I have traveled the world. I’ve never seen a city as large as Chicago act so small. What is happening in baseball this season should happen every season — not true in a town that waited 108 years for the Cubs and 88 years for the White Sox and might wait similar periods for repeat titles. At Soldier Field, a fan took a 17.3-mile shot of pollution-wreaking smokestacks across the lake, where the Bears want to play in insidious Indiana.
The video has five million views.
Politics. Crime. Sports.
Is Chicago the third-largest market in America? Or Cleveland? The media, which once produced national TV shows (I did one for eight years), is so hometown-daffy that it leaps for joy on Aug. 17 as the White Sox lead the American League Central and the Cubs are among National League contenders. So much for demanding the annual best from the team owners. Gee, we’re winning! In Chicago! The White Sox lost 324 games in three seasons before somehow winning 65 this year. The Cubs have gone 10 years without reaching another World Series. The Bears haven’t won a Super Bowl since 1986.
Do you realize Boston, a smaller metropolitan area, won 12 championships in the four major sports between 2002 and 2019? Chicago people aren’t aware of Boston or anywhere else. They think the hub of the universe is Wrigley Field, where the Cubs will host the Sox starting tonight in the Crosstown Classic. It’s possible the Cubs will be eliminated again by Jacob Misiorowski and the Brewers — in Milwaukee — in the postseason. It’s possible the Sox will wobble down the stretch with kids in a lame division, and even if they make the playoffs, they don’t have the pitching to rank with Tampa Bay, Boston and New York. That’s the truth.
But Chicago wants cheerleading from columnists, not that columnists still exist there. I spent 17 years reminding people that they’re ranked No. 3 and behave like they’re 33rd. In Paris, where I live almost half the year, people ask which country you’re from. In South Florida, where I live the rest of the year, they ask which state you’re from. In Chicago, they ask which high school you attended.
My kids went to Stevenson. I made up Supersonic High for me.
This is prime time for Chicago, never mind that the Dodgers won two World Series in 12 months. People in the third-largest market think Mark Walter is a cheater, in that the FBI invaded his private plane last fall and demanded his phone and laptop. That happened in Chicago, of course, where he earned a law degree at Northwestern and launched investment firms. Guggenheim Partners has a base on West Monroe Street, and from there, he was able to buy the Dodgers and the Lakers.
When he sold the Lakers for $12.5 billion last week, all hell broke loose in Walter World. Will he have to sell the Dodgers to find more money for the feds? If so, some dopes in the Chicago crowd consider it a victory for Jerry Reinsdorf, the cheapest big-city owner in sports history, who has won one title in 46 baseball seasons on the South Side. If Walter remains owner of the Dodgers, explain why this is a victory for Reinsdorf. The Dodgers, in winning three titles this decade, have spent gazillions and loaded up 50,000 seats inside a glorious ballpark. They are valued at $9.05 billion.
The White Sox? Their value is about $2 billion.
Nonetheless, general manager Chris Getz has succeeded wonderfully in making huge trades, developing prospects and hiring manager Will Venable. He has rescued Reinsdorf from louseville — until he leads the Dec. 1 swarm against Walter and Steve Cohen when Major League Baseball veers into labor chaos. He was smart enough to appoint Getz when Rick Hahn was doomed by Reinsdorf’s hire of Tony La Russa as manager. Not that Reinsdorf didn’t tank — losing 324 games helped him snare Roch Cholowsky, the No. 1 pick in the draft.
Which is worse? Tanking and failing on purpose? Or potentially messing with the Delaware Life Insurance Company and Clear Spring Life and Annuity? Owners are owners, not to be viewed in good faith. Walter is under the gun when Reinsdorf has been under the gun since The Last Dance. The last three years were abominable. As I asked my Sox-loving friend, Mike:
Were 324 losses in three years worth 65 victories this year?
He hasn’t responded.
Said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who shouldn’t sweat: “It’s just been four or five, six weeks of below-average production in our offense. It’s just the truth, and I think we just haven’t played clean baseball for quite some time, and that speaks to the defense.”
Said Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner, thinking about a Cubs-Sox World Series in a Sun-Times story: “That would be absolutely all-time. And I’d be all for it.”
Mike lives in Los Angeles but never left Chicago. Last week in a Florida restaurant — Rosebud, based on Taylor Street — I met a guy who has lived in the same Chicago suburb his entire life. Whether you stay or leave, the city always infects people who grow up there.
Just so they know, 2026 should not be a fluke year. The Dodgers still have three banners this decade. The Cubs and Sox have two since 1918.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host.
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