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John Cusack Got into It with a Jackass from Barstool Sports at a White Sox Game

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | October 11, 2021 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | October 11, 2021 |


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My thoughts on team loyalty in professional sports are as follows: Once you pick a team and you invest in that team, you’re stuck with them. For life. Whether they are good or they are bad. They are your team. This does not, however, preclude one from being a fan of another team. The other team just can’t be your team.

For instance, the Indianapolis Colts are my NFL team. I’m stuck with that. For life. I don’t actually like the Indianapolis Colts at the moment. I haven’t really liked them since Andrew Luck left. There’s no one on the team I give a rat’s ass about, and there hasn’t been in a couple of years. But they are my team, and I will continue to watch and root for them. Likewise, I hate the Patriots. I will always hate the Patriots. I will root against the Patriots in every single situation except — as I learned last week — when they are playing Tom Brady, because I apparently loathe Tom Brady more than I loathe the Patriots.

On the other hand, I really love watching the Buffalo Bills. Josh Allen is my favorite player in the league. Cole Beasley can take a dump on his own face, but the rest of that team, I love! It is not, alas, my team. But right now, I’d much rather watch a Bills game than a Colts game. They’re a lot more fun to watch. At the end of the day, however, if the Colts and the Bills played one another, I would obviously root for the Colts. The Colts are my team. That’s for life. The Bills are a passing fad. Does that make me a bandwagon fan? I mean, not really, because the Bills aren’t my team. However, once the Colts are eliminated from contention, I will root for the Bills over all other teams, and in my humble opinion, the Colts were eliminated from contention the moment they signed Carson Wentz, who is only slightly less objectionable than my least favorite player of all time not named Tom Brady: Phillip Rivers. Rivers was the QB for the Colts last year, and I had to root for that team. I hated every moment of it. But these are the rules of sports fandom. You can like other teams. You can root for other teams. But they are not your team. You have to root for your team above all others, even if your team’s QB is Phillip Rivers.

All of this brings us to John Cusack, who was approached by a douchebag from Barstool Sports last night in line for a White Sox game and harangued for being at the Sox game. Cusack, as many know, is a lifelong Cubs fan. The Cubs are his team. The Cubs, however, had a lousy year, and they weren’t fun to watch. Cusack, famously, is also a big fan of Chicago, his hometown, and of baseball. The other Chicago team, the White Sox, are very good this season. I mean, not as good as the Astros, but good. So, Cusack — who once played a member of the 1919 White Sox in Eight Men Out — decided to take in a White Sox game last night. This is what happened:

OK, again, my sports rules are my sports rules, and everyone is free to design their own sports rules to accommodate their particular lifestyles. Fandom is not life. The Cubs and the White Sox are hardly rivals. They play in different leagues and there is no real history of deep animosity between the two, save for some bullshit physical altercation between A. J. Pierzynski and Michael Barret in 2008. The two teams haven’t played against one another in the World Series since 1906. The White Sox/Chicago Cubs split is less a rivalry and more of a personality thing, like “Are you a Dunkin person or a Starbucks person?” There are North Siders and there are South Siders, and if Cusack — a North Sider — wants to cheer on the South Siders after the Cubs have been eliminated, that’s fine. He loves baseball. I love coffee. If Starbucks isn’t available, I will happily drink Dunkin (although I prefer the local joints).

Putting all of that aside, however, it is not cool to approach someone at a baseball game and harass them about anything. And this douchebag thought this video made him look good. It did not, and Cusack — who is a bit of a douchebag himself, to be honest — continued to take issue with the Barstools guy on Twitter for much of last night, and the White Sox guy — who said he thought Billy Squires (a mediocre musician from the ’80s) was the first baseman for the White Sox — did not help his case.

At some point, Patricia Arquette — another Chicago native — got involved, too.

Needless to say, this went on for a while longer, but I will spare you from more of Cusack’s tweets because, though he may be in the right, Cusack’s inability to properly string words and sentences together diminishes my love of Grosse Point Blank one tweet at a time. The point is: Cusack can watch whatever team he wants because he loves baseball, and once his team is eliminated, he’s free to enjoy baseball in whatever venue he likes.