If ever there was a city outside Boston whose sports fans could legitimately claim that the gods of baseball had hurled an eternal curse their way, it is the faithful of Chicago. One need only spend a day in New England in late September to hear the shrill cries of wary Red Sox fans bracing for another collision with late-season catastrophe.

While the spirits that gust off Lake Michigan and reverberate inside the walls of Wrigley and Comiskey Park offer no curse of the Bambino or Bucky Dent horror story, Buckner-esque misery has often befallen the Windy City.

The Cubs, who occupy the trendy North Side, captured the hearts of Chicagoans by broadcasting the voice of announcer Harry Caray, the lovable play-by-play man who passed away in 1998 after spending 27 years in Chicago, 16 on the North Side.

The White Sox don't have a historic stadium like Wrigley, which is a tourist attraction in itself, but they have had the city's most prolific performer over the past decade, "Big Hurt" Frank Thomas.

The 1993 American League MVP is enjoying a renaissance season, hitting 40 home runs and driving in 94 runs.

Chicago's two clubs share nothing if not prolonged agony. The Cubs and White Sox have gone a combined 179 seasons without a single championship.

When the two franchises have had success, and we're talking success of the early 20th century variety, unprecedented events have taken America by storm.

In 1906, the Cubs and White Sox both advanced to the World Series for the first and only North Side-South Side postseason encounter in major league history. That same year, 700 people perished in the tragic San Francisco earthquake.

The Cubs, who have lost seven of the eight World Series they've reached, last captured a title in 1908, the year that another resident of the Midwest, Henry Ford, unveiled his first Model T automobile.

The White Sox, who actually made a World Series appearance a relatively recent 45 years ago (in 1959), last won it all in 1917. Two years later, the reputation of the club was severely damaged during the infamous Black Sox scandal, which became the inspiration for a critically-acclaimed film titled "Eight Men Out."

The movie, directed by John Sayles (the architect of films such as "Lone Star" and "Sunshine State"), starred John Cusack as Chicago third baseman Buck Weaver and D.B. Sweeney as disgraced outfielder "Shoeless" Joe Jackson.

In 1919, a heavily favored White Sox team led by Weaver and Jackson fell to the upstart Cincinnati Reds five games to three in the World Series. An investigation spearheaded by new MLB commissioner "Judge" Kenesaw Mountain Landis found that eight Sox players had thrown the Series for payoffs from New York-based organized crime kingpin Arnold Rothstein.

While the players were ultimately cleared by a grand jury, Landis banned them from organized baseball. Leftfielder Jackson, the infamous target of a young fan's famed "Say it ain't so!" refrain, owns the third-highest batting average (during eleven seasons with the Cleveland Indians and White Sox, he hit .356) in baseball history. His potential Hall of Fame candidacy is still the subject of much debate.

While no controversy as disheartening as the Black Sox scandal has struck Chicago this summer, it hasn't been all smooth sailing for the Cubs and Sox.

On June 3, a media firestorm erupted after Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa's bat shattered in the first inning of a night game at Wrigley against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Umpire Tim McClelland ejected Sosa for corking his lumber.

While Sosa claimed that he maintains a single corked bat to "put on a show for the fans" during batting practice, baseball pundits began to question the legitimacy of Sosa's astronomical career home run numbers. Sosa owns the most 60-homer seasons in MLB history, belting 66 in 1998, 63 in 1999 and 64 in 2001.

So the question arises: Had Sosa been unfairly aided not only by the bodybuilding supplements now commonplace in major league locker rooms (see Mark McGwire's admitted abuse of androstenedione), but also by a loaded bat?

Ultimately, the six-time All-Star was suspended for seven games. Sosa, however, served his time and then quieted his critics with a dynamic surge from June 18 to the July 10 All-Star break. By employing a greater degree of selectivity at the plate, he maintained a .344 average, cracking 12 homers and driving in 23 runs.

Baseball executives applauded Sosa's quick confession, and after 76 of his bats were tested (including five enshrined in Cooperstown) and came back clean of any foreign substances, all was forgiven. "I am convinced of the sincerity of Sosa's explanation and his contrition," baseball's chief operating officer Bob DuPuy said. "In my opinion, his candor and the promptness of his apology were exemplary."

Just as the media was grudgingly forgiving Sosa, first-year Cubs manager Dusty Baker - who spent nine seasons in San Francisco and led the Giants to game seven of the 2002 World Series - made a few bizarre comments that thrust the fiery skipper into the limelight.

Baker, an African-American, made some ill-advised remarks about the ability of minorities to excel athletically in high temperatures that would make John Rocker blush.

"It's easier for most Latin guys and easier for most minority people to play in the heat," Baker said. "You don't find too many brothers in New Hampshire and Maine and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, right? We were brought over here for the heat, right? Isn't that history?"

The rant didn't stop there. "Your skin color is more conducive to the heat than it is to the light-skinned people, right," Baker added. "You don't see brothers running around burnt and stuff, running around with white stuff on their ears and nose and stuff."

Fortunately, said Chicago Magazine senior editor Marcia Froelke Coburn, Baker works in a city pretty tolerant of the wacky. "Chicagoans are used to freaks of nature," she writes. "Lake-effect snow; a mayor named Daley who flaunts flower power by blanketing the city with beautiful paintings; and, every 13 years, a summer plague of cicadas whose constant buzzing punctuates sultry nights."

In an excerpt from that Sept. 12 New York Times Op-Ed piece, Froelke Coburn talked about this summer's baseball bonanza. "There are no cicadas this summer," she writes, "but since mid-summer the buzzing around town has been about the Cubs and the White Sox. Usually both teams, after a spring taunt, are long out of any pennant race by now. But this year an amazing reversal took place: after pitiable early seasons, our lovable losers morphed into contenders."

From an organizational perspective, the Cubs and White Sox offer two distinct recipes for success.

After owner Jerry Reinsdorf's White Sox struggled early this season, young General Manager Kenny Williams started dealing like he was working a Caesar's Palace casino. Looking to add some speed and versatility to the predominantly right-handed power core of Frank Thomas, Carlos Lee (30 homers) and Magglio Ordonez (27 homers), Williams dealt for the mysteriously dour Roberto Alomar, whose career has floundered since he left Cleveland in 2001.

Outfielder Carl Everett, an immense talent wrapped in an even bigger enigma, was acquired from Texas.

The White Sox pitching staff has been a stunning surprise. Off-season addition Bartolo Colon, whose struggle to shed weight got him a ticket out of Cleveland, has 14 wins and a solid 3.83 earned run average in over 200 innings pitched. The 30-year-old right-hander leads the A.L. with seven complete games.

Journeyman right-hander Esteban Loaiza, inked as an afterthought for the $500,000 minimum, has won an incredible 19 games (2.73 ERA). The 31-year-old hurler can be counted on to get closers Billy Koch and Tom Gordon (eleven saves each) consistent work.

The Cubs boast a pitching staff of homegrown talent that is unmatched. University of Southern California product Mark Prior (15-6), Texan Kerry Wood (12-11) and 23-year-old Carlos Zambrano (13-9) are a nucleus comparable to the oft-discussed Oakland trio of Tim Hudson, Barry Zito and Mark Mulder.

Cubs fans are confident that their team (80-69) will outlast the Houston Astros and win the National League Central. White Sox loyalists are itching for their team (also 80-69) to put some distance between themselves and the second-place Minnesota Twins.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti is a Windy City fixture, so naturally he's a bit apprehensive. "Long the symbolic hub of baseball woe," he writes, "Chicago is the epicenter of a compelling, double-edged psychodrama."

"Thing is, I'm not sure if America is marveling at us or giggling at us," Mariotti continues. "Here we are, an urban center of cosmopolitan flair and middle American sensibility, losing our minds while sweating out two above-average ball clubs that would be out of contention in any other division. The national angle isn't about triumph quite yet as much as anxiety and fear.