Lately, on my regular rides on the “L,” I have seen a curious sight on the North Side.

There are gaggles of Red Line riders wearing Chicago White Sox hats, T-shirts and jerseys — and more than those sporting the paraphernalia of their crosstown rivals, the Chicago Cubs.

I have been doing double takes. “Holy cow!” as an erstwhile baseball icon might have said.

It’s a quizzical moment for this rabid Cubs fan. Chicago’s North Side has always been Cubs country. I know that from the time I was a wee Cubs fan, traveling on the CTA from my family’s South Side apartment to the West Addison Street stop at Wrigley Field.

I was born and bred on the South Side but have been a lifelong Cubs fan. It is a lifelong anomaly.

How could a Black girl from the South Side dare to be a Cubs fan? The team of the North Shore to Lakeview, communities so far and distant, in so many ways, from my own?

Michelle Obama can explain. The former first lady is also a native South Sider. She had a crush as a girl on then-Cubs player José Cardenal, she told talk show host Jimmy Kimmel last year.

“He was my hero,” she recalled. “And I think a lot of it was tied to my relationship to my dad, because he was a shift worker, and there would be times he’d get........

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