BRIDGEPORT — Every baseball season begins with a different bargain between a team and its fans.
For some clubs, the expectation is to win their division, make a deep run into October and finish the season with a ring.
For others, the bar is set a little lower. Expectations could include fielding a competitive team, sprinkling enough bright spots throughout the lineup to keep fans invested and give people a reason to come to the ballpark all summer.
That emotional divide is what has made the first quarter of Chicago’s baseball season so compelling — and what gives this weekend’s Crosstown Classic an energy it has lacked for years.
The first-place Cubs visit the surprisingly competitive and feisty White Sox this weekend at Rate Field for a three-game series between the city’s two Major League Baseball teams. And for the first time in a long time, fans on both sides of Chicago feel emotionally invested in what they’re watching.
Andrew Powers, left, and his son Rory, 9, right, attend a baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Houston Astros at Guaranteed Rate Field on Wednesday, June 19, 2024. Credit: Joel Angel Juarez/Block Club Chicago
The Cubs have largely met expectations coming off their 2025 playoff appearance. Despite a rash of injuries to the pitching staff in recent weeks, the team returns to Chicago atop the National League Central and on pace to win more than 100 games. According to Baseball Reference, the team has a 94.5 percent chance to make the postseason.
The Cubs have won 15 straight games at Wrigley Field, where multiple players described the atmosphere around the team as the most energized and fun environment they’ve experienced in years.
While expectations were high coming into the season on the North Side, the White Sox entered 2026 in a very different place.
After years of rebuilding, three straight 100-loss seasons and a record-setting 121 losses in 2024, many fans entered this year simply hoping the team would look somewhat competitive again.
Instead, the Sox have become one of the more surprising stories in baseball.
The White Sox reached .500 this week for the first time this late in a season since finishing 81-81 in 2022. The team has won six of its past eight series and enters the Crosstown Classic riding a five-game winning streak.
A 22-21 record may not sound like much in most baseball cities. On the South Side, it has felt meaningful.
In a column for South Side Sox, Brian O’Neill described the Sox not as contenders, but as a “normal” baseball team.
“Being normal when you’ve been intensely abnormal is a good feeling,” O’Neill wrote.
The Sox are finally giving fans a reason to believe their emotional and financial investment may actually be worth it again.
That optimism has been fueled in large part by the emergence of Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami, who has quickly become one of baseball’s breakout stars and is currently tied for third in the majors in home runs. The White Sox were viewed as surprise suitors for Murakami during the offseason, with the team adding the left-handed slugger despite carrying one of the lowest payrolls in Major League Baseball.
Michael Minella holds a beer snake during a baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and the San Francisco Giants at Wrigley Field on Wednesday, June 19, 2024. Credit: Joel Angel Juarez/Block Club Chicago
The Cubs, meanwhile, have benefited from the return of Japanese pitcher Shota Imanaga, who has helped stabilize the rotation after injuries disrupted parts of his 2025 season. The Cubs have also been helped by a career-year from Ian Happ and several other contributors up and down the lineup.
All three games this weekend will air locally on WCIU, a rarity at a moment when both teams have increasingly shifted broadcasts behind subscription-based regional sports networks, making the series more accessible for casual fans across Chicago.
The series is coming at fitting time with warm temperatures in the low-to-mid 80s expected throughout the weekend.
Even City Hall has gotten involved in the rivalry.
Mayor Brandon Johnson will meet with Pope Leo XIV later this month in Rome. Credit: White Sox/Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Mayor Brandon Johnson, a Cubs fan, joked Thursday that he plans to bring Pope Leo XIV — the Chicago-born and famously diehard White Sox fan — a Cubs hat when he visits the Vatican later this month.
“And then, of course, we’re going to pray for potentially a Cubs-White Sox World Series,” Johnson told Block Club.
A first-place team and a perfectly mediocre one do not usually enter a rivalry series sharing much emotional ground. But expectations have a way of changing the math of a baseball season.
The Cubs are giving its fans a season that was promised. The Sox are giving its fans hope, something they haven’t felt in years.
For a weekend in May, that dynamic may be enough to make the Crosstown Classic feel alive again.
First pitch for the Crosstown Classic is scheduled for 6:40 p.m. Friday, 6:10 p.m. Saturday and 1:10 p.m. Sunday, with all three games airing locally on WCIU, The U.
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