Part V, September 11-September 17

A fourth round rookie gets the call...38-6??!!!...the Cubs are put to sleep...late surges and fright'ning collapses, courtesy of those folks from Cleveland, first the Tribe, then the Browns...an emotional breakdown of historical measures following the latter; death to the White Sox on its way?...No! Survival! And then...Fo Fi Fo, baseball style...(and later, if we were paying attention, as dignified a post-game interview we've ever seen)

It’s been eight months and nine days since Meg and I watched the Bears get trounced by Green Bay in their most recent regular season game, and it feels damn good to know that another one is coming. ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL? Damn this feels good! Bears! Football! The start of another NFL season. Man alive...there’s nothing like it.

I get out of bed today at nine, eat a little breakfast, and then shower. Meghan’s doing some homework, but I quickly interrupt her, bringing her a diagram of the Bears’ starting eleven on offense and defense along with their uniform numbers so that she can be up to date on the players. We review positions, going over the I-formation and the specifics of where wide receivers can line up and how to distinguish a tight end from a tackle and which side is the strong side and which is the weak side and what makes it a blitz and what a nickleback is and why it’s important to win third downs and control the ground game.

Then it’s time to get dressed, and as I’m whipping through my closet I realize that I’ve left my Marcus Robinson jersey in Chicago, so it’s onto plan B: the Triple Threat shirt, the one that I wore to Game 1 of the Bulls-Wizards series. Since its comeback at that game, the shirt has become a regular in the rotation, the tight spots under the arms having loosened to a comfortable spot. I grab some red nylon sweats to go with the Bulls shirt, and my new Puma shoes, navy blue low cuts with orange laces that I bought specifically. And to top it off, the cup that Meg and I took from Soldier Field after the Bears-Packers game at the end of last season. Beautiful. We hop in the car and head to Buffalo Wild Wings…

…but when we get there, the packed house that I’ve anticipated is nowhere to be seen. Surprising, certainly, until I remember that the Colts are playing the Sunday night game, leaving the city thin on afternoon football enthusiasm. No matter; I’m here to watch the Bears, not to take part in some sort of conglomerate of football fans. Meg and I order drinks, and when my Guinness comes I let it settle and then pour it into my big plastic Bears cup. The pre-game shows are on, with CBS already pulling Jerry Rice into the studio, even though he’s only been retired for a week, and the game info stats are running across the bottoms of the screens, and then its into the stadiums for shots of the players warming up, and then the national anthem and the coin toss and the kickoff and finally the sweetest words in the world: “The 2005 season is underway.”

Before the Bears game begins, FOX shows clips of the New Orleans Saints coming out of the tunnel in Charlotte to the sounds of cheers and applause from all the fans, even those rooting for the Panthers. The players come out hand in hand, and fans can be seen holding signs that read “EVERYBODY IS A SAINT TODAY” and “WE’RE WITH YOU, NEW ORLEANS.” It’s reminiscent of the first games played in New York after 9/11, interesting since today is the four year anniversary of the attacks. The connection is on everybody’s mind, and the same feelings that existed during the post-9/11 games exist today. How can we watch sports when so many people are without their loved ones, their homes, their lives? And yet, it is at these times when sports can be most powerful. Not as a mindless escape, but as an emotional release…not as an empty entertainment, but as a connector and unifier of many people…not as a drab, lifeless re-establishment of normalcy, but as a boisterous celebration of American life.

Back in Maryland, the big question for the Bears is how rookie quarterback Kyle Orton will play in his first start. Personally, I am expecting a solid performance, perhaps marred by some mistakes, but certainly the kind of game that can produce a win with the help of a good defense and running attack. Many pundits seem to think that the Orton promotion spells doom for the Bears; one of my writing heroes, Sports Illustrated’s Paul Zimmerman picked the Bears to finish dead last in the NFL with a record of 3-13. His reasoning for this read as follows:

My West Coast correspondent, coach TJ, a Bears fan, e-mailed me, “Did you pick that 3-13 yourself or did the editors make you do it?” Yeah, they made me, TJ. I could take the lighted cigarettes, but when they shaved my wife's head, that was too much. He feels that a defense as good as theirs will spring many upsets, create much havoc. I feel that, well, could someone please look up the following for me and e-mail your answer to Andrew: what’s the record for starting QBs who have gone down, one after another, the following year, either by injury or waiver wire? I count four, and this will make a hell of a trivial question some day. Grossman, Krenzel, Quinn, Hutchinson. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

So that was bad. I don’t like reading those kinds of things about the Bears. Not because they put me in a bad mood or because I think that they are true, but simply because I like getting pumped up when I read Bears news, particularly Bears season previews, and Dr. Z’s forecast did not do the job for me. Fortunately Bill Simmons, another one of my favorite writers, picked the Bears as his playoff sleeper. He predicted a 10-6 finish followed by a big first round loss. Now that’s more like it (except for the big loss). His reasoning:

[Here’s] the thing about sleepers: Nobody should be able to predict them. Last year, the Chargers came out of nowhere. The year before, Carolina. In 2001, New England and Chicago. When you hear people throwing the word “sleeper” around for teams like Arizona and Cincy, those are NOT real sleepers. You need to choose someone from this putrid group: Redskins, Giants, Bears, Bucs, Niners, Raiders, Titans, Browns, Bills and Dolphins. I’m telling you, one of those nine teams will make the 2005 playoffs, and everyone is going to say, “Oh my God, how did that happen????”

So here’s my pick: The Chicago Bears. Easiest schedule in the league. Inferior division and conference. Underrated running game. One All-Pro receiver in Muhsin Muhammad. A defense that has a chance to crack the top-five, helmed by some playmakers (Briggs, Urlacher, Harris, Tillman) and what could turn out to be the best secondary in the league (now that Mike Brown is back). A sizable home-field advantage, especially in November and December. Very good coach (Lovie Smith) who had them playing hard in October and November until their quarterbacks did them in. And best of all, NOBODY is talking about them. In fact, Sports Illustrated ranked them 32 out of 32.

What’s the big problem here? The quarterback. They’re playing a fourth-round rookie (Kyle Orton) who’s loved by the coaches and players ... but he’s still a fourth-round rookie. So here’s my question: Even if he’s hit-or-miss, it’s not like he’s going to be much worse than Kyle Boller, Bledsoe, J.P. Losman, Patrick Ramsey or half the crappy starters in the league. Anyway, that’s my 2005 sleeper—I think they’re going 10-6 and losing by 30 points in the first round of the playoffs. You heard it here.

That cheers me up. As soon as I see somebody other than Chicago folk picking the Bears to win, my day is made. Again, not because I need someone who is established to write good things about my team for me to feel good, or because I believe everything that I read, but simply because I like reading good things about my team, because, well…I just do. Do I need a better reason than that?

The game begins, and the team looks steady. Not great, but steady. The crappy FOX announcers of the day are Dick Stockton, the Trusted Professional, and Daryl “Moose” Johnston, the former all-pro fullback from the Dallas Cowboys who is acting as FOX’s token former-player color man. They remind me of mediocre high school radio hosts, guys who know just enough to sound professional, and make an effort not to say anything too outlandish. On the Bears’ first offensive series, Orton throws an incomplete pass, and then hands off to Thomas Jones on both second and third down. The Bears punt. From that, Moose Johnston comes to the conclusion that Orton “looks good” and is doing a good job at “handling the pressure.” Brilliant.

So Orton is shaky. But the Bears defense is playing with energy and ferocity, getting constant pressure on Washington QB Patrick Ramsey. Second-year corner Nate Vasher picks off a pass for the team’s first turnover, and then a bit later on Lance Briggs comes untouched on a blitz, roping Ramsey with a vicious clothesline right beneath the facemask. Ramsey goes flying. The ball comes loose. The Bears recover.

“Hell yeah! Hell, yes.” And then: “Now baby, did you see why that was a blitz?”

“Because…” she thinks, looking at the diagram that I made her bring, “because the defense had more people running in than the offense had blockers.”

Ramsey leaves the game, and veteran backup Mark Brunell enters, with Stockton calling him Scott Brunell three or four times, despite the fact that Brunell is a former star who has been in the league for more than ten years. In an obvious effort to correct Stockton without actually correcting him, Johnston calls the QB by his full name in his first comment about him after he replaces Ramsey, and then FOX puts up their Mark Brunell graphic complete with his name, prompting Stockton to report that “Scott Brunell is a welcome change for this offense.” Later he points out that the Bears only gained “one yards.” I call Jonny C at a commercial.

The Redskins go into the locker room with a 6-0 lead on two John Hall field goals, but on the opening kickoff of the second half, the Bears force and recover a fumble. Orton leads them right down the field, and Jones punches it in on a one-yard run to put us up 7-6. Hall gets another field goal to put the Skins up two, but the Bears are still in it…

The high level of parity in the NFL has made each game a battle, and with the low number of games, each closely contested match is now determined on two or three key plays. In turn, the key to winning in the NFL is taking advantage of every opportunity and winning those two or three key plays. The Bears fail to do this. They are destroyed on the ground—Jones runs for only 31 yards on 15 carries, while Clinton Portis gains 121 on 21 carries with backup Ladell Betts kicking in another 41—and they kill themselves twice in the second half with nonsense. At the end of the third quarter, Orton throws a 22-yard strike to Mark Bradley to give the Bears first and ten at the Redskins’ 22, only to throw a pick into triple coverage on the next play. Then in the fourth, Orton leads a drive from their own 25 down to the Washington 34. Thomas Jones is stuffed for a loss of three, and on second and 13 the Bears are flagged for an unbelievable THREE CONSECUTIVE FALSE START PENALTIES!!! Veterans Fred Miller, John Tait, and Ruben Brown were all called for false starts, right in a row, backing the Bears up to second and 28 at their own 48. Orton is then sacked for a loss of ten followed by an incomplete pass on third and 38, forcing the Bears to punt. The drive takes seven minutes and five seconds, netting a total of thirteen yards, which is really a gain of 41 yards followed by a loss of 28. The Bears get the ball back with 1:43 on the clock, but on second and ten Orton fumbles after a sack. The Redskins recover, and Brunell trots back to kneel out the clock.

I’m a little bit drunk at this point, having had two Guinness, and now the Bears have just lost a lackluster game in which they played OK but not well enough. It reminds me of the famous quote: “Great athletes are not always great, just great when they have to be.” Well, the Bears were not great when they had to be, and they now sit at 0-1. The phone rings as the clock hits 0:00. It’s Nana.

Meg and I pay our bill and leave, heading home just long enough to use the bathroom before heading back out. I wanted to head back to a bar to watch the U.S. Open final, but Meghan’s grandparents have invited us over to their camper for some dinner. When we get there, Meghan’s Nana has some pasta out for us, and to my delight, her husband Toby is watching the Federer-Agassi match. Federer won the first set, Agassi the second; they are tied 1-1 in the third.

“Yeah. He likes it. He—ooh, ooh, look at that. Look at that shot from Federer.” Federer has just roped a return cross court into the corner for the point, leaving Agassi helpless. “What a shot.”

But Agassi is clearly playing as Federer’s equal, and for the first time in quite a while Federer is faced with an opponent who can move him around the court. Roger does not look like himself, as Andre works him back and forth, leaving the young star flustered and helpless.

“Wow, did you guys see that?” I say, excitedly. “Agassi’s really got Federer on the ropes.[1] He’s got him backed up and moving and playing out of position. Look how calm Agassi is, and look how Federer is caught reacting to every one of Agassi’s shots. You don’t see that often.”

Federer is flat, and he looks disappointed, and his poor play is compounded by Agassi’s near flawless execution. But Federer gets his game back in gear, and soon turns the match around, winning the third set and then jumping all over the old-timer in the fourth. We sit and watch the match, the four of us, me and Meg eating pasta and then joining Nana and Toby for an ice cream sandwich for dessert. Sunday night, sports and family. We leave in the fourth with Federer ahead, and I call my folks to get a report on the rest. I talk to Mom, as Dad is watching every last bit, savoring every point between these two greats, the old champion taking full advantage of one of his final title shots, the young champion entering his prime. Federer wins the fourth set to take the title, his second straight U.S. Open title and the sixth Grand Slam of his young career. He has now been ranked number 1 for 84 consecutive weeks. He is 71-3 in matches this year, and he is the first man to win his first six Grand Slam finals in over fifty years.

Some people argue that this kind of domination is bad for a sport, but I think it is just the opposite. Like Tiger Woods or Jordan and Pippen’s Bulls, a dominant champion sets the bar, and forces everyone else to play harder. So it is with Federer.

It’s just after midnight, which means that is now officially September 12^th, which means that it is now officially my brother’s birthday. I’m up doing some writing, and when the clock turns I call MJ to wish him a happy birthday. He is now 22, and as I have realized that nothing really changes from 22 to 24, my brother and I are now the same age. We talk for about a half an hour, with him getting off the phone to head over to some girl’s place, and just before I turn off my computer I remember that I haven’t checked the Cubs score yet. They are playing a four game series with the Giants, and they’ve won two of the first three. As I click onto ESPN.com and scroll down on the MLB Scoreboard page, I get this weird sensation that I’ve never really felt before as a fan: I’m half hoping that my team has lost. After all, I checked out on this team two weeks ago, when all hope seemed gone, and with each win since then I’ve been ever so slyly checking the standings, juuuuust in case…and wouldn’t you know it: the Cubs have won again, beating the Giants 3-2. Glendon Rusch threw five and a third innings, allowing 7 hits but just 2 earned runs, and the bullpen closed the door with Michael Weurtz, Scott Williamson, and Ryan Dempster—who earned his 27^th save of the season—combining for three and two thirds innings while allowing no runs, no hits, no walks, and striking out five. Nomar went 2-4 with a run scored, continuing his hot streak; he is now hitting .275 on the season, an average that is up 118 points since returning from injury behind a .338 August and a .324 September. The Cubs are 8-2 over their last ten games—the best mark in the NL over that span—and they now sit just a game under .500 and five and a half back from the Wild Card leading Astros. “Playoffs? Playoffs?” All of a sudden, we’re right back in the thick of the race, and I see a few points that could work in our favor as we go down the stretch:

1. Zambrano, Prior, and Maddux are still one of the best threesomes in the major leagues, and with strong performances from Glendon Rusch and Jerome Williams, the Cubs still have the great rotation that everyone said we would have.

2. After hitting .407 in the month of June and seeing his average peak at .386 on July 2^nd, Derrek Lee has hit .303, .284, and .297 over July, August, and September, respectively. He is due to pick back up, and join Nomar in the push for the playoffs.[2]

3. We begin a three-game set with the Reds tonight, a team that we’ve played poorly against despite clearly being the better team. It’s been a metaphor for our season. So if we can play well against Cincinnati, that may show that we’ve turned the corner, and after the Reds we get…

4. …four games against the division leading Cardinals. It was during a classic five game series over four days in September of 2003 when the Cubs really swung their season around and headed for the playoffs. The Cubs entered that series with a record of 69-66, a game and a half behind Houston and two and a half behind the Cardinals. After that series, they were a half game ahead of St. Louis and a half game behind Houston, and they went 15-7 the rest of the way to capture the division. The big difference here is that the Cardinals have nothing to play for, but that was the same as last year when the Astros won two of three from the division-leading Cardinals to propel themselves over the Cubs and into the playoffs. If we can take care of Cincinnati, then the St. Louis series could really be huge, and if we take three of four, then we get three with Milwaukee, a team we’re tied with now, and then we have nine games left…

5. …seven of which are against the Astros. And there it is: if we are going to overtake the Astros to win the Wild Card, we will need to be better than them, and there’s no better way to do that than in head-to-head play. This brings me to pointing out two facts of recent history: Fact the First-two teams in the NL, the 2003 Marlins and the 2004 Astros, dug themselves huge holes before dominating over the latter parts of the season to win the Wild Card. The Marlins went on to win the World Series, while the Astros came one game away from winning the NL. Fact the Second-during the past two seasons, the team at the top of the NL Wild Card standings going into the last week of the season, the 2003 Astros and the 2004 Cubs, has lost the lead and missed the playoffs. In 2003, it was the Cubs overtaking the Astros, and in ’04 it was the Astros overtaking the Cubs. If history repeats itself…

So that’s where we stand. Any way you cut it, the Cubs have a chance to finish with a winning record for three consecutive seasons, something that hasn’t happened since they did it for six straight years from 1967-1972. We’re playing great baseball right now, and no matter what happens, and no matter what conclusions one draws from this season and the games yet to be played, one thing is clear: I’m back for the ride, with all of my emotion, energy, and focus, and if they screw me again, well, I guess I’ll have my undying Chicago-born obnoxious eternal optimism to thank.

The following is the lineup, bench, rotation, and bullpen that the 2003 Cubs brought into the postseason, followed by the same from the 2005 Cubs, in bold CAPS, as we stand right now:

When we think about this season’s Chicago Cubs, when we talk about their chances and our eternal hope that they “turn it around,” we do so in a way that suggests that we are waiting for the fulfillment of a promise made two years ago: the promise of a championship. 2003 doesn’t seem that long ago; as fans we link everything together, going easily from the shocking end of 2003 to the excited offseason that brought D. Lee and Maddux, to the acquisition of Nomar and then the final week collapse that left us out of the postseason. From there we go right into the Sosa trade, and then this 2005 season, with fans still hoping for a return to the playoffs and a chance to make the memory of Game 6 bearable. Our lives may have changed over that time—since Game 7 of the NLCS I’ve graduated college, gotten a serious girlfriend, driven around the country, gotten professional freelance journalism work, and begun my overall transition into adulthood—and yet these changes can mostly be attributed to my age, an age at which people go through a lot of change in rapid succession. My parents’ lives have not changed dramatically, nor has my brother’s or grandmother’s. And the timeline of the Cubs is strung together so tightly, from playoffs to offseason to season to another offseason and finally to another season, that it’s difficult to even realize the absurdity in looking at the past three seasons as a consistent continuation. With Aramis Ramirez and Kerry Wood injured right now, only Mark Prior and Carlos Zambrano remain from the team that lost to the Florida Marlins in the 2003 NLCS. With the exception of Corey Patterson, who was injured then, not one single position player who will suit up for us this week was on that team. The bullpen is entirely different, as is the bench; only the starting rotation anchored by Wood, Prior, and Zambrano looks the same as it did two years ago. And yet we look at this team over the course of the past three years as if it is one singular entity, one group “on a mission,” one group looking to right the wrongs and “get back to the playoffs.” Of course, in 2003, Nomar and Todd Walker were dealing with their own tragic losses with the Red Sox. Michael Barrett was coming of age in Montreal. Greg Maddux was pitching in yet another Atlanta Braves postseason. And Derrek Lee, God love him, was busy winning a World Series with the Marlins.

Dad always says that the one thing that made watching and following sports teams significantly better in his day than in mine is that in his day, you knew all of the players on the team. It wasn’t just about watching your team play—my dad was a Cubs fan, a Bears fan, and a Blackhawks fan—but it was about watching the guys on your team play, the guys you grew up with, the guys who grew up with you. Ernie Banks, Dick Butkus, Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Gale Sayers, Bobby Hull, Tony Esposito…these weren’t just players who happened to be wearing the uniforms of the teams that my dad loved; these guys were those teams. Like Reggie Miller, Brett Favre, Cal Ripken, Jr…the guys that my dad cheered for lived and died with the ball clubs they played for; their colors and logos were just as important to them as they were to my dad. What do we have now? Now we have change. Grand sweeping change that is so common that we hardly even notice it, just as we haven’t noticed the change in the Cubs roster the last three years. Muhsin Muhammad signs with the Bears, and because of his past credentials, and because he seems like a nice guy…and, of course, because he’s playing for us…we like him. We cheer for him. We support him no matter what. He has clearly embraced Chicago. He has fit in right away. Other guys, it’s not as easy. Thomas Jones is loved by the fans now, but his transition was a rough one because he had to supplant a guy who we loved.

A year ago, Anthony Thomas was the fan favorite running back. He was an underdog, a second round draft choice, a guy who was always described as “OK…but nothing special.” But we rode him to a 13-3 season, to a division title, to a playoff game. Management tried to replace him, but he played hard, won the Rookie of the Year, and rushed for two 1,000 yard seasons in three seasons. We related to him. He wasn’t the best back in the game, and he wasn’t going to recall images of Payton or Sayers or Grange or even Neal Anderson, whose number 35 he shared, but in his own way he became OUR running back, the A-Train, power inside and that surprise burst of speed outside when he saw the end zone.

Then we signed Thomas Jones. Snatched him right up on the first night of free agency. Drafted with the seventh overall pick in 2000 by the Cardinals, Jones flopped in Arizona before signing with Tampa Bay in 2003 and turning his career around. Now here he was, a big free agent signee, big smiling face as he held his new helmet, OUR helmet. He was playing for us, now, for our team, and we knew that he was going to take Train’s job, and it didn’t feel right. In the second game of the season, TJ ran for 152 yards and a score against Green Bay. He broke a 54-yard run, which was exciting…but it didn’t entirely feel like ours.

On the other hand, when Brian Urlacher hit Ahman Green and forced a fumble, and Mike Brown scooped it up and went 92 yards for a score, that one was ours. Those were our guys making that play. Two Bears draftees, Urlacher in the first round of 2000, and thirty picks later, Brown in the second. Urlacher is the national favorite; Brown the fan favorite. Urlacher draws comparisons to Butkus and Singletary; Brown to Plank and Fencik. These guys were leaders of the 2001 team, guys who we love, guys who we look at and say, “That’s Bears football.” When Brown ran that fumble back, the city ran with him. When Jones took off on that 54 yard dash, we cheered, and thought to ourselves, “It’s nice to see the new guy pitching in.” Jones had a decent season, but his injury in the Week 8 game against the 49ers opened the door for Anthony Thomas, and he did not disappoint. Over a three game stretch with Jones injured, Train went for 98 yards on 25 carries, 110 yards on 28 carries and two scores, and 72 yards on 29 carries. Most importantly, the Bears won all three games, and it was clear that Train was a big reason why. And we cheered for him. We yelled for him. We wore his jersey and called him name, and said to ourselves, “That’s Bears football. That’s Anthony Thomas, our guy, the A-Train.” But Jones returned from injury, and Train fell back out of the picture. When the offseason came, we knew that was probably the end, and then the Bears used the fourth pick in the draft to take Cedric Benson, and we folded up our THOMAS 35 jerseys and said goodbye.

But a funny thing happened: Benson held out. Missed the whole preseason over some amount of money that none of us will ever come close to having. Took up space in our newspapers and on our sports sections with articles about his contract negotiations. Meanwhile, Thomas Jones started running. He ran tough all preseason, picking up big yards and touchdowns, and pointing to the Soldier Field fans as he did it. In the win over the Colts in Indianapolis, TJ broke a big run and then saluted the Bear fans in attendance. “This is my guy,” I noticed myself thinking. Benson finally signed, but Jones was running so well that we wouldn’t have cared if Benson had held out the entire season. It is now Thomas Jones who we look to, the man whose career was dead in Arizona but who fought hard and played hard and has turned it around with us. He is ours now, and on each big run, each TD scamper, we’re right there with him. JONES 20, all the way.

Still, Jones is only a two-year Bear. My heart remains loyal to the guys who have been around, and as I look at this team I see that there are quite a few. Olin Kreutz and Patrick Mannelly have been with the team since ’98, making them the longest tenured current Bears. Jerry Azumah has been around since ’99, with Urlacher, Brown, and Michael Green holdovers from the 2000 draft. Lance Briggs, Alex Brown, Justin Gage, and Bobby Wade have the look of guys who will be Bears for a while.

The Cubs’ roster has turned over almost completely over the past three seasons. Meanwhile, the Bears are melding into a club that looks like it could be around for a while, and if you understand the difference between the two, then you understand why I’m so excited for this current Bulls team. As we speak, the Bulls are preparing for their 2005-06 season, and I am beyond excited. It’s not just the wins, or the playoffs. It’s the young nucleus, Kirk and Ben and Tyson and Duhon and Luol, guys who look good in the red and black, guys who look committed to Chicago. I’ll never have what my dad had—it’s just not realistic anymore—but if I can get just a taste, I’ll be a happy sports fan.

I’ve sort of been ignoring them, just checking in every so often to see what their division lead was, and as they cruised along this season I wondered if they would repeat the failure of the 2000 Sox, or if this would be the first Chicago team to win the pennant since the Go-Go Sox of 1959. I wondered this in the same way that one wonders whether the cutest girl in school will finally notice him now that he has fully grown into himself; just a fanciful daydream, one in which things are going well enough to grant him the liberty to imagine wondrous things, though with the safety net of knowing that the only actual downside is breaking even. The White Sox were so far ahead of everyone else, dreamy speculation seemed to be all that was left.

On August 1^st, the Sox beat the Orioles to improve to 69-35, while the Cleveland Indians sat 14 games back at 55-51. Since that time, the Sox have staggered to a 19-22 mark, while the Indians have gone an astounding 29-11. With yesterday’s win over the A’s, the Indians now sit at 84-62 on the strength of their current 9-1 stretch, and as the White Sox stumble they find their division lead—which was once not so much a lead but a stone barrier—down to a paltry 4 and a half games.

Well, one can point to their abysmal hitting performances of late—nobody on the Sox is hitting .300—but I can’t help but feel like it’s more than that. In baseball, talent rises to the top. You may be able to sustain a run of good play for part of the season, as the 2001 Cubs showed us, but ultimately, the best teams end up in the playoffs. That 2001 Cub team was different from this Sox team though, as it was clear that the Cubs were playing way over their heads all year. On August 1^st, 2001, the Cubs led the Astros by four and a half games, which was about where they’d been all year, and slowly the Cubs ran out of gas, falling out of first as both the Astros and Cardinals picked up their games and played like the World Series contenders that they knew they were. The 2001 Cubs were a joy, a team that left us all saying, “Well, they did the best they could do, and the other team was just better.” There was no shame in not winning the division—we all wanted it to happen, but it wasn’t a collapse by any means—and in the end it was clear that we had given all we had, and we just weren’t good enough to run with Houston and St. Louis over an entire 162 game season.

If the White Sox do not make the playoffs, there will be no silver lining. There will be no “Aw, shucks.” There will be no “moral victory.” A team does not build up a 14-game division lead in August and then lose it without something going monumentally wrong. Any fantastic collapse requires a team to take advantage—the Red Sox had to be good enough to beat the Yankees in four straight games last year…they couldn’t just be the “other team hanging around”—and certainly the Indians have gotten hot at the right time. But that wouldn’t matter if the White Sox had not begun their own direction change. This is a free fall, a total breakdown in every aspect of the game. No matter what happens now, the 2005 White Sox will always be remembered as the team that fell apart. That’s a best case scenario. Even if the Sox pull it together, slide into the playoffs, and then win the World Series, we’ll still be talking about the massive shift from good to bad to good that we saw in this season. “Your 2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox” will still be the team that almost blew it, something we’ll be able to nervously laugh about, like Brant Brown’s error. Something that is OK since “it ended up not really mattering.” Again, that’s the best case. The worst case is the White Sox continuing their free fall, ending out of the playoffs, and going down in history with the ’69 Cubs as one of the biggest losers in Chicago history.

It’s not over, not by any means. The Sox still hold a lead, however slim, and with six of their 17 remaining games against the Tribe, they do hold their destiny in their own hands. But the Indians are hot, and the White Sox know it.

My mother, Marlene (Mickey) Pierce Silverstein (ne Marlene Dale Pierce) was born on November 21^st, 1950. Two years later, she moved with her older sister and their parents to a house in Glencoe, three suburbs north of Wilmette. Nana still lives in that house, and apart from the kitchen, the furniture and design of the house all remain from when my mom was a kid. Walking through their house is like walking through old pictures that your parents keep in a shoebox.

Next door to my grandparents’ lived the Arvey family with their two children, the youngest a girl named Sandy. My mom and Sandy met when they were 2 and 3, respectively, and have been best friends ever since. Today, Sandy and Ed Lorgeree’s youngest child, Doug—who is five months older than me—is getting married. Because the Lorgerees lived in Buffalo Grove and we lived in Evanston and then Wilmette, Doug and I were not great friends. But that is only due to geographical constraints; Doug is a wonderfully nice guy with a terrific wit and humor, and he loves sports and video games. His only drawbacks: he likes the Bears, but due to a childhood infatuation with Joe Montana, he likes the 49ers even more…and he is a White Sox fan. As it turned out, Doug went to Indiana a year before I did, and when I arrived during the fall of 2000, Doug made sure that I always had a ride to the grocery store and that I had someone to show me around. When my mom asked if I wanted to come in for his wedding, I hesitated at first, if only because of the drive, but having watched him get married, I am glad that I went.

I got in town yesterday at around six o’clock, and just driving through Evanston and into Wilmette put a smile on my face. Weaving down Sheridan past Northwestern, the school routine settling in; the early signs of fall. In Indy we’ve been hit by a lot of rain recently, but at home the colors are cool and green and brown, with a mood of summer mixed with the scent and look of autumn. When it comes to the seasons in Chicago, the transitions are long and awkward. We don’t get any one season smoothly; summer comes in parts, getting a few days of 70 degree weather in late March, and then more cold, and then a few days of 80 degree weather in mid April, and then more cold, and then a week of beauty in early May, and then some rain and more cold, and with each teasing glimpse we say that finally, this will be the week in which we leave our winter clothes in the closet “forever,” and then of course that’s the week that features an 85 degree morning and a 45 degree afternoon with light showers and a harsh 27 degree wind coming in off the lake. It’s the seasonal equivalent of trying to knock over a vending machine, and thinking you’ll get it over in one push even though you know that you’re going to have to rock it back and forth for a while. But eventually summer arrives, and when it does we embrace it fully, because we know that in Chicago, you have to hold onto any nice weather you get.

The summer to fall transition is a bit different. Not nearly as teasing, this transition is more of a melding of two different seasons, with strong aspects of both meshing with each other evenly until the one knocks the other out. That’s what we’re in right now. As I passed by Long Field on Lincoln and Sheridan, the field where I played my first Thanksgiving football game, the Northwestern marching band was outside practicing. Leaves had begun to change colors and fall in some places, and one nearly bare tree looked like something out of an Ansel Adams photo, but right nearby, as if they are in two entirely different climates, another tree stood tall and full and green. I passed by Dyche Stadium, empty this week as Northwestern travels to Tempe for a game against Arizona State, and then I headed past the Bahai Temple, and then up through Wilmette and home. We share a lawn with our lake-side neighbors, and for some reason we’ve never coordinated our lawn-mowing. As such, when autumn comes, half the lawn is covered in leaves while the other half is short, tight, and green.

Today began as Saturdays do, with lunch at C.J.’s. The three of us walked in and sat down, and when Sondra saw us sit down in her section she immediately went to the fountain and brought me over an RC.

My burger was delicious, and the fries were great, and Mom, Dad, and I had a fun time catching up, as we always do. Meanwhile, the TV over the bar was showing the Cubs-Cardinals game, with the Cubs losing 2-0 early. After lunch we went home, and my dad and I plopped down on the couch to watch both the Cubs and Sox lose. We sat casually, relaxed, both of us in our Saturday afternoon best—t-shirts, shorts, socks for my dad, none for me—and meanwhile, my mom hustled frantically around the house, dressing and cleaning and planning like a woman possessed, bouncing past my dad and I as we calmly watched TV. God love her. Like me, she is entering a new phase in life: the girl who she grew up with is about to become a mother-in-law, which puts her on the cusp of grandmotherdom, which puts my mom on the cusp of grandmother friendships. She was leaving earlier than we were, as she was picking up Nana and taking her to the wedding, a Marriott hotel in Schaumberg, which is about 40 minutes west of us, depending on the traffic, which can at times knock the drive up to an hour.

“Be sure you leave by 4:15,” she told us repeatedly, but we weren’t listening anymore, instead focusing on every mis-timed swing and errant throw. My mom left the house in a haze, leaving us with three or four different instructions about routes, cars, and how long she thought it would take us to get dressed. And then, just before she left, she stuck her head back in the door and looked at me. “Be there by 5:30.” We took my car and drove swift and efficiently, but not fast, and I gave my dad my college football schpiel as he sat patiently and took it all in. We cruised all the way there, and when we pulled into the parking lot, I looked at the clock.

All cynicism aside, arriving early was nice, because it gave us a chance to watch Doug take pictures with Sandy, Ed, his older sister Heather, and other family members along with the bride’s family. I hadn’t seen Doug in well over six months if not a year, and he looks…well, the same, but different. Same smile, same quiet goofball appeal. Full beard, fullest I’ve ever seen it on him, and for some reason it reminds me of Robert De Niro’s beard in “The Deer Hunter.”

Doug also looks older, or anyhow that’s my perception of him since he is getting married, or anyhow that’s what I need to perceive him as because he’s getting married. I’m running all of these thoughts in my head, trying to figure out which one is right, and I realize that the confusion is really stemming from the fact that someone my age who I’ve known for most of my life is getting married, which seems weird, and yet it’s not weird anymore as it is something that I’ve come to think about for myself, and the fact that it’s no longer weird is what makes it weird. After a drink at the bar, my dad and I are summoned by my mom and Nana, and we head into the room where the ceremony is going to be held. The room is overwhelmingly white, with each chair for each guest draped in some kind of white silky cloth—not silk, I think—and Doug is walking around with his best man, the two of them greeting guests and looking important, feeling, I’d imagine, a bit like Henry Hill in the wedding scene in GoodFellas, although with less money. They dart from some back room behind the stage and into the crowd, and then away in the back hallway and presumably back to that back room.

Finally, the ceremony begins. Doug, the best man, and the groomsmen come out from the back room and stand at the front, and then each bride’s maid comes in to stand opposite of the groomsmen. Doug has a huge smile on his face, and as I’m watching him he looks over at me. I hadn’t gotten a chance to say hi to him earlier, so we do a big hello-nod, and I make a face like “Holy shit! You’re getting married! (And you’re my age!)” He returns the face, allowing himself to briefly return to that mindset in which this is all weird, a mindset that he has clearly taken his leave of. The little three-year-old flower girl comes out for the obligatory emotional manipulation, and the “she’s so cutes” are so thick you’d think some people are on the payroll.[3]

But I can’t be cynical for too long, because soon after Sandy comes in, and there is such a joy in her face it makes you want to jump up and touch her in some hopes that you’ll get some of it. The family sits down in the front row, and then the bride, Lori, comes in, a girl who looks like she could be one of my friends…and she could, since she’s my age, which is what I keep reminding myself as I’m watching this. These people are my age. The bride’s father gives her away, and then Doug and Lori stand in front of the priest as he speaks. Doug is a great guy, but not one of my great friends, and so again I’m able to watch this ceremony from a bit of a detached perspective, my head flipping around every which way to see the expressions on everybody else’s faces, and then always back to my mom, who has a smile in her eyes of such love and warmth that you’d think God put it there himself. Sandy turns around from her seat in the front row, and the old friends look at each other and smile, each saying exactly what she wants to say—and no more—without ever opening their mouths.

Then came the rest of it, bang-bang-bang, with the vows and the rings and the kiss, and just like that, they were married. They turned and walked back down the aisle, as husband and wife, and then they returned to personally let each row out, a nice alternative to the normal handshake and hug line. We are in the fourth row, so we watch as Doug and Lori hug everyone, with Lori giving big hugs and kisses to Sandy and Ed, and Doug embracing Lori’s father and stepmother. Then it’s over to us. I quickly introduce myself to Lori—“I’m Doug’s mom’s best friend’s son”—and I watch her eyes as she runs that lineage through her head until it connects, and then she smiles and gives me a hug. “Congrats,” I say. And then as my parents congratulate Lori, I see Doug.

[1] I love the way sports metaphors bounce from one sport to another. That was a boxing metaphor used in tennis, and there are plenty more. A point guard is the quarterback of the basketball team, a football team allowing no points is “pitching a shutout,” and a free safety in a deep coverage is “playing centerfield.”

[2] There’s some eternal optimism for you. Things have been bad, so logically, he’s due. Why wouldn’t I assume that since things have been going bad that they’re bound to continue this way?

[3] “We’ve got ‘she’s-so-cute’ people on the payroll, right Tom? They might like a cute little flower girl like that.” “They might. They just might.”