Now you’ve touched a nerve, Mr. Larison!

First, as a Cubs fan I’ll concede that to a non-fan we can often seem a whiny lot. Consequently, and as a former Southsider as well, I’ll also concede that White Sox fans have earned the chip that each carries on his shoulder towards the Cubs.

But the Red Sox have finally won their championship, yet their fandom remains a vindictive, self-obsessed caricature of sporting passion. I’ve vacationed briefly during each of the last two summers on Cape Cod, and, naturally enough, I’ve had frequent occasion to talk baseball with (it’s true) some of the most knowledgable and dedicated baseball fans around. But as soon as they hear I’m a Cubs guy, I get unsolicited harangues about the superiority of their suffering to mine. Literally every time. It’s chronic, insufferable, and proof against your claim that Red Sox nation will ever drop its permananet grudge against not only their archrival Yankees but also any other team that commands a similar depth and breadth of passion. Cubs fans may sometimes be whiny, but, good Midwesterners at heart, they are almost uniformly genial. Not so, Red Sox diehards who, it seems to me, fuel their love of team with a bottomless resentment.

Finally, and with apologies, while I used to appreciate the ‘Stros, I’m afraid that today I find it difficult to take the franchise very seriously — ever since it’s chosen to host its games beneath the ridiculous gaze of a toy train and within a glorified pinball machine. Please petition your team to blow-up those disgraceful “Crawford boxes” and level the “grassy knoll.” More baseball, less EPCOT Center, please.

Allow me to explain. I have lived in Chicago on and off since 2001 and there has never been an end to the laments about “the Curse” and how longsuffering and miserable are Cubs fans. Teams that have never won a World Series (such as my Astros) do not cultivate this sort of mentality; most teams that won their championships long ago and have been mediocre since then do not cultivate it. The Cubs and Red Sox fans have been almost unique in this regard, and the Boston fans, thank goodness, finally got over it when they won. I wonder if the Cubs fans would ever believe that the Curse had truly been lifted, even if they did win some day–they would invent another one as soon as the team became bad again. The White Sox were without a championship for almost as long, but there was never some mysterious rationale cooked up to explain why this was so, even as a joke. I understand that the Curse idea is intended as a joke, and that a lot of Cubs fans endure their team’s failures in silence and patience. But the ones who make most of the noise have this sense of entitlement about them, especially in the Bartman episode, that drives me right up the wall. The way Cubs fans in this city turned on that guy and made him into the scapegoat (the goat connection is almost comical) for the Cubs’ implosion in that series against the Marlins was deplorable. Add to this that I live on the South Side and support the Astros in the division, and you might understand why I am not all together enthusiastic about the Cubs and many Cubs fans. But I apologise to the stoic and decent Cubs fans whom I unjustly insulted with the Kos comparison.