I don’t follow the AL Central all that closely…but just what the hell is going on there, anyway!!!
I am hardly what you would consider a fan, but my mother always was so I have always cast an eye on the standings over the years just to see what is happening.
So this year, I happened to notice the White Sox are just zooming along all year in first place - they can do no wrong.
And then…
If mom were alive, she would just shake her head in disgust and say, “typical.” The team always found a way to disappoint her just when she would get her hopes up.
Still, would be nice to see them pull the rabbit out of their hat this year. But if they keep playing like they have, I think the Cubs will have a better chance of winning this year.
Heh heh. Nice to see the shoe on the other foot for a change.
The Sox have the most pathetic legacy in all of sport, yet they don’t even get credit for that over the Cubs and the other Sox.
Chicago teams don’t want to win, if they did the greedy owners would have to give everyone a raise. As long as they finish in the plus column on the income statement, the big wigs are all smiles. Witness two of the masters of this technique, Bill Wirtz and Wm Wrigley.
I’m really a Giants fan, but have been vaguely rooting for the Sox all year because it would be great for Chicago if they managed to progress into the playoffs. (Also because it would make Cubs fans crazy and that’s always funny.) I thought this would be an easy ride on the bandwagon! A couple months ago I never figured the goddamn Sox would be upsetting me!
Stupid Sox. I’m listening to the game right now and it’s tied. Argh!
Never find yourself rooting for a Chicago team, my friends. It’s just not healthy.
How so?
As far as White Sox fans go… good luck getting them to admit to it.
Well, for starters they’ve been in exactly one WS since 1919, a year which ended badly you may recall.
They’ve been around for 113 years and have won 2 titles. The last was 88 years ago.
The famous anti-Red Sox chant was “Nineteen!! Eighteen!!” Well, for perspective the White Sox last won in 1917. They only have 9, count 'em, 9 trips to the post season ever.
They’ve been convicted of throwing one World Series, something I’m pretty sure no one else can claim in any sport.
Oh, and they have always been second fiddle in their own town.
Another chance to compare them to the other miserable team, the Cubs. The Cubs in 135 years of existance, have been in 20 post-seasons.
Now, I know there are other franchises that have never wone at all, but most people tend to conceed that a 88 year drought is a little more miserable than a 45 year one for a team that’s only been around for as long.
People might rattle off franchises like the NFL Cardinals, the MLB Indians, the NBA Clippers…but really, I’d be hard pressed to compare any of them to the Sox.
As an Indians fan I hadn’t even paid attention to the distance between the Sox and the Tribe. It was a given that we were out of it. I was consumed by the wildcard. One day I look down and see that we are five game out with one of the easiest remaining schedules in baseball. Not sure what happened.
BTW anyone wonder how ESPN makes a decision to plop the WNBA Finals on the Deuce while the Indians and White Sox play out of the of the more exciting finishes this year? Ugh!
The numbers are interesting, but the patheticness of the Red Sox and Cubs was based on more than their long championship droughts. The Red Sox were known for spectacular implosions, the Cubs were known for never even getting close. They’ve had one or two close calls in recent years, but the Sox had some good teams in the early 90s, and compare their World Series droughts- counting this year, 46 years for the Sox and 60 for the Cubs.
I spent much of the last five years around Chicago. The way people favor the Cubs there is pathological. It defies sense, and while I’m sure there are reasons for it (I suspect economic class is a factor, and 1919 is another), I don’t think it reflects poorly on the Sox.
They both have sad-sack histories. Assuming the White Sox complete their historic collapse this year, I might call it a draw. In part, it raises that question “Is it better to just suck consistently, or get close once in a while?”
I don’t think that it’s quite as socially and culturally significant as that. My personal opinion on why the favoritism is the way it is is because of Wrigley Field.
The Sox play in a shitty part of town that for many years in the 70s and 80s was simply too dangerous to be in after hours. It’s not great now, though it’s a little better. Daley (who’s from that part of town) insists on preventing issuing liquor licenses for the vicinity immediately surrounding the park, and stubbornly refuses to allow the neighborhood he grew up in become less “neighborhoody” than it is. As a result of these policies, and the poor economic situation on the whole, the area around the ballpark is barren. Therefore, there’s very little in the way of environment to enjoy surrounding the park.
The Cubs however have famously thrived in a neighborhood which is a festive and commercial boon. As a result city newcomers and non-baseball fans can find reasons to enjoy being close to the Cubs. After many decades of this people grow to enjoy the concept of Wrigleyville.
Add in the fact that the Cubs have maintained a beautiful, historic ballpark, while the Sox leveled theirs after years of neglect. That tends to ruin alot of the nostalgia that makes baseball so vital.
The Cubs get all the casual undecided fans. That is self-propogating. The Sox can’t blame the media, or the econimics of the city for their failures. They are reaping the results of the Comiskey family’s mistakes.
If you compare Comiskey and Wrigley, Wrigley looks like Steinbrenner. For all the heat the Tribune Company takes, they make every other sports franchise ownership’s in the city look embarassing.
You make some good points there.
I imagine you’re familiar with the concept of damning with faint praise… 
I agree, though. The fact that they had the good sense to dump Sosa should be proof enough.
One of my more disappointing realizations was that Sosa was a total douchebag. I figured it out right around '96. '98 was fun, and I was ready to give him another chance when became a more complete player, but that turned out to be the anomoly.
Mind you, I don’t feel this way because I’m sad to lose a hero, or because I wanted the Cubs to have another legendary fan fave in the hall.
I was sad and disappointed because I wasn’t able to wholeheartedly respond to any Brock-for-Broglio comments with a snappy Sosa-for-Bell zinger. I mean it just doesn’t quite do it.
Yeah… after '98, he started to lose me with all of his celebration crap. Then the injuries started piling up and I got a chance to see up-close that he’d earned a reputation for hitting meaningless homers.
Thats not what bugged me most, and not what cost the team most. His biggest flaws were that he was often very poor on defense. This got the fans against him to a huge degree because it’s not like he wasn’t capable. This isn’t a Manny being Manny situation, we could have reconciled that. In '98, and for long stretches of other seasons he played some very good defense. Hustled, hit the cut-off man, and generally played the right way. Later it just seemed apparent that he’d either got clockd in the head one too many times, or just lost focus/quit caring. Secondly, he ALWAYS struck out in big situations. He struck out a ton to begin with, but you can allow that for a 50+ HR guy. But with RISP or 2-outs he should have learned to be selective and put the ball in play.
I’ll take the kitschy celebrations and the pre-game sprints, as long as you perform when it counts. He didn’t.
OK, back to Sox bashing…
Always is a long time and I don’t believe it is true that Chicago has always been a Cubs town. I think the Sox and Cubs attendence figures were roughly comparable until the early 1980s (the White Sox set the Chicago attendence record in 1983 when they won the AL West, a record which the Cubs beat the following year when they won the NL East), at which point the Tribune Company, which owns The Chicago Tribune newspaper and Chicago’s WGN radio and TV stations bought the Cubs. I suspect the Cubs’ dominance over the White Sox with regard to popularity is tied directly to the Tribune Company’s emphasis of its own product, the Cubs, over the White Sox.
Ding-Ding…a winner!
Has far less to do with all that Comiskey-v-Wrigley nonsense. Cub fans of today couldn’t tell you who Wrigley was if they had a mouthful. It’s the superstation, the Harry Caray phenomenon and all the razzmatazz bullshit promotionalism that the Tribune Conglomerate foists upon the world.
The Cubs, as was pointed out, get all the borderline fans who don’t care about baseball, but want to root for the Cubbies. Many, many Cub fans (the bus wife included) are serious die hards, but most of the rooting you see in parks around the country are people with no more tie to Chicago than the Himalayas.
And since when did Wrigley Field become 'well maintained"? That place is a dump with troughs for urinals that look like the streets of Port Au Prince, dark corners, slippery, grease coated pedestrian ramps, no decent parking and the upper deck is coming down piece by piece. It’s a hovel covered with sentimentality. Until the sheep (watch out forHal Briston) stop coming to watch a second rate product at the tune of 3 million a year, the Tribune has no reason to care about the shape the park is in, or the team on the field.
I’m only a Sox fan when the Cubs season is over.
So basically every July, you put on the black cap?
To get back to the OP for a moment…is there a particular reason for this Meltdown? Did somebody on the Sox get hurt? Or is just massive choking?
What happened was that the White Sox offense stopped performing to the standard it had set earlier in the season, and the team has gone 22-24 since August 1.
But while it’s easy to blame the Sox, the fact is that much of the credit for closing the gap has to go to the Indians. In that same period, they have gone 33-12, a record of .733. And now, of their remianing 11 games, they have four against the White Sox, three against the improved-but-still-bad Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and four against the absolutely woeful Kansas City Royals.
If i heard correctly on ESPN the other night, if Cleveland do beat Chicago in the AL Central, it will be the first time in Major League history a team has overcome a 15-game deficit to win a division title.
I’ve never had any particular beef witrh the White Sox, but every time i hear those godawful commentators of theirs, i just fiund myself prayiong for a White Sox loss.