Chicago, I really don't know thee at all

Chicago is a bit of an enigma to me. I’ve never spent any significant amount of time here, something that distinguishes it from several cities in the U.S., and yet it holds this sort of magic, unknown “what-if” in my life, since my No. 2 college choice, Northwestern, lies just north of the city.

Any time I come here or think about Chicago, I can’t help but wonder what my life would be like had I spent four years in Evanston instead of Houston. Would I tolerate the cold better? Like my friends as much? Still love baseball? Where would I be living/working? The list goes on. I'm very glad I made the choice I did, but I always wonder.

It’s probably the big city in the U.S. I know the least (this is mostly based on my having experienced public transportation without a parent in New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco/Oakland, Denver, New Orleans – riding public transportation makes me feel like I know a city, or at least have a tenuous connection to it. Heck, by that measure, I have more of a connection to maybe eight European cities than I do to Chicago). To be honest, most of what I know about it comes from that immortal cinematic classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

But as I said, there is a “road not taken” je-ne-sais-quoi about Chicago for me. I’m intrigued by it, and I think I would like a chance to explore it. Coming into town on a team road trip really doesn’t present much of a chance – I don’t think I left my hotel last year except for the game – but it’s better than nothing.

With that in mind, and because I heart baseball, I headed to the White Sox-Mariners game last night. A boss and a fellow broadcaster turned down the chance to join me, so I was making a longer solo excursion in a strange city than I’m used to. I’m not going to lie – being in one of the country’s major cities made me a bit more fearful than normal. I limited cash in my wallet and cleared essential broadcasting stuff out of my bag so that, were I to be mugged or something, I could still do the game on Saturday.

But things went relatively smoothly. The walk to the nearest L stop gave me a pretty decent directional orientation, and getting a train was (surprise, surprise) pretty much like anywhere else. Forgetting how much the fare was, I overpaid for a fare card, but it was easy after that – separate north- and south-bound boarding areas, some no-pay exchanges, and a global in/out fare (rather than one adjusted for location) all made it feel more like the New York subway than the T, Metro, or BART.

Personnel-wise, Chicago made me feel like I was in New York Lite. It was crowded, but not heinously so. People were in their own world, but not totally discourteous. It’s diverse, but still seems to retain a Midwestern-style white plurality. This is just general feel rather than cold, hard facts. I heard Spanish, Russian, and an African dialect on my short ride down to the New Comiskey Park, now known as U.S. Cellular Field, not to mention a slightly unbalanced guy smacking his lips nonsensically. All par for the course, right?

It’s cold, so there’s that The North Face/Columbia fleece brand-dominance thing going on, and it makes me feel a little at home. I always miss the Northeast when I’m away, and Chicago seems like it could be a good compromise of Northeastern and Midwestern. Of course, it gets freaking cold in the winter, and it was pretty cold at the game for late April – the scoreboard stopped updating temperature at 54 degrees in the middle innings, but it felt like the 40s PLUS a windchill as we got into the late innings.

Luckily it was an entertaining game – a grand slam by RBG’s fantasy third baseman gave Seattle a come-from-behind lead it didn’t deserve, but the Sox wowed the home crowd by rallying – buoyed by one of RBG’s relief pitchers – and winning on a walk-off by Andruw Jones. I remember when he was an almost unknown 19-year-old from Curacao hitting two bombs against the Yankees in the 96 World Series, and now he’s coming back from being dismissed as washed up and hitting two bombs on his 33rd birthday. Bizarre world.

Anyway, I stuck it out through the cold and left as the White Sox fans enjoyed Friday fireworks. I walked across a bridge to the L station and boarded the first train, after a short wait, back toward our hotel. I do love riding back from a game on public transportation. There’s just enough common experience that you can pick up on or join in other people’s conversations, but the diversity of experience is such that just listening is usually entertaining enough.

With dreary weather and some work responsibilities, I chose not to leave the hotel until gametime again today. Maybe I’ll get to see more of Chicago some other time.

Meanwhile, what was the point of this aside? Chicago intrigues me. Cities, in general, intrigue me. They seem to be examples of that wonderful oxymoron ‘organized chaos,’ that can scare us and comfort us, warn us and welcome us, injure and nurture us. Some day I will live in an eastern-style city and write what I see there. Every city has its own identity, its own character, and that’s why it is one of the societal elements that interests me the most.