Two of sports most noxious franchises, ESPN.com’s repugnant Page 2 and ESPN2’s unwatchable pile of Cold Pizza have combined to create the Rosemary’s Baby of sports features. They have compiled a ridiculous list of the Top 15 Most Tortured Sports Cities.

They have so far released five through 15 and as you’d assume, Chicago has not made the list yet. Neither has New York. I swear, if New York makes the top five, I’m going to have my head in the oven. If you have the Yankees, a team who has won the World Series once every FOUR YEARS since their inception, you are off the torture list forever. I don’t care how long the Knicks have gone without a title, or how long the Rangers had to wait…for chrissakes the Islanders won four in a row, once. New York doesn’t get on the list.

Let’s face it, every region thinks they know sports torture. I’m sure down there in Miami, they’ve already forgotten the World Series and are still whining about the Dolphins going nowhere with Dave Wannstedt.

Bill Simmons wrote the piece on Boston, who ranked fifth on the list, and he basically laughed at his own bosses for being dumb enough to put his city on the list. He points out that the Patriots have won two of those last three Super Bowl things, the Red Sox go to the playoffs every year and even the Celtics were good as recently as 2002.

There is only one winner here, and we know who it’s going to be. Hell, nobody has a resume to match Chicago’s.

Our baseball teams have gone 96 and 87 years respectively without World Series wins. Those are the two longest in baseball history. How nice.

Our football team has won one NFL title since 1964, despite the fact that from 1985-1988 it had the best team in the world. For most of those 40 years with one title, the Bears have been abysmally bad. But they’re like crack to all of us, we just keep coming back for more, and in today’s supposed parity-filled NFL we can even delude ourselves into thinking they might get lucky and win something.

The hockey team left town right after the 1992 Stanley Cup Finals…right? No, wait, they’re still around? You mean the Wolves, right, they don’t really count. Huh? The Blackhawks still play in Chicago? You don’t say?

For one decade, at least, nobody ever had a better basketball team than the 1990s Bulls. Seven trips to the Eastern Conference finals, six Finals appearances, six World Championships and the chance to watch the greatest basketball player of all time on a nightly basis. So there, that alleviated our suffering, right?

Only in Chicago could an eight year span in which the Bulls were the most feared team in the NBA be replaced by six years (and counting…) of the worst basketball in the history of the league. Not just mediocrity, but horrifically bad basketball.

Consider this, in 1995-96 the Bulls won an NBA record 72 games. That’s one season, 72 wins. In three and a half seasons, starting right after the Bulls’ sixth NBA title in eight years, Tim Floyd won 49 games! Forty-nine!

From 1998-2002 the Bulls won 67 games. Four seasons, sixty-seven wins. In the ’90s the Bulls had three seasons in which they won 67 games.

The biggest kick in the pants in Chicago is that the team that had the most success was the one that we cared about the least. Chicago has never really been a basketball town. The closest it had been before Michael Jordan showed up was during the Terry Cummings and Mark Aguirre DePaul years and Skip Dillard took care of that with some clutch free throws against St. Joe’s in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Clutch…if you were rooting for St. Joe’s.

Everybody loved the Bulls for that title run because Michael Jordan was around. Winning is addictive. Chicago teams had never won when they were supposed to, and this one did to almost ridiculous extremes. It was the kind of epic run that has made generations of basketball fans in Boston and Los Angeles. Only, in Chicago, just six years after its conclusion, you almost feel like it never really happened. This kind of thing only happens to us.

As part of the Page Two piece on tortured sports cities, they have a mope write about the ten most painful moments in that city’s sports history.

Ten? Is that all? We could do ten on the Bears with our eyes closed.

Screw it. Let’s just start listing them. They don’t need an order, and they don’t need a limit.

– The freshest, is of course, game six of last year’s NLCS. Five outs from the World Series with the best pitcher in the world on the mound and the Cubs manage to give up eight runs before the eighth inning can end. The whole sequence is just too surreal to comprehend. A dumbass with a headset and a turtleneck knocks an out away from Moises Alou. The shortstop who made eight errors in the 172 games played before that night botches an easy grounder. The right fielder throws home, tragically late and allows two more runners to advance…

– Three words for Sox fans: Jerry Dybzynski’s baserunning.

– Steve F@#$ing Garvey’s homer in game four of the 1984 NLCS.

– Somebody spilling Gatorade all over Leon Durham’s glove, a routine grounder hits a rock and shoots over Ryne Sandberg’s head, a ball rolls through Durham’s legs and Rick Sutcliffe can’t hold a 3-0 lead in game five of the 1984 NLCS.

– Scottie Pippen’s migrane headache. Plus the fact that the Pistons just threw the Bulls around like rag dolls for three straight years.

– The ’93 Sox trying to hit Dave Stewart in the ALCS. Well, they did score three runs off of him…in two games.

– Hue Hollins’ phantom foul on Pippen in the ’94 playoffs. Hubert Davis still needs to be publicly flogged for that flop.

– Scottie refusing to get off the bench for the last 1.8 seconds of a game in that same series.

– The rumor that Michael Jordan was going to retire, even though he was only 30, going around Comiskey Park during the 1993 ALCS. Man, the Sox are never the biggest story…ever. The next day, Jordan announced he wanted to spend more time with his kids, and ride his lawnmower. Within 10 months he was playing outfield in the Sox farm system.

– Darrell Green’s punt return in the 1988 playoffs. Somebody tackle that little bastard!

– “Now in at quarterback for your Chicago Bears…Doug Flutie!”

– The Bears drafted two Hall of Famers in the first round of one draft. Gale Sayers ended up being the youngest player ever elected into the Hall of Fame (never a good thing…it means you left way too early) and Dick Butkus was the greatest defensive player ever, until his knees got him, too and he never played on a good team. How can you get more tortured than to draft Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus in the same round and never make the playoffs with them?

– The last time a Chicago team was favored to win a World Series, eight of the White Sox tanked it for some cash. Nice. You don’t think that’s the real curse in this city? Think again.

– Speaking of that, how about the first place White Sox in 1994 having the end of the season and the playoffs wiped away by a lockout, led by their own owner?

– September 23, 1998…the Brant Brown dropped flyball. Two nights later, Brant got attacked by a pigeon in the Astrodome.

– 1992, the Packers trade for Brett Favre. Hillbilly Brett is 20-4 in his career against the Bears, including 10-1 in Soldier Field. There is no team hated more by Chicago than the Packers, and for 13 seasons, this has been sheer Hell.

– Two more words for Sox fans: Tito Landrum.

– Not to be outdone, two words for Cubs fans: Will Clark.

– Greg Maddux’s regular season ERA, 2.89. Greg Maddux’s postseason ERA for the Cubs, 13.50.

– The 1985 Cubs are in first place on June 11. They are sixteen games over .500 at 35-19 and all is well with the world. They won’t win another game until June 26 and finish the season 23.5 games behind the Cardinals.

– The 1984 White Sox come off a season in which they won the AL West by 20 games. In 1985 they spend a grand total of 17 days over .500 and their best record all season was four games over at 44-40. The Royals win the division with 84 wins and the Sox still manage to finish ten games back.

– The NFL admits that officials blew an instant replay review in the Bears’ 14-13 loss at Green Bay. Don Majkowski’s still living off a fourth down touchdown pass that never should have counted.

– Stan Musial’s 3000 hit and Pete Rose’s 4151th occur at Wrigley Field, but Sammy Sosa’s 500th homer and Mark Grace’s 1,000th groupie banged both occur on the road.

– Tom Seaver wins his 300th game while playing for the White Sox…in New York.

– The Cubs start the 1997 season 0-14. Oh and FOURTEEN! The season is over before Tax Day.

– In 1999, the Cubs play a stretch of 50 games in which they go 10-40. In 2000, THEY DO IT AGAIN!

– Two more words for Sox fans: Terry Bevington.

– Six words for Cubs fans: Preston Gomez, Jim Essian, Bruce Kimm.

– 1979 the Bulls lose a coin toss with the Lakers for the top pick. The Lakers take some hack named Earvin Johnson. The Bulls get the great David Greenwood.

– September 2, 1969 the Cubs are 84-52, 32 games over .500, after Fergie Jenkins beats the Reds for the Cubs’ fifth straight win. The Cubs have a five game lead with 26 to go and a Magic Number of 25. The Cubs will go 8-20 to finish the season, the Mets will go 22-9 and win the NL East by eight games. Along the way, a black cat will run on the field, an umpire will miss an obvious play at home plate and Randy Hundley will throw a jumping tantrum, and Ron Santo will call timeout during a game to go to center field and yell at Don Young. If the Cubs just go 17-11 to finish the year, they win the division.

– From 1960 to 1982 no Chicago baseball team will play a playoff series. From game three of the 1984 NLCS to game one of the 2003 NLDS, Chicago baseball teams will go 2-16 in playoff games.

– January 8, 1989, it’s 20 below zero and the wine sipping 49ers are in Chicago for the NFC Championship game, one week after the Bears had beaten Buddy Ryan’s Eagles in the fog bowl. The wine sipping Niners completely pants the Bears 28-3 to go to the Super Bowl. Joe Montana doesn’t even need any chicken soup.

– From the 1979-80 season to the 1981-82 season, DePaul’s basketball team posts records of 26-2, 27-2 and 26-2. They play in three NCAA Tournament games, and lose them all. Including the infamous loss to St. Joseph’s.

– Just think of these numbers. The Blackhawks haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1961. The Bears haven’t won a Super Bowl since 1985. The Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908. The Sox haven’t won a World Series since 1917. That’s 33, 19, 96 and 87 years.

If you were born in 1918 you’ve never seen a Chicago World Series winner. Nineteen-eighteen!

– The Blackhawks have won three Stanley Cups since their inception in 1926.
– The Bears have won seven titles since their inception in 1920.
– The Cubs have won two World Series since their inception in 1876.
– The Sox have won two World Series since their inception in 1900.

That’s 14 titles in a combined 393 seasons. Is that good? Even if you add in the fledgling Bulls, founded 1966 it’s 20 titles in 431 seasons.

And there’s just so much more. Feel free to add your own.