Follow @sneedlingsHey! Hey!
Isn’t baseball the best?
White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, whose 2005 World Series-winning team has had a disappointing year, had this to say about the OTHER team:
“I think it would be great for Chicago if the Cubs won!
“Cubs fans have suffered enough. They deserve to have a winner. It would be great for the city.
“My White Sox fans won’t be happy with me saying this. They’ll think I’m a traitor. But that’s how I feel.
OPINION
Follow @sneedlings“You know the beauty of baseball is that it ties generations together. It’s one sport where grandfathers and grandchildren unite. Even though the ballgame is a place of action, it’s also a place where you can talk to the people you are with.
“I talk to people who say they like football over baseball, but then I ask them what’s the first game you went to? Who did you go with? If it’s baseball, they remember the where, when and who they were with.
“It’s that kind of game.
“Look, baseball is part of the fabric of America. I’m from Brooklyn and was a huge Brooklyn Dodgers fan and I was furious when they moved away — which was the same time I moved to Chicago in 1957.
“I was completely turned off from baseball until my son, Michael, who was 8 years old, became a Sox fan. I was a fan of nothing until then.”
Then the sports icon added:
“I have never been a Cubs fan. But I really do wish them well.”
Thanks, Jerry. What a class act.
Pew news . . .
Archbishop Blase Cupich — who was given a Cubs skullcap by Rabbi Steven Lowenstein of Temple Am Shalom in Glencoe at the Chicago Bar Association luncheon last week, tossed by Chicago Bar Association President Dan Kotin — is taking the Cubs yarmulke to Rome next month when he is elevated to cardinal by Pope Francis. And he might give it to Pope Francis.
The Cubs baton . . .
A note from a music fan on the night the Cubs won the pennant:
“Last night I was with 1500 other people at Orchestra Hall (trying to be known as Symphony Center), and we listened without so much as clearing a throat to Emanuel Ax play, for 40 minutes, Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto.
He exited, of course, to tumultuous applause and a standing O.
Coming back onstage for his next piece, he told us that the Cubs were up 5-0, and this crowd of decidedly un-jock, WASPishly non-demonstrative people, who would never break silence at a golf tournament, and always applaud either side for a well-executed move on the polo field — they went wild. Kinda nice.”
Kinda wonderful.
Hey! Way to go!
Sneed is told that Gov. Bruce Rauner has authorized all state employees to wear Cubs caps and/or jerseys to work during the World Series — if they choose to do so.
