Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Chicago Bears, rushing past me on their way to the suburbs, for real this time.
Let me just slide my ample suburban backside over to make room on the Bench of Shame. Welcome to the club, boys. “One of us! One of us!”
It’s truly happening.
“Moving outside of the city of Chicago is not a decision we reached easily,” Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren wrote in a letter to season ticket holders. “This project does not represent us leaving, it represents us expanding.”
Sure it does, Kevin. Expanding … into Arlington Heights. Yet not leaving Chicago. Good luck with that. Quite a stretch, one foot on the city dock, one on the suburban pier … 26 miles away.
Sure looks like “leaving” in the traditional “go away from” sense.
The Bears won’t play Downtown anymore, right? Fans who hope to see them play within Chicago city limits will need a television, or a very active imagination. Yet, through some alchemy of branding, they won’t become the Arlington Heights Bears. The name “Chicago,” they intend to keep. Too good to actually play in the city, but gripping the city’s name hard, stiff-arming anyone who would take it away.
Allow me to savor this moment.
Ahhhhhh …
Honestly, as someone who has had his chops busted continually for 25 years for the moral crime of writing about Chicago while not living in the city, I’m not sure how to feel about this development.
Gleeful? Sure. Nothing we flailing-around-in-the-status-ditch like more than to see our betters knocked off their high horse. This move might even be helpful to my situation. Now I’ve got the Chicago Bears football team standing foursquare behind me, arms folded across their brawny chests, hands tucked in sweaty armpits, nodding. Now I can reply: “It’s good enough for the Chicago Bears, it’s good enough for me.”
Or is it just harmful to them without necessarily benefiting us scorned suburbanites? Trust me here: Chicagoans love lording their residency over those whose pillows rest beyond the city limits. If the Bears go on some White Sox-like swoon — and they’ve certainly stumbled out of the gate — will the general weakness and inauthenticity of the suburbs be blamed? Or will they bluster, “No, no! We sucked before!“
Maybe “Chicago Bears” is just another a brand. Americans respect branding. Philadelphia Cream Cheese was not created in Philadelphia, nor is it made there. “Chicago” is hog butchers and Bronko Nagurski. The Bears are like Home Run Inn Pizza — a taste of Chicago you can enjoy anywhere. The Chicago Bears can go back to playing in Decatur, where they started, and still keep the name.
Or can they? My experience says that Warren can spin the move however he likes. It won’t help. The suburban stain doesn’t wash off. Believe me, I tried reminding folks: Mike Royko lived in Winnetka. Nelson Algren fled to New Jersey. Saul Bellow wrote “The Adventures of Augie March” in Paris, Rome, Salzburg — everywhere but Chicago. “Not a single word of the book was composed in Chicago,” Bellow later confessed.
Does that convince people? Not a bit. You still can’t borrow a scintilla of Chicago mojo if you don’t wake up in the city, not without expecting grief. Last week I ran a blog post about how I talked my way off a global CNN broadcast. In it, I carelessly wrote this line, regarding the need for immigrants: “Chicago had 3 million residents in 1950. Now we have 2.7 million residents.”
Slapdown came quickly.
“And you’re one of the ones that left,” a reader sneered. “Taking the ‘we’ out of it.”
Ouch.
“Sorry pal, you don’t belong here.”
Or maybe sports fandom sprays a mist of grace over such stretches. The New York Giants play in East Rutherford, New Jersey. I almost said, “And nobody holds that against them.”
Honestly, I’m not that well versed in New York Giants fandom. Maybe their fans howl location-based derision from the stands.
But I doubt it. The Giants went to the Super Bowl five times and won four. They could play at the American Girl store in Montclair, New Jersey, and that would be OK with fans.
I shouldn’t dip my toe too far into sports — I couldn’t name a current Bears player if you put a gun to my head. I didn’t know they were trounced Monday until someone told me Tuesday morning. But I do know that next time someone gives me grief about living in Northbrook, I can say, “Hey, at least I sometimes work in Chicago. That’s more than” — whoever the quarterback of the Bears might be — “can say.”
Which means I’ll have to learn a player’s name. Eventually.