Bleacher Bums and Black Belt Fans:
Social Divisions and the Cubs-White Sox Rivalry 1871-1921
Abstract:
Professional baseball has been an institution in Chicago since the Great Fire in 1871, and a rivalry between the Cubs and White Sox has existed since 1900. This rivalry is an often overlooked example of cultural difference that existed between business and working classes in the great western metropolis, between approximately 1870 and 1920. Geographically and culturally a wide divide existed between upper business classes and lower ethnic and working classes. The Chicago Cubs endowed themselves with gentlemanly, Victorian values to appeal to Chicago’s business classes, while the White Sox took on a more egalitarian nature that working classes wished to see. As the city’s geography repeatedly changed, the teams reacted to their respective markets, and maintained their roles through the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. When the Black Sox Scandal struck in 1919, the meaning of the game was irrevocably changed to both groups of people, as the country moved towards a new era after the First World War.