How many members of the 1962 Mets are still with us, waiting with bated breath to see if their position will soon be usurped?
I sort of looked it up. Felix Mantilla is still around, as is Jay Hook.
It’s a shame Ed Kranepool passed just two weeks ago.
And indeed, today’s Chicago Tribune featured an interview with 87-year-old Jay Hook, who mentioned that he has suddenly become a very popular guy, as he also did what with the Tigers in 2003. More so now, because he’s one of the last survivors.
Hello people! Is this what you are all talking about?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/magazine/chicago-white-sox-loss-record.html?unlocked_article_code=1.NE4.oJkY.Qahvo9gaXeY-&smid=url-share
The NYT is not able to generate a preview, but the gift link works and is a joy to read, even if you (like me) don’t know anything at all about basketbaseball.
Yup, that’s it.
There really is something mesmerizing about the level of incompetence across multiple levels of an organization to achieve a result like this. Even without breaking the record, it’s effectively unprecedented. In '62 the Mets were in their first season and a different era in terms of professionalism among athletes. And 1916 baseball might as well be a different game.
I’ll say again, though, I blame the players least of all (though some underperforming players certainly contributed their share). When most of the roster consists of players who wouldn’t even be considered on any other MLB team, expectations shouldn’t be set so high. This is predominantly on team owner Reinsdorf and the staff he put together.
To be more precise, in that expansion era they were entirely dependent on castoffs from other teams, without the ability to get decent players* through free agency. It’s incredible that a modern franchise could threaten their record for ineptitude.
For the same reason, the '62 Mets should be credited with the fastest path for an expansion franchise to win a World Series, not the later Marlins who had advantages the Mets never had.
*they had a very few capable players, like Frank Thomas, who held the Mets franchise record for HRs for a long time, and an end-of-career Duke Snider. Pitching was desperately bad and catching a black hole inhabited by the likes of Choo Choo Coleman and Jesse Gonder.
The weather in Chicago is rainy, cool and gloomy. Perfect for setting a suck record.
And the few halfway competent players they had were traded away in mid-season. (Granted this is standard procedure for a bad team to trade away established players for younger prospects.)
It’s been steadily rainy here since last night, but the rain is finally moving off, just in time for the game (starts at 6:40pm Central). 
For the record, I’m a born and raised Sox fan, and I want this record bad. And I want Reinsdorf gone. I want to be proud of this team, and if it takes a record of suck to bring about change, well we’ve come this far.
As of this moment, the Sox have five batters with a positive bWAR score:
- Luis Robert Jr. leads the team with a 1.1; in recent days, he’s finally gotten his number over 1.
- Andrew Vaughn is at 0.4; he also has the highest batting average among regulars on the team, at .246 – which is .003 above the overall MLB batting average (.243).
- Yoan Moncada is also at 0.4; he has exactly one plate appearance since April 9th (a strikeout on 9/18)
- Nicky Lopez and Jacob Amaya are both at 0.1.
Andrew Benintendi (and his $17.1 million per year contract) has played better in recent weeks than he had earlier in the season, but he’s still at a -1.0 bWAR.
I see the game is listed as Delayed. Did they get a first pitch thrown? Is it still raining? Will it clear up?
The social media department has been having fun on the @ChicagoWhiteSox twitter account:
After every recent home loss, they’ll post something like “we didn’t do so great this time, guys” or “the other team scored more runs than we did”.
How about a forfeit to make the record? Do it in style.
It’s underway now; the rain has moved out of the area. 0-0, moving into the bottom of the 4th.
Oh, no! They’ve come back from being down 0-2.
Looks like a Sox win. They’d better not let me down!
They got six shutout innings from their starter, Jonathan Cannon, and then their sieve-like bullpen gave up two runs. Piecing together a three-run eighth to take the lead – and then only giving up a two-out walk in the ninth, to seal the win – was a very un-Sox-like finish to the game.
The key play of the inning was a misplayed pop fly which would have been the 3rd out of the inning. Instead, the tying run scored, followed by an RBI single for the lead run. A very Sox-like play allowed them to win the game, the first time this season they won a game in which they trailed after 7 innings.
Ah, I love this pic! LOL