The Cubs are a member club of MLB's National League (NL) Central division, and play their home games at Wrigley Field, located on Chicago's North Side.

The White Sox are a member club of MLB's American League (AL) Central division, and play their home games at Rate Field, located on Chicago's South Side.

From 1903 until 1942, excluding the years one team or the other won the pennant, the Cubs and White Sox played each other in a best-of-seven postseason City Series.

[13] In the bottom of the second inning, Brian Anderson of the White Sox hit a sacrifice fly, attempting to score catcher A. J.

After slapping home plate in celebration, Pierzynski began to walk away, but Barrett blocked his path and punched him in the jaw.

[13] Umpires debated for 15 minutes before ejecting Pierzynski, Barrett, White Sox outfielder Brian Anderson and Cubs first baseman John Mabry from the game.

In 1916 the Cubs moved from the west to the north side, taking over Weeghman Park, the abandoned Federal League facility (later renamed Wrigley Field), thus setting up the current separation.

When the Tribune Company bought the Cubs, they immediately started pressing for night baseball, threatening to abandon Wrigley Field otherwise.

Wrigleyville, a part of the Lake View neighborhood, surrounds the Cubs' stadium, and comprises middle- and upper-middle-class housing, as well as many restaurants, bars and music venues for fans to visit before and after games.

The shared game status ended following the 2019 season of both teams, the last time WGN broadcast the FTA matchups of both teams, with NBCSC becoming the full time home of the White Sox while the Cubs move on to a team-owned cable channel, Marquee Sports Network.

An examination of other great rivalries (Yankees–Red Sox, Mets–Yankees, A's–Giants, Dodgers–Giants) shows that both teams have made World Series appearances on a fairly regular basis.

The animosity among fans (that only rarely escalates to violence) is summed up in the lines from the song "The Ballad of the South Side Irish", echoing sentiments often expressed by at least one side of any number of sports rivalries in America: "When it comes to baseball I've got two favorite clubs, the 'go-go White Sox'... and whoever plays the Cubs."

Royko once wrote that the reason Sox fans have a "bad attitude" is that when they would go to games at Comiskey Park, the stench of the Union Stock Yards would fill their nostrils and remind them of the status of their team.

Several Cubs and White Sox fans have made a cottage industry selling shirts, hats, and other souvenirs that include slogans intended to take swipes at the opposing teams, rather than support their own.

President Barack Obama, an avid White Sox fan, has taken verbal jabs at the Cubs on several occasions.

Some historians argue that the genesis of the curse goes back much farther; that the allegedly underhanded way they won the 1908 pennant (leading to their last World Series win) angered the "baseball gods".

Every post-season they have participated in since then seems to have featured a disaster of some kind, from Hack Wilson losing a fly ball in the sun, to Babe Ruth's called shot, to the "Steve Bartman incident".

Some fans took that as the kiss of death... which it proved to be, as the Padres late-inning rally in the final game in San Diego featured a ground ball slipping under the glove of first baseman Leon Durham... an eerie precursor to a similar and much-more-memorialized incident with the Red Sox and former Cubs first baseman Bill Buckner that would occur two years later.

The 1960 Pirates had been the lone exception until 2001, when the Diamondbacks effectively ended talk of that curse by winning the Series in a dramatic finish that featured two of the three ex-Cubs, one of them (Luis Gonzalez) providing the series-winning RBI.

Eight White Sox players conspired to intentionally lose the World Series, and in 1920 were banned from baseball for life.

While the White Sox won 4 AL titles in the first 20 years of their existence, they would win only one more league championship in the twentieth century.

The term "curse" has seldom been used as such, since the scandal was perceived to be something the players did to themselves rather than being wrought by the front office conducting ill-advised transactions or committing public relations gaffes.

Still, a pall seemed to settle on the franchise (along with a slim budget), and it would be the last years of the Eisenhower administration before they would win the league championship again.

When the White Sox clinched the pennant in 1959, broadcaster Jack Brickhouse capped his play-by-play with, "A forty year wait has now ended!"

This adds a decidedly interesting twist on the rivalry as there were, until 2005, very few fans for either team who were alive to see one side actually claim a title while the other waited.