Indiana’s historical ties to Chicago’s pro sports scene

Indiana map image by deMysticWay via Pixabay

While a “Chicago” Bears den in Hammond, Indiana, is still not official, its serious prospect is enough discussion fodder.

The citizens of Windy City proper and its Illinois-based suburbs have self-explanatory cause to decry the proposition. This is, first and foremost, their time-honored NFL franchise, coming off a steady 104 seasons with their historic handle, 105 in or around ChiTown, and 106 entirely in the Land of Lincoln (inaugurated as the Decatur Staleys).

Sure, one of the NFL teams calling themselves “New York” has gotten away with residing in New Jersey for a half-century, the other since 1984. But added time means added tradition, and the epicenter of Chicagoland will feel understandably hollowed out if their hallowed franchise jumps state lines.

Still, Hammond is as much a part of Chicagoland as any Indiana hamlet, and the northwest corner of the Hoosier State has savored its fair share of more cordial narratives with the nearest major-league sports market.

Even other sectors of the state — whose big-league teams only oppose Chicago in the NFL, WNBA, and NBA — have witnessed Second City sports alliances. Just like South Bend, Indianapolis has one lower-level minor-league team honing the hopefuls in a Chicago pipeline today. Those two towns plus Indiana’s third-largest city have had such an arrangement before.

If the Bears follow through on the Hammond leap, and if even the most negligible of exits from Illinois is enough to inflict permanent fan-relations fractures, there are still these past and present examples of Indiana and Chicago sports personnel and rooters getting along.

Indianapolis Triple-A Baseball (1957–1959, 1962–1967)

Consistently lacking a modern MLB team, Indiana’s capital and largest city has at least savored the privilege of honing one-last-step prospects for eight franchises in one or more stints since 1902.

The club, whose nickname has always matched that of the Cleveland Guardians’ previous moniker, allied with the White Sox for two stretches. The first of those flings lasted three seasons, culminating in 1959, when several Indianapolis alumni helped Chicago to its first American League pennant in 40 years and only pennant in the team’s 88-year gap between world championships.

After splitting 1957 and 1958 between Indy and the South Side, starting pitcher Barry Latman made that first-place campaign his first full year in The Show, placing third on the Pale Hose with 97 strikeouts. He subsequently transferred to Cleveland but stuck around to stretch his big-league career for a decade and went to the 1961 All-Star Game.

Catcher and fellow Indy grad Johnny Romano joined Latman in Cleveland after helping Chicago to reach the ’59 World Series and would see action in four All-Star Games. Right fielder Jim McAnany hit .276 in 69 games over that pennant race and ultimately split his 5-year big-league career between the White Sox and Cubs.

One year after Romano left, J.C. Martin secured the starting job behind the White Sox plate and savored 11 aggregate years with the two Chicago teams plus a moment of glory in New York with 1969’s Miracle Mets in between.

Later South Side bloomers with Indianapolis Triple-A seasoning included 2-time All-Star pitcher and 1964 A.L. wins leader Gary Peters, 4-time National League All-Star Johnny Callison, and Miracle Mets key cog Al Weis.

Evansville White Sox (1966 to 1968)

Though more in the Reds range, Indiana’s third-largest metropolis sustained the White Sox’s Double-A Southern League partner for three fairly uneventful seasons.

South Bend White Sox/Silver Hawks (1988–1997)

The South Bend-South Side baseball alliance had a sophomore surge on the minor-league end with the 1989 High-A Midwest League championship. Future White Sox regulars Roberto Hernandez and Scott Radinsky were both on that team’s sterling pitching staff.

Hernandez was later an All-Star on behalf of the White Sox (1996) and Tampa Bay Devil Rays (1999). Fellow hurlers Jason Bere (1994); James Baldwin (2000); and Bob Wickman (2000, 2005), and centerfielder Mike Cameron (2001) also graduated to Chicago and later represented South Bend’s alumni at the Midsummer Classic.

Cameron and pitcher Al Levine both spent the 1992 Midwest League season answering to manager Terry Francona. South Bend was Francona’s second stop up the White Sox ladder before he switched organizations and garnered his first big-league skipper’s assignment in Philadelphia. The past 30 years have yielded 25 seasons managing four different big-league teams, including Boston’s world champions in 2004 and 2007.

Indianapolis Ice (1989–1998)

Apart from their first and final of 11 seasons in the Triple-A International Hockey League, the Ice maintained a steady arrangement with the Chicago NHL team. The capped the affiliation’s first season with a Turner Cup championship piloted by leading scorer Brian Noonan and featuring such other future NHL mainstays as forwards Mike Eagles and Mike Peluso, defenseman Cam Russell, goaltender Jimmy Waite, and head coach Darryl Sutter.

Sutter and world-class goaltender Dominik Hasek, who came through Indianapolis in 1990–91 and went on to win six Vezina Trophies, each started illustrious NHL careers in their respective positions with the Chicago parent club. Both later won the Stanley Cup with other organizations (Hasek for Detroit in 2002 and 2008, Sutter for Los Angeles in 2012 and 2014).

Sutter’s first season as an NHL bench boss even yielded a non-demotion return to his old workplace. As part of the top league’s 2-year neutral-site series, Market Square Arena hosted the Ice’s Chicago parent club against the Washington Capitals on November 3, 1992.

It wouldn’t be the Windy City Original Six franchise’s last regular-season shift in the state next door.

Indy Fuel (2014-present)

After operating independently for one more IHL season in 1998–99, the Ice downgraded their brand to the Double-A ranks, then ceded it to a junior team. But mid-level minor pro hockey returned to the area when the Fuel took root as an ECHL franchise at Indianapolis’ Coliseum.

Save for a slight shift to the suburbs at Fishers Event Center, nothing has fundamentally changed for this franchise since. That includes the understanding that prospects with nothing left to prove at this level will move west to Chicago’s present-day AHL base in Rockford.

South Bend Cubs (2015-present)

The Cubs previously had farm teams of various levels from New England to California, from Florida to the Pacific Northwest, and in several Southeastern and Southwestern locations plus municipalities around their own home state and the neighboring Wisconsin and Iowa.

But the South Bend Cubs of the Midwest League were the first, and still only, Indiana franchise to ally with the North Siders. They have done so since 2015, succeeding the Illinois-based Kane County Cougars.

With that, the same South Bend franchise that launched as the White Sox and later flexed an independent streak as the Silver Hawks — a name that overlapped with the final four years of their Pale Hose partnership plus 17 years with the Arizona Diamondbacks — promptly rebranded to take the latest parent club’s name.

The arrangement has since vouched for Northwest Indiana’s cultural kinship with Chicago more emphatically than anything else. In 2021, following the affiliation’s seventh season, the South Bend Tribune reported that the local ball club relished a 700% spike in merchandise sales upon latching onto the Cubs. In addition, team owner Andrew Berlin blamed a handful of chilly April outings for the fact that that only a majority, not all, of the home schedule was sold out.

Fair-weather fandom? Maybe a little bit, but not much.

University of Notre Dame (2017, 2019)

Furthering South Bend’s spiritual links to Chicago sports, the Notre Dame varsity hockey program served as the host school when the 2017 NCAA Men’s Frozen Four took place at United Center.

Two seasons later, the favor went the other way, as Notre Dame Stadium housed the NHL Winter Classic between Chicago and Boston. Out of 17 Winter Classics to date, it’s one of three home games for the Chicago team (which has also hosted a couple at Wrigley Field) and the only one held in a non-NHL state.