Congratulations, Sox.
It was exciting, though, huh?
Congrats to the White Sox.
Houston had so many chances to win and blew it every time.
The White Sox won because they just never gave up, even when things looked pretty dismal.
Too bad the White Sox couldn’t have won the final game in Chicago, but I guess if they had, the joyful riots would still be going on.
In '91 when the new Comiskey opened, a friend and I went in on weekend tickets for the first year. One of his friends was a wine salesman and had these bottles made up for us:
If you can’t read the label, it commemorates opening day at the new place. Mark and I decided that we would save ours for the next White Sox world series victory. My wife, the cub fan made fun of our optimism.
The bottle has moved with three times since then, always holding a place on the wine rack.
After game three Tuesday night (Wednesday morning), I finally got the chance to take it from the rack, and discreetly put it in the fridge.
Last night, sometime around 11, I popped the cork.
It would be more appropriate to say that I pushed the old, partly dry cork into the bottle. There was no fizz, nor any pop. The vaguely urine-ish looking old liquid was flat, and tasted very much like shoe polish.
But it was the sweetest drink EVER.
Thank you White Sox, from another lifelong suffering fan.
PS: Yeah I cried a little, but I will kick your ass if you repeat that to anyone.
Every day I sit here not shopping, I get weaker.
Every day Charlie squats in the Wal-Mart, he gets stronger.
Sure it was. I’d still rather the series had gone the distance, though. Game 7s … now *those * are exciting!
And something about a team winning the World Series (or any championship, for that matter) in an away stadium bothers me.
When my 22 year old son was a little kid he was raised on the teat of WGN Cubs baseball (euphemistically speaking) back when Rhine the Divine, “Jodieeee, Jodieeeee Davis”, Leon Durham, and all those other great players were on their team. (Here in my part of the swamp the Royals perpetually suck…so we turned to WGN on cable just to watch good baseball.) I told my son that if the Cubbies ever won the WS, the world would end. Back then, in his little 3-5 year old mind that thought was horrifying…so he tells me now. He’s now a hapless Cubs fan. I have lots of family on the South Side, so my sympathies have always been with the Pale Hose…and I agree, the rivalry is intense and it should rightly be so. The South Side is blue collar, working class folks…and the North Side is…the North Side.
The WS was just incredible. I love good pitching and, IMO, I’ll take a 1-0 game over a blowout any day. Maybe I’m waxing senimental in my age, but every game I’ve watched this year, all season (except for the sucky Royals) has been simply beautiful. Now we enter that awful time…“The Time When There Is No Baseball”…and I’ll be sad until the pitchers and catchers report for spring training. The White Sox played incredible, pretty, well executed, well thought out baseball and it’s been a joy watching them.
Maybe next year will be the time for the Boys in Blue, but I keep thinking about what I’ve told my son many a time: “They wouldn’t be the Cubbies if they didn’t break your heart.”
So I guess we are al in agreement then that the Angels were the second best team baseball. And that and fifty cents will get you the daily paper.
I saw a sign on a Chicago bar that said:
Cub’s fans: Only in your dreams.
Oz and the boys took Winning Ugly to a new plateau. Great job south-siders!!!
Obnoxious? Moi? I would never kick a Cubs fan when he’s down. My biggest wish has always been to see the Sox win a World Series before the Cubs did and that wish has now been granted. Feel free to go aead and win the whole thing next year (unless you are playing the Sox, and then you can all get bent).
You and I are the same age, then. 1987 was the first year I started paying attention to baseball seriously, because it was the first year I played softball and suddenly the rules and strategy became clear to me. The Giants won the NL West that year and I was thrilled. I coulda cried when they lost to the Cardinals in the NLCS. I was glad with a vengeance when the Twins proceeded to beat them in the Series.
So, maybe you don’t pay attention to things like that, but some of us do.
ANYWAY. I am taking the day off and going to the parade tomorrow. Of course I’m really a Giants fan, but I love my adopted hometown, and I’ve been rooting for the Sox all year. I must admit I never actually thought they’d do it, but I am very happily surprised. This is so great for Chicago! No way am I going to miss this party.
Incidentally, I thought it was a great Series. The 4-0 sweep doesn’t come close to indicating how close it really was. Every game was tense and exciting. The Astros had a great year and winning the NL pennant is nothing to sneeze at.
I live on the South Side, and been born and raised here, but there’s certainly no shortage of blue collar up North. Ya know, Humboldt Park, Logan Square, the Polish neighborhood up Milwaukee, Rogers Park, Austin, etc…
On a related note, there was an interesting survey in the Sun-Times last week that basically revealed that Cubs and Sox fans are pretty much identically the same demographic.
Whoa… you went to Regis, too?
Congrats White Sox, you certainly deserved it. You guys were clearly the best team in baseball, with awesome pitching, balanced hitting throughout the lineup, and impeccably coached. You did everything right. And it really is hard to root against a team that hates the Cubs so much as well…
At least the Astros got their first NL pennant ever out of it. Houston is pretty thankful all in all, and of course there is the obvious grumbling but there is as much praise for what the Astros managed to pull off this year, and I expect that sentiment to be much more pronounced after the sting of the sweep starts to ebb. It was the best season in Astros history and it will not be remembered for the World Series sweep but rather for the abyssmal start, the huge turnaround, and the best playoff performance ever.
I previously posted that the Astros could be the most frustrating team in baseball. They had long stretches during the regular season of complete inability to score despite men in scoring position. Remember, they started 15-30, and shadows of that team threatened to poke through on any occasion. I went to a game where Clemens pitched 8 scoreless innings against the Pirates in around 70 pitches, we stranded 16 men on base, he left a 0-0 tie before the 9th with a back spasm, and Lidge gave up a solo homer to the Crawford boxes in the top of the 9th for the 1-0 loss. I was at the 18 inning game against Atlanta where there were 9 innings of shutout ball in there, despite plenty of opportunities.
Anyway, they were always streaky and managed to get on a hot streak for the Braves and Cards series. That streak ran out against the White Sox. We depended on the bottom of the order for lots of runs against the Braves and Cards – Lane, Burke, Ausmus and even Everett turned it on. When those guys couldn’t do it (and we are talking about some poor offensive weapons here that can’t really be expected to do it), and Ensberg, our 100 RBI guy, didn’t hit well the entire postseason, then you are left with Biggio, Taveras, and Berkman and that won’t win you games. They just looked tired at the end, more than anything else. RoyO pitched like 270 innings of ball this year and looked like ass in his start, even before that 5th inning. Clemens was hurt and hurt himself worse, the hitters looked like they had no concentration. Even Scrap Iron was obviously frayed by the end of it and was clearly outcoached, forgetting how to play the small ball that won us games this year (how many times do I have to yell “squeeze!!!” and the television before someone will lay down a bunt up the first base line?). Anyway, it was fun. Now our attention turns to ignoring the Texans and hoping for the Rockets. And, for a good proportion of us, rooting for the Texas Longhorns to get to Pasedena and whip the shit out of USC.
One more thing. This year’s Series was the lowest viewed ever. But I wouldn’t blame it on baseball, nor would I blame it on the teams. I would blame it on Fox and their glacial pacing and interminable commercial breaks. Next year, get the games started at 7 PM, and 1.5 min instead of 2.5 min commercial breaks.
And here’s hoping for the Cubs to lose miserably again next year.
The Astros definitely had their chances in this one, but it might be worth keeping in mind that this White Sox team always gave the other team a chance. They just didn’t let them take advantage. Most of Chicago’s games were decided by two runs or less, and they won 2/3 of them. There was some great drama in the Series, and it was the same drama the Sox played with all year.
I totally agree. I’ve been seeing people talking about this stat and I don’t think it indicates anything about the teams involved, or at least only peripheally. I think it can be traced back to a few things primarily. First, the White Sox share Chicago with another team, so in effect this wasn’t the 3rd and 4th biggest markets. Secondly, games one and two were played on a Saturday and Sunday during football season. People LOVE football, and as a result large portions of the country choose football over baseball for the first few games. Had the games been on a Tuesday or Wednesday, people would have watched in higher proportions and gotten hooked on watching it. As it was timed it was over before most people had time to even begin to get emotionally involved. Also, that 14 inning game wore out alot of viewers. Assuming ratings are determined by some average rating, it’d necessarily follow that this long, late game lost viewers to attrition dragging down the overall average. The series also lacked a series of do-or-die games culminating in a ratings bonanza of a game 7.
In my estimation the teams (meaning not the Yankees or the Red sox) were a small factor, and the quality of play and/or star power is an even smaller one.
Great series, even if I was unable to catch most of it due to work and not willing to sit through that many effin’ commercials. I think the really telling moments came in game 3, where the Astros got a gift run from a terrible call and got what seemed like ninety men on base in the extra innings, and still found a way to lose. They made a game of it the next…er, same day, but you knew the writing was on the wall.
Disappointed in yet another sweep (I don’t like these in the championship any more than the TV execs do), but the right team won all four games.
And I’ll just say that I was getting sick of all the curse junk, the same teams damn winning and the same damn teams getting robbed at the last millisecond over and over. The Red Sox and White Sox winning in consecutive years proves that, for all the superstitions and noise about curses and legends and magic etc., it’s what happens on the field that counts. No free rides. No such thing as “doomed”. It’s a little weird that the Red Sox’s record of most seasons between two championships only lasted one season, but I doubt it’s a record most of the city wanted in the first place.
Congrats to the winners. Proving once again that any damn thing at all really can happen.
Armaggedon will come in October of 2006 when the Tampa Bay Devils Rays win the series.
Clearly you’ve never watched the Cubs.
The Rays have a lot of good young players. Don’t be surprised to see them contend by 2008. I predict by then the AL East will be headed up by Toronto and Tampa.