Sox lose one of their biggest fans

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

She told me she was at the All-Star game at Comiskey Park in 1933 when Babe Ruth hit a home run. She was 9 years old. She said she was there! And I don’t think she ever lied to me. Back in the day, Comiskey Park was her second home. She loved the Chicago White Sox.

Her all-time favorite player was Sherm Lollar. Truth is, she had a thing for catchers. Sherm, Cam Carreon, J.C. Martin (she always called him by his nickname “Sweet Pea”), and when Pudge came along, she was beside herself. Carlton Fisk was a gift from God!

She didn’t have an official scorebook, just a sheet of lined paper. But if I asked what happened in the first inning, she’d look at the paper and tell me Louie led off with a single, stole second and then Nellie drove him home. Early had pitched a great game, and her beloved Sox won another one.

In 1963, she encouraged me to enter Bill Veeck’s White Sox batboy contest in the Chicago Daily News. I guess I can admit now that she helped me write my entry — a poem. After meeting with the judges, I came in second place and was batboy for the visiting teams at Comiskey that whole summer.

I know she was at the very last game at Old Comiskey because I was sitting next to her. We were kind of sad that day. But she was so happy in 2005. The World Series!

The two of us reminisced many times about the 1959 series. Sherm hit a home run, you know. Klu hit three, but the Lollar home run was the one she always talked about.

But little by little, she inched closer to the bottom of her own ninth inning. Then, last week the Sox lost one of their biggest fans. Marilyn Lewis died.

I love you, mom! Tell Sherm I said “Hi.”

Dan Lewis, Seattle, Wash.

Unions help everyone

Maybe you blame unions for what’s wrong with everything, but without them you’d still be working 12-hour days six days a week at straight pay.

Child labor laws would not exist, workers comp wouldn’t exist. Labor laws would be nonexistent, and as for retirement, you would start the day you drop dead.

John Riley, Gurnee

Unions vs. taxpayers

Once, unions provided government employees a collective voice against self-serving politicians. Those days are over.

They are now part of the political money culture, donating as much as they can to the politicians who will give them what they want.

It’s no longer the unions vs. the political machine; it’s the government employee unions and politicians joined in a cabal against the rest of us.

The political uproar in Wisconsin, Ohio and California isn’t about union busting. It’s about taxpayers sick of escalating taxes so that government employees can retire as early as 55 with free health care.

Peter A. Quilici, Skokie