If you are any of the following things:
1. From Chicago
2. A baseball fan
3. Aware that Barack Obama is president
... then you know that Barack Obama is himself an adopted son of Chicago and a die-hard White Sox fan. He made mention of this fandom numerous times throughout the campaign; it's not news anymore, not in the least. (The Recovery and Reinvestment Act? Now that's news.) What's also not news is that Obama has no crosstown love for the Cubs; he told ESPN's Stuart Scott that Cubs baseball was "not serious." Yep: That's a White Sox fan, all right.
But Lou Piniella has never been one to go down without a fight, which is why, on behalf of the Cubs, he's formally extending our nation's president the same invitation the White Sox. He wants Obama to show up at Cubs spring training:
But general manager Jim Hendry said: ''There's always room for a guy that likes both teams in town. He's always welcome.''
Manager Lou Piniella seemed to take exception to seeing the president frequently wearing an old, worn Sox cap. ''We got to get him a Cub hat over there,'' Piniella said. ''We can sneak Chief Wahoo over there.''
Huh 'Who is it?'' Piniella said, grasping for the right character. ''Yeah, Ronnie Wahoo.''
If we're reading Lou Piniella correctly, he either wants Obama to become an Indians fan, a fan of the Indians mascot, Chief Wahoo (the most racist of all the mascots!), or Ronnie Woo Woo, noted annoying Cubs superfan. That's about as close to sense as you're going to get out of Piniella's quote. We give up.
In any case, we doubt Obama's going to flip-flopping on the Cubs anytime soon. The election is when you do those things. The guy won on his hard ine White Sox stance. Now is no time to waffle.
