Whoa Nellie! Armageddon, The Rapture and The White Sox

This has nothing to do with politics, but I had to post something on the long, long, long awaited American League pennant just won by the Chicago White Sox. I still find it hard to fathom that the long-suffering Chi-Sox will be playing in the 2005 World Series. Growing up in Chicago watching the Cubs and Sox on TV and at Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park, pennants and World Series appearances were almost nonexistent.

There hasn't been a Sox win in a post-season series since 1959 and we all know about the famous Black Sox Curse. Then there's the Cubs' Billy Goat Curse that has prevented a pennant since 1945 and that struck again two years ago when the Cubbies ALMOST won their league championship. Close enough to cause rampant despair in Chicagoland natives around the globe.

So when the Sox won the ALCS championship this week with a walloping 3-run win over the LA Angels, there was alot to savor and hoot about at my house. Including FOUR, count them, FOUR complete games by their pitching staff in an era when one guy pitching all nine innings of a game is considered a miracle.

I'm old enough (ahem) to clearly remember the Go-Go White Sox of 1959, with Nellie Fox, Little Looie Aparacio, Ted Kluszewski, Billie Pierce, Early Wynn, Sherman Lollar, Turk Lown and the rest of the team known for base-stealing, bunting, incredible pitching and rousing defensive plays.

The night the '59 Sox won the pennant is burned into my memory, with Da Mayor, Richard Daley, ordering the fire department to sound the Cold War air raid sirens (go ahead and click) all over the city. We ran outside and joined neighbors up and down our street who were out there cheering and jumping up and down to the wailing of the sirens. I also recall that non-baseball fans were, shall we say, a little scared by those same sirens, it being the middle of the Cold War and all. But there didn't seem to be any of those confused souls in my working class neighborhood. I bet every house had its black and white TV tuned to WGN and the Sox game that night. Chicago baseball has a long and proud tradition and it was the background music for almost everyone's life where I grew up.

To understand how long ago 1959 really is, check out the year's events. A few highlights:

• Hawaii and Alaska became states
• Fidel Castro's revolution took power in Cuba
• Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens went down in a plane crash on the "Day the Music Died"
• the first Barbie doll went on sale
• the Dalai Lama left Tibet
• VP Richard Nixon and the USSR's Nikita Krushchev had their famous "kitchen debate"
• Ford discontinued their Edsel model
• the Twenty-One quiz show scandal with Charles Van Doren erupted
• Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's Countdown was born
• Billie Holiday died

Chicagoans have always claimed that the end of the world as we know it would occur if the White Sox or Cubs ever appeared in another World Series. You can see where I'm leading with this now, can't you? Those right-wing Armageddon-Rapture mongers may be on the right track after all ... Whoa Nellie (as in Nellie Fox, he of the big tobacco chaw in his cheek)! Added eerieness: a Daley is Mayor of Chicago today, just like Richard Senior was in 1959 (cue Twilight Zone theme). And it's anyone's guess what can happen if the White Sox, dare I whisper it, actually WIN the World Series this year...