CHICAGO — As Harry Caray’s Chicago Cubs career was celebrated Thursday with the 26th “Toast to Harry Caray” sponsored by his namesake restaurant, his legacy on the South Side continues to be overlooked by his former team.

It makes sense that the restaurant is more focused on his Cubs years, when Caray became a national figure thanks to day baseball and the WGN-TV superstation. That’s the Harry Caray whom Will Ferrell imitated on “Saturday Night Live,” a caricature of a befuddled old man with a microphone that drew laughs even from those who had no idea who Caray was.

But that wasn’t the same Harry Caray whose decision to leave the White Sox booth in 1981 became a red-letter day in the long and storied history of the Cubs-Sox rivalry — and continues to resonate 43 years later amid the controversy over current Sox broadcaster John Schriffen calling out the “haters” for criticism of the 6-25 team.

Caray probably would’ve been fingered as one of those alleged “haters” back when the Sox were awful and no one was coming to Comiskey Park. My friend John Owens pointed to a YouTube video of Caray’s final Sox TV broadcast in 1981 — posted by media colleague Jeff Agrest of the Sun-Times — in which Caray tells viewers after a commercial break that he counted only 15 people sitting in the center-field bleachers on a sunny afternoon.

That kind of raw honesty is no longer acceptable to modern marketing executives, who prefer their handpicked broadcasters to sugarcoat attendance problems while focusing on the positives. Watch any major league broadcast in a nearly empty ballpark and you won’t hear a word about it.

It was a different era.

Caray was a rarity among broadcasters, revered by fans of three organizations: the Cubs, Sox and St. Louis Cardinals, who host the Sox for a three-game series starting Friday at Busch Stadium. He was a unique personality and the so-called “Mayor of Rush Street” — a legendary baseball salesman and best friend of the team’s beer sponsor, from Falstaff to Budweiser.

In his Sox days he could be the team’s best marketing tool, as he was in 1977 during the season of the “South Side Hit Men.” Or he could be the owner’s worst nightmare, placating the fan base by offering blunt criticisms of the team, its manager and struggling players. His legacy is celebrated at Wrigley Field every home game, while the Sox virtually ignore the fact he spent 11 seasons on the South Side.

Caray’s exuberance on home run calls was not demonstrably different from Schriffen’s calls. But Schriffen’s now-infamous call on Andrew Benintendi’s walk-off home run Saturday night — calling out “the haters” before asking fans to “staaand up” — has divided Sox Nation, or what’s left of it.

Can you imagine Caray yelling: “It might be, it could be, it is … holy cow, take that, you haters.”

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