WHITE SOX NATION.(The Talk of the Town)

Baseball, a year past the lifting of the Curse of the Bambino, the end of the Evil Empire, and the redemption of Red Sox Nation, has come up with a World Series so free of overtones that the games themselves may have to provide the entertainment. Modern-day ball teams like to come onstage with an almost visible trail of legend and epithet--think of the Yankees, think of the Sox, think of the Braves and the Cubs and the Mets and the Montreal Expos. Loss, it will be noticed, can bestow recognition and reputation almost as firmly as dominant, repeated victory. The Houston Astros, who are playing in the first World Series of their forty-four-year history, bring only the blurry sadness of five playoff eliminations in the past decade: not much in these bleeding annals. Their opponents, the White Sox, are slightly better off here, springing at once to the fanly mind as Not the Cubs, and--oh, yeah--the Black Sox. The Pale Hose, in fact, have not won a World Series since 1917, and thus would appear to be a year worse off than the Red Sox, who were taunted all through that emotional summer by enemy fans holding up "1918" signs: the last time Boston won it all and a year before the team sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. This year's White Sox won steadily through the early season, building a fifteen-game margin by August 2nd, then wobbled badly, almost giving way to the onrushing Indians near the end, but they were not much baited for their failings. Why? Why, because of the Cubs, of course--the hated North Side rivals, who have made losing into opera. The Cubs won a World Championship in 1908, then tried but failed in seven more World Series, the last in 1945. Now they are good at losing in the playoffs as well, having turned the trick four times since 1984. Their most recent defeat featured that grisly sixth-game, Steve Bartman faninterference episode, when the Cubs, five outs away from the World Series, coughed up an eight-run inning, and then the pennant, to the Florida Marlins. All this has established the Cubs as clear leaders in the ever-popular "It's Our Turn to Win" show, now that the Red Sox have been crossed off.

The only thing the Astros had going for them when they won their pennant was a scrabbled-together demographic offered up by the Fox announcers during the N.L.C.S. playoff against the St. Louis Cardinals: not a single World Series game has ever been played in the state of Texas (What!! Great Scott, can that be!). No, the advantage falls clearly to the White Sox, who, if they lose again, need only to work on their Black Sox advantage and focus it on Shoeless Joe Jackson. The Mojo of Joe . . . Clueless Joe: why, the thing ...