I know it’s tough, being the perennial Little Brothers to the Chicago Cubs organization. No matter what you do, no matter how successful you are, you will never be Mom’s favorite. You can win World Championships, you can have an owner who’s far superior to the Tribune Organization^*, you can even have a ballpark built in our lifetimes, and yet “The Chicago Cubs” will remain on the tip of the vast majority of tongues when people get asked, “name Chicago’s baseball team.”

Anyway, I’m not here to diss you guys. I don’t personally hate – or even dislike – a single Sox fan. Then again, outside of Chicago, I’ve never even met one, but that’s beside the point.

I’m not here to comment on the White Sox fan who saw fit to troll our blog back in your championship year of 2005 while the White Sox were parading down LaSalle Street, trophy in hand! I mean, c’mon, this guy could have found something better to do with his time. I can understand him stumbling back home AFTER the parade and drunk-trolling on the many Cubs blogs out there, but I have issues with any “fan” who’d rather spend his time jeering a rival team than cheering for the one he personally supports. . . did I say I wasn’t here to comment on that? Never mind.

Now, about this upcoming series. Apart from a mild fear about having to deal with the embarrassment of a sweep, I don’t think it means as much to Cub fans as it does to White Sox fans. I imagine it might be different in Chicago, where you have to live among each other, but out here in the boonies known as Toronto, since I don’t see Sox fans, I don’t have to worry about them giving me crap because the Cubs won 90 games and reached the playoffs but lost four of six games to the hapless, basement-dwelling White Sox back in June. Not that I’m saying the White Sox are basement-bound. It was a hypothetical; I think the Sox have a great chance of reaching the post season if Ozzie doesn’t do something stupid beforehand, like murder half your bench in a red haze of violence.

Furthermore, as the Cubs surge toward the playoffs^** and I begin to fantasize about potential World Series match-ups – many of which involve a naked Charlize Theron hanging out with me (or perhaps on me) in the stands – the Sox don’t really stand out as one of my preferred opponents. It’s not because I’m afraid of the White Sox (I promise you that that isn’t the case). It’s more that of all the American League teams I find interesting, the White Sox aren’t one of them. Sorry about that.

However, I can see the appeal of this series, and I can appreciate the bragging rights that will ensue. But the one thing I’ll worry about will be the ever-looming potential of collapse. I truly believe all Cubs fans are scarred and tramatized, at least a little, and one of the hardest pains I ever personally experienced was in 1999, when the Cubs were cruising in the Central toward their second consecutive winning season, right up until the White Sox decimated them. The Cubs collapse was epic that year, and your team started it.

Therefore, I would like to conclude this open letter by saying that I don’t really know what point I was trying to get to. I don’t hate the Sox, but some Sox fans annoy the crap out of me. (Some Cubs fans annoy the crap out of me, too, and I actually got spat on by a Jays fan once.) I’m not afraid of the Cubs losing to the Sox, but I am unreasonably afraid that a Sox sweep would be the beginning of a collapse. I don’t care if the Cubs play the Sox in October, but I’ll admit now that it would be way more interesting than if the Cubs played, say, the Jays, Rays, Twins, A’s, Mariners, or Rangers.

I wish the Sox the very best of luck for the rest of the season. And, Sox fans? A few quick tips for the future:

1. Stay off the crack and 40’s, kay?
2. If she has a rose tattooed on her boob, you don’t want to take her home to your mother. . . even if your mother also has a rose tattooed on her boob.
3. Mullets are so 80s.
4. No matter what you think you heard, the first base coach wasn’t challenging you and your son to fisticuffs.
5. Good luck!

(*) Not that Reinsdorf is setting the world on fire, but at least everybody knows his name. I could be sitting in a bar drinking a beer with the faceless bigwigs who’ve inflated their bottom line while neglecting the Cubs, and I wouldn’t have a chance of, 1. Identifying them in order to, 2. Smash my beer bottle on the bar and use it as a weapon as I violently pummel them for more than 20 years of gross neglect. . . violent pummelling? Maybe I’m cut out to be a Sox fan after all!↩

(**) Assuming Carlos’s arm didn’t just pull a ¡Viva la Revolución! on his body.↩

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Kurt Evans is one-sixth of the multi-headed hydra of awesomeness that is the award-winning Goat Riders of the Apocalypse. He dreams of one day living in Chicago, but for the time being has to settle for the semi-communist city of Toronto, Canada.

Lest we accuse Cubs fans of being unwilling to listen to reason, they have graciously hosted the Sox/35th 40-ounce rebuttal of their accusations.