My family moved to the Chicago area in early August of 1972, just a couple of weeks after my eighth birthday. In some sense, I've resided there ever since. I came to Chicago, believe it or not, with my professional sports affiliations already established, so I never became a primary fan of any of the Chicago teams. Gradually, however, I developed what I'd regard as a "secondary rooting interest" in two of them--the NHL's Blackhawks (who continue to play second fiddle to the Boston Bruins, the team I primarily root for) and baseball's White Sox. The rest of the Chicago professional panoply (baseball's Cubs, the NFL's Bears and the NBA's Bulls) I don't like at all, for a variety of reasons, but my loose attachment to the White Sox stretches back more than 25 years.

(In 1979 or 1980--I don't remember exactly which year, but it was while I was still in high school--I first became aware of just how obnoxious some Cubs fans could be, despite decades of ignominy. That bizarre attitude--I mean, geez...this team hasn't appeared in a World Series since shortly after V-J day, for crying out loud, and hasn't won a World Series in what is becoming dangerously close to 100 years...how could anyone be arrogant with that kind of history?--has reared its head ugly head repeatedly over the years despite the Cubs' continued futility. Arrogance may be just as insufferable when manifested by Yankees fans, but at least it's understandable; what possible excuse do Cubs fans have?)

Specific allegiance to one local baseball team or another aside, it's difficult to express the feeling around Chicago over the course of the last week plus.  I don't think it's possible, without some kind of a long-term Chicago connection, to understand the present atmosphere around these parts.

Until this year, there hadn't been a World Series in Chicago in my lifetime.  I was born five years after the White Sox lost the 1959 Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers.  By the time my family moved here, 13 years had past since the last Series involving a Chicago club and it seemed an even more distant memory than that.  By the time I graduated from high school, 23 years had gone by; by the time I finished graduate school, 29 years had passed.

And here we are, an additional 17 years later.

It had reached a point where, it seems clear, most Chicagoans had relegated themselves to the notion that there would never be another Chicago World Series.  For all the noise about the Red Sox last year, Boston had experienced four World Series since the last one in Chicago.  And remember, there has only been one team in Boston since the Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953.  Chicago has had two major league teams since there have been two major leagues.  90 team seasons had gone by since the Sox's 1959 appearance until the 2005 club defeated the Los Angeles Angels to bring a pennant to the City of Broad Shoulders.  

When the White Sox clinched a World Series berth with the victory in Game 5 of the ALCS, people in Chicago celebrated...but proceeded to walk around for days pinching themselves to make sure that they weren't dreaming.  The sentiment I heard repeatedly during this time frame was "I can't believe a Chicago team is in the World Series."  As someone who has been here for the last 33 years, I understand what they mean.  The White Sox not only made the World Series, they won the World Series...the first time a Chicago team has accomplished that feat since 1917.  I don't know anyone who remembers the 1917 World Series.  

There's almost something surreal about this experience.  After all these years, it's almost as though this isn't really happening; the entire notion of a Chicago team in (and winning) the World Series is simply hard to believe.

And yet it's happened.  The White Sox not only won the Series, they blazed through the postseason, winning 11 of 12 games.  Counting the final five games of the regular season, the White Sox closed the year winning 16 of 17 games.  And now that the White Sox have not only reached the World Series but won it, they have left the Cubs in sole possession of the "haven't reached the World Series in a pig's age" title, as well as the "haven't won the World Series in two pigs' ages" title, given the Red Sox's win of last season.  As unexpected as this world championship was (I'm not aware of a single pundit who picked the White Sox to reach the World Series this year, let alone win it), the Cubs can always look to their next season with optimism, with the hope of finally crushing their own Curse (of the Billy Goat).

No matter what happens from this point on, this White Sox squad will be remembered in Chicago for a very long time; it was this unit that broke the most dishonorable geographical streak in American professional sports history.  

At Game 2 of the World Series at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, an elderly woman held a sign that read:  "I've waited 92 years for this moment."  There may not have been another person in the stands that night who had waited as long, but almost every individual in the greater Chicago area had spent a lifetime waiting and wondering.  Not anymore. 

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