CHICAGO — The City Series that begins Tuesday night at Wrigley Field matches the gloomy Chicago spring we’ve endured, with anticipation low on both sides of town.
While sub-.500 teams and miserable weather have seldom dampened the atmosphere of the crosstown rivalry between the Cubs and White Sox, it’s hard to get excited for this one — especially with another soggy forecast on tap for the two-game series.
The series was reduced from six games to four this season, a welcome relief to many. As much as the “Crosstown” usually lives up to the hype, it’s somewhat exhausting for the players, managers, reporters and even some fans.
“A two-game series is fine,” Cubs manager David Ross said Sunday. “I don’t really have an opinion either way. It’s just a fun environment when we get to play them.”
This season marks the 25th anniversary of interleague play, a marketing ploy MLB concocted in reaction to fan malaise after the 1994 players strike. The Cubs and Sox began with a three-game series at new Comiskey Park in June 1997. And after a three-game series at Wrigley in 1998, MLB decided to schedule home-and-home series starting in 1999.
Here are five things to watch this time around.
1. The managers
Tony La Russa and Ross are the latest managers going head to head. So far it has been one-sided, with La Russa going 5-1 against the Cubs last season.
“It’s a big deal,” La Russa said Monday. “Our guys are fired up and I know the Cubs guys are fired up.”
Maybe. But Cubs and Sox fans? Meh.
La Russa was managing in what was then called the Windy City Classic before any of his players were born, facing off against former Cubs manager Jim Frey in the mid-1980s. It was just an exhibition game then, but Sox and Cubs fans took it seriously.
The first regular-season matchup in ‘97 pitted the Sox’s Terry Bevington against Jim Riggleman. Bevington helped market the inaugural series in his own unique style of downplaying its significance.
“I have a hard time believing that it’d be different than any day,” he said. “I don’t think it will be any different. Nothing is any different.”
Wrong again, Bev.
Riggleman warned his players not to schmooze with the Sox before the first game, but they ignored the edict when Sox shortstop Ozzie Guillén came out and started talking.
“They call me Tiger Woods,” Guillén said. “I play for fun. The money is in the bank.”
2. The ex-Sox players
Nick Madrigal said he planned to meet up with some of his former Sox teammates Monday night before the first game. He and reliever Codi Heuer are the only players still around from last year’s trade-deadline shocker between the teams.
After the ill-fated experiment to use Craig Kimbrel as a setup man, the Sox dealt Kimbrel to the Los Angeles Dodgers this spring for outfielder AJ Pollock. Heuer pitched well for the Cubs last summer but underwent Tommy John surgery in March and will miss the 2022 season.
Madrigal has scuffled in his first month as a Cub. He is hitting .210 with 11 strikeouts in 62 at-bats, including five Ks in his last two games.
The Cubs have struck out 27 times in their last two games — and Madrigal struck out three times Saturday in Milwaukee, chasing pitches and looking out of sync. He said Sunday he never had struck out three times in a game “my whole life.”
Madrigal fanned only 24 times in 303 at-bats with the Sox in 2020 and ‘21, when Sox broadcaster Jason Benetti nicknamed him “Nicky Two Strikes.” Because he’s a singles hitter whose reputation was built on making contact, Madrigal must hit for the Cubs to make the deal work out.
Also in the spotlight is David Robertson, who is not the Cubs closer but referred to himself as their late-inning “tough guy” Sunday after his fifth save. Robertson saved 84 games for the Sox from 2015-17 but wasn’t particularly effective. The 37-year-old could be a valuable trade piece for the Cubs if he remains healthy and productive in July.
3. The missing Cub killer
One prominent player who will miss the series is Sox slugger Eloy Jiménez, who remains out of action for several more weeks after surgery on his right hamstring.
Jiménez has four home runs and eight RBIs in 30 at-bats during eight career games at Wrigley with a .1000 slugging percentage and 1.469 OPS. Overall he has hit .340 in 13 games off Cubs pitching with six homers and a 1.246 OPS, including a game-winning, broken-bat home run in 2019.
Jiménez, who also is expected to miss the two games on the South Side on May 28-29, was well on his way to Carlos Lee status in the City Series. No one loved being a Cub killer like Lee, who once was asked to explain his success against the North Siders.
“Destiny maybe?” Lee replied. “Go through every big league player’s stats and everyone does good against one team. ... It seems like Barry Bonds kills San Diego. I always seem to do well against the Cubs.”
4. Anniversary of the comeback game
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the most memorable comeback in City Series history, which occurred on the South Side on June 28, 2002. In spite of incurring a walnut-sized bump on his head after ducking into a Kerry Wood curveball in the fourth inning, Paul Konerko finished with four hits, including two home runs, while leading the Sox back from an 8-0 deficit to win 13-9.
“I think you reach a point where you get sick of being average,” Konerko said. “Pretty much for the last year and a half we’ve been mediocre.”
The 2002 Sox finished 81-81, the definition of mediocrity. But they had this one — and it was a keeper.
5. The fans
Shenanigans are tolerated up to a point, but beefed-up security is as much a City Series tradition as Guillén’s tales of rat sightings at Wrigley.
Fan behavior was lauded after the first Cubs-Sox interleague game in 1997. Afterward, Sox security boss David Schaffer reported only two fans had been arrested and seven fans were ejected.
That was the last time either team announced the number of arrests and ejections at Cubs-Sox games.
Most fans are there to have fun and watch the games, but they do enjoy watching the fights. During the inaugural series, Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf offered faint praise for Cubs fans.
“They’re very enthusiastic fans,” he said. “Sox fans are more demanding. They’re more knowledgeable about the game. They don’t like to watch bad baseball.”
Twenty-five years later, that can be said of both teams’ fans during this miserable spring of discontent.
