Ticker Tape

Much is being made of the fact that the last time the White Sox won the World Series was 1917. That kind of information makes me wonder if there’s still anyone alive who remembers going to a World Series game that year. Eighty-eight years ago, so someone over 95, say. Someone has to still be around. Finding that someone and interviewing her is a job for the Tribune or the Sun-Times, but as far as I can tell, they’re not doing anything with that angle.

The event downtown for the Sox has been described as a “ticker-tape parade,” but that too makes me wonder: ticker tape? A linguistic fossil, surely, since no one uses ticker tape itself anymore. A deejay on the radio today commented on this as well, noting that in fact the city dumped shredded newspaper on the Sox. Which would make for black-and-white “ticker tape,” more or less, so that seems right.

Earlier this year for unclear reasons, Lilly declared herself a White Sox fan, though that hasn’t actually meant watching very many of the games on TV or going to one in person or buying anything. That’s my kind of fandom. It was much easier to go to a minor-league Schaumburg Fliers game this summer, and a whole lot cheaper too, which are concerns of mine if not hers.