OPINION

By JIM LITKE

updated 12:01 a.m. ET Aug. 30, 2008

CHICAGO - The last time they met on baseball’s grandest stage, it was preceded by earthquakes registering at least 7.8 on the Richter scale in San Francisco, Ecuador and Chile. There were major riots in Atlanta, Paris and Stockholm. Mount Vesuvius erupted and a 200-foot wide stream of lava flattened nearby villages and nearly incinerated Naples again.

So with a month left in the regular season and both teams atop their respective divisions heading into Labor Day, ask yourself this: Do we really want to tempt fate with another Cubs vs. White Sox World Series?

Just the possibility of a sequel — 102 years after the White Sox prevailed in the original — has driven a wedge between politicians in this traditionally straight-ticket Democratic town. Chicagoans are casting suspicious glances at their unaffiliated neighbors. The uneasy detente that stretched across the city only last spring is fraying fast.

Cub fans can’t imagine anything more painful than waiting 100 years for a World Series title only to have their crosstown rivals snatch it away again.

“I’ve only been here a couple of years,” Cubs manager Lou Piniella sighed, “but I understand you’ve got to choose sides. Either north or south.”

Mellowed by winning a World Series title in 2005 that broke an 88-year old drought of their own, Sox fans began the season in a charitable-enough mood.

The previous October, Mayor Richard M. Daley had kicked off a postseason rally for the Cubs in a downtown plaza named after his father by wishing them luck against the Diamondbacks in the upcoming playoffs and then — oh, the heresy of it — he donned a Cubs cap for the cameras to show he was serious.

But if Daley, the city’s most famous Sox fan at the time, a man with South Side bona fides tracing back beyond the turn of the last century, said it was every Chicagoan’s civic duty to root for every Chicago team, well, who was going to argue with him?

Besides, the Sox were coming off a fourth-place finish in 2007 and staring at a tough American League Central race — supposedly made tougher by Detroit’s offseason acquisition of Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. The NL Central, on the other hand, looked like easy pickings, and for one of the very few times in the last 100 years, the Cubs looked positively loaded.

But then a funny thing happened.

The Cubs bolted out of the starting gate exactly the way the experts had predicted. But Detroit stumbled badly and the Sox turned out to be anything but slouches. When they met on back-to-back weekends in June for the annual crosstown classic — the Cubs sweeping at home, then the Sox sweeping right back — more than just bragging rights were on the line. Both were struggling to stay atop their respective divisions.

Sox manager Ozzie Guillen got things started with a shot at one of his favorite targets, the aging shrine that is Wrigley Field.

“You go to take batting practice and the rats are bigger than pigs out there,” he said, pointing to the batting cage beneath the right field bleachers. “You want to take a look? I think the rats are lifting weights.

Special feature Wait 'til this year? With the Cubs gunning for glory, NBCSports.com looks at ups and downs in team history since their last World Series win in 1908. NBCSports.com

“This is a museum,” Guillen added, warming to the task. “People like to come to Wrigley Field. I don’t say people don’t like to come here. I said, ’Ozzie doesn’t like to come here.”’

When his comments were relayed to Piniella, the Cubs skipper just rolled his eyes.

“If you can believe everything Ozzie says then I guess you should be ... I haven’t seen any rats around here to be honest with you,” he said.

The only confirmed rat sighting, as it turned out, was in the stands at U.S. Cellular Field during the final interleague game, when an obnoxious fan was pounced on and then pounded by fans of both teams. Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf pretended not to be surprised by the rare show of bipartisanship.

“In the years when neither team was really going anyplace, this is all you had to talk about all year,” he said. “Right now, most people are focused on winning the division and getting to the World Series.”

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