October 24, 2005
Reprinted from the Chicago Tribune

I'm sitting at U.S. Cellular Field with my stomach full of White Sox worry.

My oldest son is telling me he is so nervous he thinks he's going to throw up. The fans around me are pumped. The players are pumped. Heck, even the ushers are pumped.

But off to my left, in the seats behind the White Sox on-deck circle, it's an entirely different story. There are at least 100 people who aren't even paying attention. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig leads them. Unbelievably, the action on the field seems to be a distraction to them.

Bud even has his own TV set and headphones so he can "monitor" the broadcast.

There are some famous faces, movers and shakers, a few well-connected families with kids, the occasional politician, and a bunch of MLB honchos. None of them is even remotely interested in watching the game.

They are constantly standing up as the game progresses to straighten their coats and wave at each other. In between innings they stand with their backs to the field as if to say, "Notice me!" The honchos also carry briefcases to indicate their importance to the proceedings. The kids seem spoiled and whiny, and they need a lot of attention. So do the celebrities. The honchos are handed a box of game balls.

Bernie Mac is the one that really gets my goat. This is the same Bernie Mac who denounced the Sox back in 2003 when he sang the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field.

He stands up in between the second and third innings and bear-hugs Barack Obama. That's not even his senator. Mac (if that even is his real last name) lives in Los Angeles.

Why can't these people at least take their action to a skybox, so we don't have to see it?

At the end of the third inning, Bernie Mac gets up to leave and never returns. I find out later that Bernie was on the World Series telecast at least twice and touted as big a White Sox fan. These are the tickets that real Sox fans couldn't get.

That's just not right.