My Cicy

Chicago likes to think of itself as the city that works, one way or the other. But in recent years, what with political wars, racial politics and strikes, more things seemed not to. Then last year this city of three million people lost its Second City ranking to Los Angeles. And the Chicago Cubs, on the brink of departing from the cherished local baseball tradition of losing, reverted to form at the last minute, at the hands of a team from another sunny southern California city with a Spanish name.

But now, 22 years after a tough- talking, hard-hitting, fist-swinging tight end named Mike Ditka helped the Chicago Bears crunch the hated New York Giants, 14-10, for the National Football League championship, that same tough-talking, hard- hitting, clipboard-throwing coach is leading the same Bears into the final National Conference playoff game before the Super Bowl.

”We play the way he played,” explained Dan Hampton, a defensive end the Washington Redskins found offensive on Sunday, ”We’re a reflection of him.” And Chicago loves it.

The Bears’ defeat of the team from Washington in Washington gave headline writers here a chance to talk about the Bears making ”Capital Gains,” handing out ”Capital Punishment” and being, once again, a ”Hog Butcher.” The latter referred to the nickname of Washington’s line and a line from Carl Sandburg’s poem about this city, which over the years has not exactly been consumed with poetry.

On Sunday the Bears pulled trick plays. They blitzed. They separated players from the ball and, at times, from their senses. ”It was kind of like being on the freeway at rush hour without a car,” said Joe Theismann, quarterback of the team that some people here have labeled the Washington Deadskins.

At one point Sunday Mr. Ditka (opposing defensive backs did not always use that honorific in his 1961-66 playing career) called a favorite play, a halfback pass by Walter Payton to a tight end, Pat Dunsmore, lined up just as the coach used to, on the right side.

Coach Ditka, who has a reputation for sudden but not necessarily profound outbursts when things do not go his way, guaranteed his fellow coaches on the sideline that it would score a touchdown. And, sure enough, the 23-year-old Mr. Dunsmore, who values his job, caught the ball for a touchdown and a 23-19 victory. So what if it was not quite so clearcut as pro football’s most lopsided victory, a 73-0 championship drubbing by the same Bears over the same Redskins in 1940.

The next obstacle for Mr. Ditka’s Chicago Bears, perennial underdogs, are the San Francisco 49ers, another one of those teams from the West Coast where they eat all those fruits and nuts for lunch. ”I guarantee you one thing,” Mr. Ditka said, ”we’re gonna come out hittin’ and play some football.”

”We’re a city of champions,” Mayor Harold Washington said in a statement after the Bears’ victory. He interrupted another struggle of lines, budget lines, as his minority bloc of Aldermen negotiated a 1985 budget with an opposing City Council majority.

The budget struggle, which ended on cue five hours before the state-set deadline of midnight Dec. 31, ostensibly dealt with political fights over bond issues, property taxes, sanitation charges and committee personnel. Both sides claimed victories.

But the real struggle, as usual here, had to do with jobs and who will hold them after the 1987 mayoral election. The majority bloc of Aldermen, led by Edward R. Vrdolyak, Cook County Democratic Party chairman, would not be unhappy if the impression city voters carried away from this year’s budget game, and any other skirmishes in the next 24 months, was one of great governmental turmoil under the leadership of Mr. Washington.

Then perhaps in two years the voters, who narrowly elected Mr. Washington over a Republican in 1983, might select someone else, someone like, say, Mr. Vrdolyak of the 10th Ward, who identifies himself as a staunch Bears fan. Mr. Washington does too, publicly. Privately, however, he confides much stronger allegiance for the Cleveland Browns.

Politicians on both sides, as well as the Bears, had to struggle this week against the Chicago area’s first storm of the year. The warm, moist air billowing in from the South met, as it so often does here, the cold dry air of the North.

A result across the three-state metropolitan area was anywhere from two inches of snow on Mayor Washington’s South Side to 19 inches to the north and northwest, where it crippled air traffic, including the Bears’ charter flight to practice in California.

Lake Michigan did not freeze yet. The lake’s temperature, widely broadcast here as a kind of broad seasonal barometer for those who never go outdoors, has fallen somewhat from August’s broiling days when it soars up around 55 degrees.

But this week the lake’s temperature still hovered one degree above freezing. That meant Chuck Fifielski and the boys from the 20 Fathom Club could still take their brisk New Year’s dip just off the downtown waterfront.

And for the third year Jim Murphy passed the New Year’s holiday in the empty lobby of the Cook County Building. He wanted to be first in line to buy a $5 1985 county park picnic permit. It guarantees Mr. Murphy and his Antler Dancer’s Sportsman Club use of a specific picnic grove next July 27. By then, the Bears will be in training camp again.