There are only a handful of bars in Nashville where the patrons cheer “Go Cubs, Go,” in unison during the World Series.
Still, Chicago may have a built-in advantage over the Cleveland Indians when it comes to the number of fans in Nashville due to recent migration patterns.
In recent years, more transplants have been moving here from Cook County, Illinois, than any other county outside of Tennessee.
That’s been good news for Chicago bars in the city, including 312 Pizza Co. in Germantown — a restaurant named after Chicago’s area code that serves deep-dish pizza and plays Chicago sports on TV. Needless to say, this series means a lot to owner Dan Bockman.
“Every significant sporting event growing up in Chicago, we would go find a place to watch the game with Chicago people,” he says. “Obviously, it was a back-thought in our mind when we were building the place that this might be the place where people get together and watch, and it’s become that.”
Bockman says the restaurant is filling up beyond capacity some nights, and sales during the month of October have increased about 20 percent over last year.
This isn’t the first time baseball has been good to 312 Pizza. A year after the restaurant opened, the new Nashville Sounds stadium opened just three blocks away, which also spikes business on game days.
During the Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup win in 2015, 312 Pizza also experienced big business, though Bockman says not as big as this World Series.
But he admits he’ll be glad when the World Series is over. With night after night of a packed house, the staff is exhausted.
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