Column: It’s never too soon to think about a Chicago Cubs-White Sox World Series

Where were you in the summer of 2008? If you’re old enough to remember, you probably were watching your favorite Chicago baseball team and dreaming of a crosstown World Series. Until this year, 2008 was the last full season the Cubs and Sox played each other in the regular season with realistic dreams of a World Series rematch. It didn’t happen, of course, but it could this time with a little luck. ESPN put the odds of a Cubs-Sox World Series at 63-1, which seems low. “Sign me up,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “I’m in for all the fun, everything. You want to hype it up? All of it. I’m sure (Sox manager Will Venable) and I are both in.” I’ve covered every City Series from 1997, and written about all 156 games, including Monday night’s series opener at Wrigley Field. I even went to one at Comiskey Park on Aug. 7, 1981, when the city scheduled a pair of exhibition games to welcome back the teams after a players’ strike. They were called “Mayor Byrne’s Charity Games,” and Mayor Jane Byrne was seen hobnobbing with Andy the Clown, while Cubs manager Joey Amalfitano and young Sox manager Tony La Russa faced off. But the golden years of the Cubs-Sox rivalry were from 2006-10, when we witnessed the epic brawl incited by Michael Barrett punching A.J. Pierzynski, the wild fan brawl in Section 538 of Sox Park, the Carlos Zambrano-Derrek Lee dugout scuffle, Cubs manager Lou Piniella telling Milton Bradley to go home and calling him a “piece of (bleep),” and Sox manager Ozzie Guillen insisting the Wrigley Field rats were as big as pigs, adding “I think they’re out there lifting weights” in the batting cage. Neither team went to a World Series in those five years, but you couldn’t ask for a crazier atmosphere or more quotable players and managers. Could this be the start of a new golden age of the City Series? It would be hard to replicate those days, especially ’08, when the teams met on successive weekends in June, with the Cubs sweeping the series at Wrigley and the Sox sweeping at what was then called U.S. Cellular Field. In the final game of the series, Piniella was ejected in the second inning for coming out to argue a checked swing call that went in favor of Joe Crede, then blew off the postgame news conference, sending coach Alan Trammell in his place. Counsell and Venable aren’t colorful enough to provide the kind of copy Guillen, Piniella and Dusty Baker provided the media with back in the 2006-10 era. In fact, few managers in Chicago history gave us as much to write about as those three. But Counsell and Venable both manage playoff-caliber teams, so theoretically it can happen. The Cubs look like they should hang on to the top wild-card spot in the National League. As of Monday, that would have them playing at home against the Philadelphia Phillies in the best-of-three wild-card series. The Sox look like a good bet to win the American League Central, and on Monday were three games ahead of AL West-leading Houston for the No. 2 seed, which would mean a first-round bye. “That’s not anywhere near anything that I’m thinking about,” Venable said before Monday’s game. “We are trying to win today. We understand what is ahead of us and how challenging this road is going to be and that starts with (Shota) Imanaga and the Cubs tonight.” Sure, but is it OK if everyone else here thinks about it? “You can think about it, write about it and do all the things,” Venable said. Sounds like a plan. The reason a No. 2 seed is so important is that it means they’d probably be able to avoid playing an American League East team until the American League Championship Series. The Tampa Bay Rays, New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox can beat each other up in the wild-card series and AL Division Series, while the Sox can advance against a weaker opponent in the ALDS and maybe have some momentum going into the ALCS. The Cubs will likely have to get by the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers at some point, but they just swept them on Aug. 2-4 at Wrigley, and the Dodgers have struggled since the All-Star break. There’s also a chance the Dodgers could be upset in the wild-card series, since anything can happen in a short series. No one is getting ahead of themselves, but … OK, yes, we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. Sue us. Both the Cubs and Sox still have a lot of work to do to get into the playoffs, and then have to have the right matchups. The Cubs’ staff is a constant merry-go-round with Edward Cabrera in and out, Javier Assad up and down and up again, and a cast of characters waiting to return to the bullpen, including Daniel Palencia, Ben Brown and Hoby Milner. The Sox also have their issues. On Monday afternoon, Venable wasn’t sure who would start Tuesday’s game against the Cubs, though Erick Fedde and José Urquidy were possibilities. “We really are day-to-day here with this just because of the usage we have had over this last series and then just not having really starters,” Venable said. Not having starters for a stretch run might be considered hazardous for a first-place team, but the White Sox never do anything the easy way, so why start now? Either way, the only thing that really mattered was the game at hand, as Venable said. The Cubs went into the series with a 78-77 all-time lead in regular-season games, while the Sox won the one that mattered most — the 1906 World Series. “Someone pointed out this is the biggest series since 1906, which is a pretty historical note,” Counsell said. Nice of him to pay attention to Chicago history. It’s going to be a crazy series, so let the hype begin.