Tales From The Red Line:

My wife works off the Roosevelt stop and usually gets stuck riding the Red Line with the seasonal crushes of Cubs fans, suburbanites and other non-public-transit types.  You know the kind - the ones who, despite there being football fields worth of space in the center of the car, won’t take two steps away from the door all the way from Jackson to Addison “because what if we can’t get off?”

Those types.

I wanted to pass on a story about a few of ‘em she told me the other night.  Here we go:

“So, I get on at Roosevelt and all the baseball fans are on the way down to the Cell, which is nice because I usually have to put up with them all the way to Belmont.  But then at Jackson, these three guys in Cubs gear get on and head north.

“I figure they’re just on their way up to get something to eat and then head back down to the game or something.  And they’re talking about the game and how awesome it’s going to be and where they’re going to go get wasted beforehand and then one of them says to another:

‘There’s not a lot of people on this train for a game day.’

“That’s when I realize: They do think they’re going to the game.  Do these Cubs fans simply assume that since the Cubs are in town, of course they’re playing at Wrigley?  I don’t even know if they know they’re playing the Sox, or if they’re just out to get drunk.

“So I’m thinking, ‘maybe I should say something?’ and then I catch the eye of a guy sitting across from me who’s obviously thinking along the same lines.  He looks me square in the eye, and slowly…shakes his head…’NO.’ 

“I reciprocated and shook my head in the same way, kept my thoughts to myself and went back to reading my New Yorker.

“If you can’t take the time to read your ticket, you deserve to get all the way up there and find out for yourself where the game is.”

Truth.