Let Us Compare

Today's Tribune predicts the World Series is within reach for the Tribune-owned Cubbies, in spite of the fact that the team's meteoric rise to mediocrity seems fueled largely by the bottom loving suckage of the rest of their division. This inspired us to see what the Tribune was up to on Sept. 25, 2005, when the White Sox were 1.5 games up in their division, where they had been all season, and had just thumped the Minnesota Twins 8-1.

WOE IS OZ ; The White Sox precipitous plunge has their outspoken manager's emotions on a gut-wrenching roller-coaster ride;

Melissa Isaacson, Tribune staff reporter.
You are tired just from listening, drained by the relentless questions and the patient answers, worn out from watching a man trying to explain himself, to the point where it seems even he is confused, pouring out his soul until his eyes are red, his face is moist and he finally must slump to a sitting position on the concrete steps of the White Sox's dugout. This was Ozzie Guillen's day Thursday, really just the tiniest sliver of a day, of a week that must feel like a month and a month that must seem like eternity for the manager of Chicago's slumping White Sox.

Ah yes, "precipitous plunge," worry and woe on the South Side, a World Series within reach on the North Side. The Tribune staff was apparently too busy salivating over the prospect of a White Sox collapse to consider what it meant that the team had just pounded the Minnesota Twins. It's true that the 2007 Cubs have just distanced themselves from the Brewers, while the 2005 White Sox were just beginning their streak to the finish line, but don't we expect our reporters to be a little something more than wind socks and Cub fans? In the Chicago Tribune Magazine on Sept. 25, 2005, crack investigative reporter Jeff Lyons is writing about what? You guessed it, attendance. The headline makes it clear the Magazine is writing only for Cubs fans:

IF A WHITE SOX-CARDINALS WORLD SERIES SHOULD MATERIALIZE, CONSIDER THIS:

Sox manager Ozzie Guillen would be up against his former boss, Tony La Russa, who piloted the Sox in 1985, the year Guillen debuted in the bigs. If you believe in the ex-Cub factor, the Sox have the edge. They have only one former Cub, Ross Gload, but the Cards have three-Ray King, Julian Tavarez and Mark Grudzielanek. Both teams have won in spite of serious injuries (Sox: Scott Podsednik, Joe Crede, Frank Thomas; Cards: Scott Rolen, Reggie Sanders). Chicago has 3 times the population of St. Louis, but the Cards have drawn 3.4 million to the Sox's 2.3.