If you’re gonna come for John Cusack’s White Sox allegiance, you better have the know-how to back it up: over the weekend, a video of Barstool Sports’ Dave Williams confronting the actor during Sunday night’s playoff game against the Houston Astros went viral — and Williams is the one who wound up looking foolish.
Williams, better known as “White Sox Dave,” called out Cusack outside of Guaranteed Rate Field for rooting for both the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox, accusing him of being a fair-weather fan.
“You can’t tell me where I can go. I can like whoever I want,” Cusack responds in the video. He then puts Williams in his place by quizzing him on White Sox history; after Williams admitted he was unfamiliar with the Sox players Cusack mentioned because he’s younger than the actor, Cusack said, “That proves your ignorance.”
The two went back and forth for a bit more before Cusack eventually said “We’ll have to agree to disagree,” fist-bumped Williams and walked away. But it didn’t end there: the two eventually took their beef to Twitter, with Cusack pointing out that Williams confused former first baseman Mike Squires with singer Billy Squier and Cy Young winner LaMarr Hoyt with former NBA player Lamar Odom. He also called Williams a “foul smelling baby man” and a “pretend tough guy.”
Now, as someone who still considers Michael Barrett punching A.J. Pierzysnki in 2006 to be one of the greatest things to have ever happened in Chicago sports history (and perhaps human history as a whole), I have to point out a few things here. For one, Cusack has been publicly supporting both the Cubs and the Sox for decades now. However you feel about the idea of being a fan of both teams, it’s undeniable that Cusack is a fan of both; he’s been going to games on both sides of town for ages, and as the video from Sunday night’s game proves, he clearly knows his stuff. (And of course, Cusack famously played Buck Weaver in Eight Men Out, so that should earn him some additional White Sox bonafides.) Calling him a bandwagon-hopper is simply incorrect.
But beyond that, the Cubs-White Sox rivalry hasn’t been much of a rivalry in recent years. There’s still some mild animosity between the North and South Side fans, but there’s no real tangible hatred between the players, and the Cubs fans’ relationships with divisional rivals like the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers are far more contentious. If Cusack were to suddenly start rooting for the Cardinals, he’d never be able to show his face in Chicago again, but — especially in a year when the Cubs were so atrocious — there’s nothing wrong with pulling for another Chicago team now that the Cubs’ season is over. There’s something to be said for city loyalty, right? Besides, can anyone who isn’t actively rooting for the Sox to destroy the cheating Astros really call themselves a baseball fan?
And even if you do still think that it’s impossible to root for both the Cubs and the Sox, we can all agree that filming yourself confronting someone over it and posting it on social media in the hopes of going viral is lame. Team Cusack.
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