The "T" (South Side L)
Seven decades of rattle, steel, and Sunday-afternoon faith rolling south on the Blue Line.
The 'T'—Chicago's beloved shorthand for its elevated rapid transit system—is not a ballpark, but for generations of South Side White Sox fans it was the front porch. The Blue Line, running its steel spine along the Dan Ryan Expressway, was the artery that carried working-class families, neighborhood crews, and lifelong loyalists down to Comiskey Park for seven decades. To ride the 'T' to a Sox game was not merely transportation; it was a ritual, a sensory threshold between the street and the diamond.
The South Side 'L' is a character in the White Sox story as much as any player. Its rattle, its smell of hot metal and diesel, its brick-and-steel stations—these are the textures of a fandom that grew up in the shadow of the tracks. Even after Comiskey Park's lights went out in 1991, the 'T' remains the connective tissue between the neighborhood and the team it has carried since 1916.
- Type
- Elevated rapid transit line / cultural institution
- Affiliation
- Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)
- Line
- Blue Line (South Side 'L')
- Role in White Sox history
- Primary transit corridor for fans attending Comiskey Park, 1916–1991
- Nearest station to Comiskey Park
- 35th Street (Blue Line)
- Status
- Operational; Comiskey Park (1916–1991) demolished
Lore & Background
In the 1920s and '30s, before the automobile had fully claimed the American weekend, the South Side 'T' was how a Sox game happened. A father would set his coffee cup down at the kitchen table, pull on his coat, and walk two blocks to the platform. The car would lurch, the overhead wires would hum, and for twenty minutes the whole neighborhood was in motion together—teachers, machinists, shop girls, old men who had been riding the same line since before the war. You didn't drive to Comiskey Park. You rode the 'T,' and the city carried you there.
The Blue Line's South Side route runs directly above the Dan Ryan Expressway, and for decades that meant fans could watch the elevated cars racing alongside highway traffic, a strange ballet of steel and asphalt. The 35th Street station sat just a few blocks from the ballpark, and the walk from the platform to the turnstiles was short enough that you could still smell the hay and hot dirt of the outfield. The 'T' didn't just deliver you to the game; it set the tone. The clatter in your ears, the slight lean of the car in a curve—by the time you stepped onto the concourse, you were already a Sox fan, already part of the crowd.
When Comiskey Park closed in 1991, the neighborhood changed. But the tracks didn't. The Blue Line still runs its route above the expressway, still rattles past the brick rowhouses of Hermosa, still stops at 35th Street where a ballpark used to be. For the fans who remember, the 'T' is the one constant. The team moved, the park went, the city rebuilt itself around the old site—but the rattle of the wheels on the rails is the same sound it was in 1916, and that, for a South Side kid, is enough.
In Their Own Story
It's a Saturday in late September, 1974. The air smells like cut grass and the faint sweetness of the hot-dog stands. You're twelve, riding the Blue Line with your grandfather, and he's got his Sox cap pulled low, eyes half-closed, swaying with the car. He doesn't talk. He doesn't need to. You both know the rhythm: the lurch at the curve, the hum of the wires, the particular groan the track makes when it crosses the bridge over the expressway. At 35th Street he tugs your sleeve. You step off together, and the ballpark is already there, the outfield fence catching the low sun, the crowd a low roar like the 'T' itself. He buys you a beer—well, a Coke, you're twelve—and you walk in. The diamond is green and perfect. The whole South Side is in the stands. You are, for the next three hours, exactly where you're supposed to be.
Reader's Guide
The 'T' smells like hot iron and diesel, a metallic tang that clings to your jacket long after you've stepped off the car at 35th Street. You can hear it before you see it—the deep, rhythmic clatter of steel wheels on steel rails, a sound that South Side kids have known since before they could walk. The platform is concrete, worn smooth by decades of rubber-soled shoes, and the bench is the kind where you sit close to the edge because the car stops fast and the gap is wider than you'd like.
You step onto the car and the whole thing lurches. The overhead wires hum. Through the window, the Dan Ryan Expressway stretches out below, a river of taillights, and the rowhouses of Hermosa scroll past in their brick-red and faded yellow. A kid in a Sox cap sits across from you, knees up to his chin, watching the city go by like it's a movie he's already seen a hundred times.
At 35th Street, the doors chime. You step out, and the air is different here—grassy, faintly of cut hay and hot asphalt, the ghost-scent of a ballpark that stood on this exact block for seventy-five years. You walk a few blocks, and the diamond is there, the outfield fence catching the late sun, and the whole South Side feels like it's leaning in to watch. That's the 'T.' It doesn't just get you there. It gets you into it.
Did You Know?
- The 'T' is a distinctly Chicago term; other American cities call their transit the 'subway,' the 'tube,' or the 'metro,' but Chicagoans say 'the T' with a possessive pride that no signage can replicate.
- The Blue Line's South Side route runs directly above the Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90/94), so fans could watch the elevated cars racing alongside highway traffic on the way to the ballpark.
- Comiskey Park, the White Sox's home from 1916 to 1991, sat just a few blocks from the 35th Street Blue Line station, making the 'T' the most direct public-transit link to the diamond.
- The South Side elevated tracks have been a constant fixture of the neighborhood skyline for well over a century, outlasting several ballparks and generations of fans who rode them to games.