The Dark Side Of Sports

Cubs mania is sweeping the north side of Chicago. As for the other end of town, it's gotten very gloomy. Bridgeport isn't the sort of place where you go looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, because you just know it's the headlight of the train coming straight at you.

The average Cubs fan watches the games at home, with ticket prices so outrageously expensive that only the corporate big-shots or the well-to-do commodities traders can afford a season pass.

There's a lot of sharing, of course, in which a group of people will split the cost and then divvy up the tickets. Works well enough during the season, but the Cubs are in the play-offs and the lawsuits are flying like home runs off of Aramis Ramirez's bat.

Jerry Slavin owned season tickets but he sold them to Laurence Wright and Brad Ginsberg. Then the post-season play-off tickets arrived, and Mr. Slavin decided that the purchase agreement didn't include them. He stood to make a great deal of money off of them on the resale market (up to $40,000), on top of the $15,000 he made from the sale of his season ticket package.

He said he'd sell us the post-season tickets, said Mr. Wright and Mr. Ginsberg. Did not, said Mr. Slavin. We'll see you in court, went the two businessmen. Fine, went Mr. Slavin.

Judge Mary K. Rochford (she's a Sox fan, with a name like that) looked at the trio before her in the court room and told them to work it out. She no doubt said the same to her children when they were little.

Four tickets, three men, everyone gets a seat and one left over for Mr. Slavin's family. He said he was going to bring them along, in spite of the fact that he's had bypass surgery, hip replacements, and hasn't been to a game in two years because of ill health. But it's a reasonable settlement.

We don't want to so much as sit next to the greedy, cheating bastard, they all chorused.

Fine, said the judge, you'll split the tickets and everyone gets to go to some of the games and Mr. Wright and Mr. Ginsburg will pay face value.

If this had been a dispute involving White Sox fans, they'd have handled it like gentlemen. With fists, behind Schaller's Pump.