South Side

In Their Own Story

It was a late-August evening, the kind where the heat hangs over the South Side like a wet wool blanket and the air smells of hot asphalt and the faint sweetness of someone's backyard grill three blocks over. A kid, maybe nine, sits on the concrete lip of the outfield wall at Comiskey, legs dangling, a half-eaten hot dog in one hand and a crumpled program in the other. The crowd is a low, constant roar — not the polite applause of a ballroom, but the full-throated, argumentative, beer-spilling noise of people who have been here since before their parents were born. Somewhere in the stands, a woman is singing the lyrics to a song the radio played that morning, and her neighbors are singing along, slightly off-key, and it is the most beautiful sound in the world. The kid watches the pitcher wind up. The bat cracks. And for one suspended second, the whole South Side holds its breath together.