Sox and the City: A Fan's Love Affair with the White Sox from the Heartbreak of '67 to the Wizards of Oz

Roeper's mother was nine months pregnant with him when the Chicago White Sox made their losing stand at the 1959 World Series, beginning a post-season drought that wouldn't end until their championship 2005 season. Roeper, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist and co-host of Ebert & Roeper, grew up an impenetrable and sometimes irritable Sox fan. Here, he examines the history and culture of Chicago's second baseball team, and his personal history as a fan, with the kind of devotion usually reserved for family memoirs. He claims to have attended a thousand Sox games, and he adamantly argues why the South Side team will always be superior to the North Side Cubs. Naturally, Roeper (Schlock Value) peppers his narrative with movie references, as well as fun sidebars and details about long-forgotten games and players. His irreverent style-alternately witty and abrasive-recalls Chuck Klosterman's essays on pop culture and music, and his take on such subjects as the old Comiskey Park and the joys of owning season tickets for a losing team are detailed, funny and quick. Sox fans will love this one, Cubs fans will mock it and the unaffiliated will better understand what it means to be a true baseball fan.