This Tuesday, May 20th, TCM will show Jimmy Stewart’s The Stratton Story, the sports bio about former Chi White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton who won dozens of games for the Sox before accidentally shooting himself in the leg. He then came back to pitch minor league ball with a wooden leg. Because it’s a movie about the Sox, you know it isn’t going to have one of those tired rag-tag-bunch-of-outsiders come from behind to win it all endings, because the Sox never do. Best moment of the film for me is when players, knowing he has a wooden leg, bunt on him to make him dive for the ball. After this bit of torture, the camera cuts to Stratton’s disgusted wife (June Allyson) and the grizzled old vet who scouted him (Frank Morgan), as Morgan smiles appreciatively, and says, “Yeah, that’s baseball.” Given the trilogy of White Sox related movies out there that includes Eight Men Out on the 1919 Black Sox and the Jimmy Piersall bio Fear Strikes Out, you can’t beat the South Side for good movie material: violence, mental illness, and corruption. When Bob Odenkirk gets his Disco Demolition Night movie made, it’ll make the Sox the most storied team in movies. I don’t know why I’m not more of a Sox fan, or why Bill Veeck never had free beer-filled wooden legs handed out at Commisskey on Monty Stratton nights, but that’s baseball.
The White Sox the most storied team in film? Yeah, I guess if you ignore the Yankees, which the NL side of town usually does.
And sure, it’s been a while since the Cubs took a star turn on the silver screen (or the baseball diamond), but it’s not as if Hollywood has stayed away. I thought Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with its Wrigely scene did a magnificent job of portraying the Cubs fan ethos: sheltered suburbanites return from a visit to distant, alien Chicago to mull over the pressures of sportscar ownership.
Relatedly, what ever happened to the Kevin James vehicle “Fan Interference”? It’s been in development for five years. I would think a feel-good comedy based on Steve Bartman would be a laff riot, especially when the loveable “King of Queens” star gets his first death threat.
Not to begrudge Kevin James his big moment, but he really oughta step aside and allow Steve Carrell to be cast as Bartman.
rob – i always thought rob lowe wearing a “no lights” shirt in “about last night” was the definitive cub fan moment on screen, but I’ll withhold judgement until kevin James makes his bid.
What is it with sox fans and their whole “no, we’re the real Chicago” trip? the first sox fans I ever met were my cousins from Skokie. Did you see that article comparing cubs/sox fans in the sun-times a few years back? Actual income difference between cub fans and sox fans is 2K – that’s it. Where’s all the working class hero attitude come from? Sox fans are more local, but that’s because the cubs draw a national audience.
But I can’t wait for Disco Demolition, a moment in south side sox history that turns an evening of, basically, book burning and homophobia, into the working man’s struggle for a bob seger and old style world.
Ben – Long story short, the Sun-Times has a very different readership than the Tribune, and the Trib would never, ever horrify their readers by printing that Cubs and Sox fans occupy the same income bracket. The Tribune is a paper whose 1800s history includes publishing stories on how to poison the homeless when they beg for food.
But enough of the history of the Hostess Baking Company, let’s just say that as long as Wrigley attracts the rude, cursory fans it does, as long as Clark & Addison indulges obnoxious tourists who see “downtown” as a combo urine trough/frat party, then the 2005 World Series Champion Chicago White Sox will trump the Kenilworth Kubs and remain the choice of the discerning Chicago fan, Bernie Mac, and, in 2009, the Oval Office.
Rob — you’re gonna tell me about Tribco? I’m not exactly their biggest fan. Wasn’t it just last year that the Sun-Times declared itself a Democratic paper again? What about Ruper Murdoch’s owning the paper so enlightened the South Side? That’s gotta be a first for Newscorp.
But, if you gotta play the politics card dating back to the 1800s … Obama is the coolest Sox fan, and that alone starts to chip away at decades of Daley, Sr. season ticket holding and city planning to segregate the Obamas from the Daleys (figuratively speaking) on the South Side. I’m also an open fan of Ozzie Guillien for blowing off the White House and many other public statements from the South Side’s second greatest current orator (meaning Obama is first, not Jeremiah Wright or Farrakhan). Once Zell sells the Cubs, any Dem of conscience can finally attend a Cub game without having to wonder if they’re sitting under the box seats of Donald Rumsfeld and George Will.
And I gotta say, I prefer the boozing Cub fan from Old Town in his Ann Arbor shirts to the Sox fans who beat the shit out of off duty cops at “the cell.” To the credit of the Cicero Sox, they did win the 2005 World Series. It’s just that, I, like most of the country, forgot about it already.
You’ve upset me, Rob. So much so I’m having my assts cancel my meetings and am asking my intern to walk my schnauzer, Gangsta.
Ben
(sent from a gold-plated iPhone)