Windy City Sox Fans held their annual holiday party Sunday afternoon at Senese’s Winery in Oak Lawn. Senese’s is an old-school Italian restaurant where fake ivy spirals like a knuckleball around rustic white beams. Windy City Sox Fans are a rugged old-school group who enjoy spicy sausage and don’t care for knuckleheads.
“I don’t take kindly to seeing entire groups of people insulted for nothing more than a feeble attempt at humor,” said Hal Vickery, a 53-year-old high school chemistry and physics teacher who lives in Joliet and attends about 20 White Sox games a year. “We took it day after day for months at a time. Even the players talked about it.”
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About 100 club members turned out for the party, along with ex-Sox Billy Pierce, Minnie Minoso, Bill Melton, and Steve Trout. Senese’s served a holiday spread of Italian sausage with sweet peppers, chicken Parmesan with pasta, and roast sirloin with sauteed mushrooms. Club members paid $22 for the meal, with proceeds going to Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities, which Pierce heads.
Senese’s has a long history as a comedy club. Pictures of Steve Allen, Red Skelton, Jim Belushi, and Rusty Warren hang near the dining room entrance. But what’s funny about being a White Sox fan?
Hester asked Wills if anyone had any good news. Hester maintains a certain innocence. At age 35 she’s the club’s youngest board member. “I am a Sox fan, but this is what irritates me,” she said after dinner. “My husband will say this too–most Sox fans have nothing good to say about the Sox.” Club president Weir blamed sports talk radio. “Sports talk shows have a lot of influence and they give a skewed vision of U.S. Cellular Field,” she said. “Many of those people don’t come to the park regularly. That’s frustrating too.”
Trout, who lives in Munster, Indiana, now, attends more Cubs games than Sox games. “White Sox fans have more of a blue-collar demeanor,” he said. “The person at Wrigley Field goes out for an afternoon in the sun, which creates a different mentality than a nighttime event on the south side. That’s why north-siders don’t take it as seriously or as personally as south-siders do.”
