Paul Sullivan: City Series arrives with both the underachieving Cubs and White Sox at a crossroads

The first round of the abbreviated City Series between the Cubs and White Sox on Tuesday and Wednesday coincides with the start of Bears training camp, a Bermuda Triangle of madness for the Chicago media.

Which way to go?

The Yin of lost baseball dreams playing out on the South Side vs. the Yang of summertime Bears optimism in tony Lake Forest.

You make the call.

In truth, when push comes to shove, the Bears will always win out when it comes to media coverage, leaving the Cubs-Sox series as an afterthought. That’s a shame, because this year’s Crosstown Classic, as everyone except this newspaper calls the rivalry (don’t ask why), figures to be more interesting than ever.

With the Aug. 1 trade deadline approaching, the focus has shifted from our underachieving teams to the two men currently most responsible for trying to fix things — Cubs president Jed Hoyer and White Sox general manager Rick Hahn.

Space limitations prohibit us from mentioning every Cubs and Sox player who could be gone by the time the two teams meet again Aug. 15-16 at Wrigley Field. Among the more prominent names available to contending teams are Cody Bellinger, Marcus Stroman, Lucas Giolito, Lance Lynn, Kendall Graveman, Michael Fulmer and Joe Kelly.

The Sox, who are 12 games out of first and 19 games under .500, are motivated sellers. The Cubs, who are 6 1/2 games out of first and 3 games under .500, remain in wait-and-see mode.

As the Sox teeter on irrelevance, the team’s Twitter account recently revealed the introduction of the “Bell of Shame” to Sox Park, starting Tuesday. Located in center field, the bell will be rung whenever someone puts ketchup on a hot dog, a violation of Chicagoans’ encased meat ethics.

A Sox spokesperson told the Chicago Sun-Times the bell “is designed to be a fun interactive for fans to weigh in on the age-old condiment debate in Chicago over toppings for hot dogs.”

Already exhausted from a season of Lynn’s home run offerings and player injuries, Sox fans can rest assured the team’s priorities are at least in the right place. Maybe the Bell of Shame can be rung whenever a Sox player doesn’t run out a ball, or a starter gives up five first-inning runs. The possibilities are endless.

The City Series began in 1997 with the introduction of interleague play, a concept unthinkable to previous generations of fans who only saw the American and National League players on the same field in the World Series and All-Star Games.

It was a response to fan apathy resulting from the 1994 players strike and cancellation of the ’94 World Series, and a blatant attempt by baseball to try and boost attendance. Some fans believed the owners were ruining the game by making such a drastic change, while others welcomed the opportunity to see stars from the other league in their home ballparks.

Before the first Cubs-Sox game, on June 16, 1997, at what was then called new Comiskey Park, Cubs reliever Turk Wendell said the co-mingling of the two leagues proved “the power of the almighty dollar.” Wendell insisted he liked the game better “the way it was supposed to be played, 127 years ago.”

Of course, Wendell didn’t want to be paid the way players were paid back in 1870, but that’s another story.

Fans were relatively well-behaved at the first Cubs-Sox game, which featured two teams going nowhere. Sox security chief David Schaffer reported only two fans had been arrested during the inaugural game, and only seven fans had to be ejected. It was a different era.

The first Cubs-Sox series was a critical and financial success. Game 2 drew a standing-room-only crowd of 44,249, the largest regular-season crowd in the ballpark’s seven-year history, and the infusion of thousands of Cubs fans made for a great atmosphere.

“They’re very enthusiastic fans,” Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said of the Cubs’ crowd. “Sox fans are more demanding. They’re more knowledgeable about the game. They don’t like to watch bad baseball.”

Some things never change.

Players noticed the difference in intensity, and some wondered where Sox fans had been all year until that week.

“It’s kind of a shame we have to (play the Cubs) to get this kind of crowd,” Sox reliever Roberto Hernandez said. “Hopefully we can get better and have it like this all the time.”

The Sox won the series 2-1. Cubs manager Jim Riggleman conceded afterward it would be difficult for their fans to live it down.

“I don’t think the players get too caught up in it,” Riggleman said after the rubber game loss. “But our fans will have to endure some heckling for some time.”

Cubs fans survived. Being heckled by Sox fans was a tradition that began before they were born and was unlikely to end any time soon.

Average attendance on the first weekend of interleague play increased by 37 percent over the first 10 1/2 weeks of the season. MLB knew immediately the controversial decision to end the separation of the two leagues, after nearly a century of tradition, had paid off.

Twenty-seven years later, after an owners’ lockout ended in 2022, MLB decided to switch from the unbalanced schedule for 2023. This year every team plays at least one series against every other team, paving the way for the inevitable realignment of baseball down the road, probably when it expands to 32 teams.

That means the underachieving Cubs and Sox would likely be in the same division, no doubt chasing the overachieving Milwaukee Brewers. Circle of life and all that.

But that’s still a ways off.

It’s still the same old Crosstown, er, City Series, for now, and a matchup of two rivals that play 8.1 miles apart and have no real reason to dislike the team on the other side of town.

For disgruntled Cubs and Sox fans, however, this is the Super Bowl of hate.

Ring that bell.