A day will come in the not-too-distant future when the newest round of ammunition in the endless war of words between the two sets of baseball fans around town surfaces. It will probably involve this bit of news, and it will probably involve some tasteless joke about 2005. Maybe there will even be a crack or two about why the Sox drew so many fans that year, or the real reason they called it such a special season.

Anyone who’s walked around outside either of Wrigley or Comiskey has probably seen the beauties you can pick up for $10: Crack Whore Mom, World’s Largest Gay Bar, Sux, Kiss It. Come to think of it, there might even be a good old-fashioned Cubs Suck model laying around the 35th Street offices somewhere. So is it preposterous to think this kind of thing will end up on a t-shirt? Not really.

And inevitably, this will become yet another tolerated salvo in the increasingly lame war of words that’s never really about baseball anyway. Someone has problems with gay people, so obviously the Cubs are a terrible baseball team. Distribution of wealth and municipal favoritism are complicated matters, so let’s all hope the Sox lose today.

Really? Is that really how this works? And we wonder why people make fun of people from the Midwest?

So that day will come when tacky, misinformed shots at Catholicism become somehow acceptable complements to rooting against a baseball team. Someone will say “Cubs suck” and someone else will say “well, at least kids are safe at Wrigley.” And at that point we will have all sunk a little lower as human beings.

Except someone using true horror as a drunken comeback or putting it onto a t-shirt isn’t what we should concern ourselves with. What we should concern ourselves is that we’re talking about t-shirts and comparing baseball teams instead of, you know, the evil that people do. Just something to think about next you see that guy with the duffel bag on Sheffield or the 35th Street bridge.

We’ll get back to baseball tomorrow.