Why You Shouldn't Mock a White Sox Fan

While White Sox and Cubs fans argue constantly over which team is better, and why the other team sucks so much, we still interact with each other. We're friends, and like friends tend to do, we make fun of each other. We also place bets with one another on whose team will fare better.

That happened between one Cubs fan and a White Sox fan earlier this season, when two neighbors made a friendly bet before the two teams squared off for a three-game set at Wrigley back in June. The Cubs fan said that his Cubbies would sweep the Pale Hose, and the Sox fan told him he was nuts. They decided that the loser of the bet would by the other one dinner.

Well, the Cubs swept that series, and though the Cub fan got his dinner, it wasn't enough. That's why he snuck into the Sox fan's house and hid a broom in his kitchen doorway with a note attached that read "This is just a reminder of who the real team in Chicago is."

While Cubs fans are just kind of annoying with their smack talk and bravado, Sox fans are smarter. They're also more devious, and they know the right time to strike.

Except in the Sox household, where the Sox husband told the Sox wife that plotting revenge would require patience: "When the Cubs lose in the first round of the playoffs -- and you know they will because they're the Cubs -- when it's the most painful, that's when we retaliate."

Retaliate he did. The Cubs fan (the story in the Tribune leaves out names) woke up to quite a surprise on Sunday morning, a few hours after the Cubs had been swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers, and it was amazing.

Sunday morning at the Cubs house. A battery-operated CD player with a timer went off at exactly 7:30. A bullhorn is attached to the CD player. The whole contraption is placed right outside the Cubs couple's bedroom. Blasting out of the bullhorn is a very loud and painfully slow version of "Go Cubs Go."

"Go."

"Cubs."

"Go."

Ah, but the Sox husband couldn't leave it at that. No, as the Cubs husband sought the source of the noise, he ventured out to his front yard. There he found 100 lawn signs with nothing but a drawing of a billy goat stuck in the ground. Yes, 100 signs. For some reason, that number rings a bell.

Ah, but the Sox husband couldn't leave at even just that. No, there on the lawn, supported by two poles sunk into buckets of cement was a massive, blue "L" flag.

Ah, but the Sox husband still couldn't leave it at even just that. No, on the garage were dozens of posters that mocked Cub Nation. A Cubs logo with with a red circle and line through it. The Wrigley Field marquee with a nasty saying. One poster explained, "I'd rather have a sister that lived in a whorehouse than a brother that's a Cubs fan."

Much admiration from the Cubs husband: "All I could say to my wife was, 'How can you beat this?'"

Simple answer: You can't. As if all that wasn't enough, the Cubs fan also noticed something else had changed before heading back into the house. The house number on his mailbox had been changed. It now read 1908.

If only our teams would try as hard to win a game as our fans do to one-up each other, we'd bring a World Series trophy home to Chicago every season.