Now, this Cubs fanatic must grapple with the reality that the White Sox, an American League leader, are headed for a playoff berth. The White Sox hold sway.
The Cubs may be in contention for a wild card play, if they get lucky. I hate to throw shade on the Cubs’ chances of prevailing, but let’s remember: They are the Cubs. I will never recover from their infamous August collapse of 1969.
Now, the South Side rivals are outshining my beloved Cubs. Their fans are showing up.
The Sox are in first place in their division, and for their fans, that’s a powerful reason to show your colors.
So far this year, the average attendance at White Sox games is 24,394, compared with 18,021 in 2025. More than 1.7 million fans have cheered on the Sox at home this year.
Comiskey Park — well, Rate Field, if you must — is now the go-to of choice for the boys and girls of summer.
Lifelong Chicagoans regret the demise of Comiskey. Despite a painful succession of ownership changes, Wrigley is still Wrigley. And as long as the White Sox stay in Chicago, all is copacetic.
A new Sox minority investor just unveiled a pitch to build a new stadium in the South Loop. (Let’s hope there are no excursions to Hammond or Wolf Lake in the cards).
I see White Sox fans displaying their baseball love. Is it that everyone loves the winner? Or is another secret surfacing? Should the Ricketts family get nervous? The North Side’s love affair with the Cubs could be waning.
I am seeing Sox fans pop up like green shoots in the garden of Cub fandom. The beloved team of my childhood could be facing a reckoning.
It’s bad enough that I am already confronted with another hard truth: Pope Leo XIV is a staunch White Sox fan. He is, after all, a South Sider, I must admit. For this lifelong Roman Catholic and dedicated fan of the pope, that’s an ugly reality to face.
However, I am not letting the White Sox off the hook for those comical pope hats the team has been handing out. Last month, 40,000 “pope hats” were distributed to fans, replicas of the ceremonial miter, a pointed hat that is worn by Catholic bishops, cardinals and popes. More than a dozen of them are currently being hawked on eBay, with some asking prices at $200 and up. Really? How undignified.
The crosstown rivalry will continue, and the Cubs will always be Chicago’s best. I am willing, however, to make one concession. I will endow the pope with special dispensation from being a Sox fan. Mea culpa.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune every other Wednesday. Write to her at LauraLauraWashington@gmail.com.
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