The White Sox’ annual Dog Day Afternoon promotion used to take place, appropriately enough, in the dog days of summer. But this year they held it on the second Saturday home date of the season, a day that turned out to be barely fit for man or beast. The Sox weren’t about to waste the promotion on a summer weekend, when the Comiskey Park bleachers fill with sun worshipers; better to bring the dog aficionados to a game that might otherwise produce a paltry crowd. By last Saturday, the summer temperatures that began the week had been blown away by a late-season reappearance of the hawk howling in off the lake. The dog-filled bleachers were the most packed sections of the stadium.
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The sun didn’t last, but at least the rain stayed away. It was cold but not unpleasant as we walked our dog (a sweet old lug of a soft-coated wheaten terrier that was being repaid for having to sit out a Kane County Cougars game in a stranger’s yard a couple of summers ago) around the park and into a line of dogs near the center-field gate for a pregame parade along the warning track. There were dogs of every breed, shape, size, and color, many sporting old Sox T-shirts cut down to size, and at least two Jack Russell terriers wearing sleeveless Harley-Davidson leather motorcycle jackets. After waiting in the cold and wind, we got to march in about a half hour before the game. To judge by the evidence left behind, some owners of rather large dogs were distressingly lax about picking up after them, but a pooper-scooper company got a chance to promote itself and the parade otherwise went off without a hitch.
Afraid not, however. Head wind, tailwind, against good pitching or bad, left-handed or right-handed–the Sox are clobbering the ball. Jose Valentin led off the second against Detroit with a blast that rode the wind into the right-field seats. The fireworks burst and our dog went nuts–as did other dogs, if not so completely. Yet it wasn’t dreadful or humiliating; it was kind of a kick, like when the bleacher bums go ape over a Cubs homer but without the beer tossed in the air. Speaking of which, a vendor in the aisle pouring a beer as the rockets popped turned to me and shouted, “I love home runs on Dog Day. It’s my favorite time.” The following inning Paul Konerko blasted a grand slam to left field into the teeth of the wind, and that got almost as much of a rise out of the fans as it did the dogs, and in the fourth Frank Thomas and Magglio Ordonez hit back-to-back shots, which really set the dogs off. By then it was 10-2, and the Sox coasted to a 12-5 victory. The final out brought on one last blast of fireworks to send the dogs home barking.
In short, here were the Sox on Dog Day, in an early battle for first place with the Indians and the upstart Minnesota Twins, pounding the ball, looking good, and offering one of the most anticipated promotions of the year. Yet they were being outdrawn by the woeful Cubs in Wrigley Field 36,476 to 15,737–not counting the 525 dogs. Keep in mind that with the wind out of the north, it was probably a lot more comfortable in the grandstand at Comiskey, which turns its left-field shoulder into a north wind, than at Wrigley, where the Cubs lost to the Cincinnati Reds to fall to 6-10 and five games out of first.
