Cubs, White Sox have Chicago jazzed for baseball

CHICAGO (AP) -Everybody who played the last time the Cubs and the White Sox made it to the same postseason is dead. Wrigley Field wasn't even built yet; neither was Comiskey Park, the White Sox home torn down to make way for their current digs.

So the once-in-a-century, plus two years, event has both the North and South sides buzzing with excitement and maybe a little bit - but not much - love for the team on the other side of town.

"I think it's great, I pull for Chicago teams," 79-year-old White Sox fan Tony Golden said Wednesday, his sincerity broken only by a cutting remark to a passing Cubs fan acquaintance.

Golden talked wistfully about working as an usher at Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series which, as any White Sox fan will remind you, is the last time the Cubs made it to the Fall Classic. That's a lot more years, they'll also remind you, than the three years it's been since the White Sox played - and won it all. And, in case you've forgotten, that's something the Cubs haven't done in 100 years.

Retired bank employee Gloria Rose seemed ready to extend her own olive branch to the Cubs as she waited in line for a South Side souvenir shop to open Wednesday morning.

"I'm rooting for them ..." she paused.

Wait for it. Wait for it.

"To lose!" Rose said to laughter from like-minded Sox fans seeking their own "White Sox AL Central Champs" hats and T-shirts.

Across town, many Cubs fans preparing for Wednesday night's Game 1 weren't much more charitable.

"I would never root for the White Sox," said Paul Henrickson, a former Chicagoan who now lives in Reno, Nev., as he wandered around Wrigley. "I didn't root for them in '05, and I won't root for them this year."

Henrickson's not alone, as White Sox fan Aaron Konen noted the last time he went to see his team play the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Konen on Wednesday remembered one Cubs fan's shirt in particular.

"His T-shirt had the three biggest tragedies in Chicago history," said Konen, a 32-year-old airline pilot. "One was the Chicago Fire, I can't remember the second one and the other was the White Sox winning the 2005 World Series.

"It would be nice if we could all be Chicago fans, but that's not going to happen," he added.