When I dream of Paul Konerko, he is not selling me stamps at the Post Office or writing me out a speeding ticket.  No, we are involved in more intimate interactions. After these interactions, Konerko, first baseman and super slugger for the Sox, always tells me he desires as his life’s companion not his young, slim, sane wife, but an overweight, angry, menopausal woman. The dreams always end with his wife busting in on us, shocked not so much that Pauly is in bed with another woman, but that the woman happens to be me.   

I’m hoping the White Sox’s 9-game winning streak will put an end to foolish rebuilding rumors. Losing Konerko would be disastrous, not only to the team, but, more importantly, to the team’s many robust female fans. Who would I dream about? (Wait, no, that’s “Of whom would I dream?”)  Alexei Ramirez?

The winning streak is, of course, the direct result of my husband and me spending a week in Lithuania. This interesting causal relationship was pointed out by wise sports observer Joe Heumann.

Marty and I are buying tickets to Lithuania the minute the Sox lose a game.   

Earlier in the season the White Sox lost a bunch of games in a row, five, I think. Marty claims it’s because I had washed his lucky shirt. How ridiculous. Everyone knows they lost these games because I had angered the God of Baseball by referring to the Yankees as the Skankees and the Minnesota Twins as an irritating stain on the otherwise pristine cloth of American League, Central Division baseball. (You try scrubbing them out, soaking them out….) I was also harassing clerks at gift shops and gas stations throughout Central Illinois by pointing to Cubs paraphernalia and faux-politely inquiring: “Can you tell me where I can find the White Sox stuff?” Slack-jawed stares of stupidity met my question, as if I had asked where the radium to make the atomic bombs was kept. Once, at a Cracker Barrel, I grabbed a cute little Cubby teddy bear off the shelf and stuffed him head first into a mug with the Cubs logo. I ground him into the mug. I then proceeded to cram all of the surrounding cubby-wubby teddy bears into all of the mugs. I felt a twinge of guilt when a little boy—he couldn’t have been more than four—saw the bears with their chubby cubby feet sticking out into the air and started screaming. His mother glared at me: “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

I should be ashamed of myself—a woman in her fifties, an accomplished professional, a devoted wife and teacher, stuffing teddy bears into mugs. I don’t hate the Cubs.  I just get annoyed at the media hoopla that follows their every misguided move. Here in Central Illinois the television stations begin their baseball coverage with the Cubs, followed by the Cardinals. (Sometimes vice-versa.) I don’t mind the Cardinals coverage—they deserve it with their history of World Series appearances and wins. The Sox get 15 seconds if they get anything at all. And many Cubs fans, more so than Sox and Cards fans, simply don’t know the game. Cubs fans think a “utility man” is the guy who changes the lights at Wrigley Field.