On the very next morning after he was elected President of the United States, there was Barack Obama, taking his girls to school, wearing his Chicago White Sox cap.
But hard as the club had tried, it wasn't a crisp, new Sox cap.
See, the Sox offered him a new cap last summer, but you know how finicky true fans can be ... they usually prefer to stick with their worn, familiar team caps and jerseys, no matter how old.
"At one point this summer he took a Sunday off during the campaign and took the kids on bikes up and down Lakeshore Drive (by Lake Michigan)," Scott Reifert, White Sox vice-president for communications, says. "There was one photo in particular of him wearing a battered White Sox cap, so (Sox owner Jerry) Reinsdorf called me and said, 'You've got to get him a new cap.'"
Why was Reifert nominated?
Well he is the vice-president of communications. Plus, his children attend the same school as Obama's daughters.
So the Sox picked out two new caps, and Reifert became the ambassador. He went to Obama's people, told them that his boss wanted to deliver a couple of new caps, and. ...
"Someone close to the Senator laughed and said, 'No way we're going to get the old, battered one off of his head,'" Reifert said, chuckling. "So I said, 'Well, at least I've given them to you.'
"And we've never seen them since."
That photo of Obama in a Sox cap dropping his children off at school on the morning after the presidential election?
The White Sox took a measure and figured that the newspapers that carried it reached 16.5 million readers.
They didn't monitor television, or Internet.
"That kind of reach, having a White Sox fan in the most visible house in the country, it's been fun," Reifert said.
Obama's devotion to the Sox goes back several years, even before throwing the ceremonial first pitch before Game 2 of the American League Championship Series in 2005 -- after which the White Sox promptly reeled off eight consecutive victories to win the World Series.
Let's just say it goes back far enough that White Sox fans appreciated his understanding of the culture -- and his honest and direct answer -- when ESPN's Stuart Scott interviewed him last summer and asked whom he'd root for in the event of a Sox-Cubs World Series.
"Oh, that's easy," the now-President-elect said. "White Sox. I'm not one of these fair-weather fans. You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer, beautiful people up there. People aren't watching the game. It's not serious. White Sox, that's baseball. South Side."
"He gave an answer any White Sox fan on the street would have given you," Reifert said. "It made it genuine. The pride is very real.
"That's something that is pretty cool for our fan base and pretty cool for our organization."
