By Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw
I am a Cubs fan.
You do not need me to tell you that — you already know.
I am going to talk about the Chicago White Sox today and I need to start the discussion with the simple fact that I love the Cubs.
But in my youth, I cheered for both the Cubs and the White Sox. I still get choked up to hear Lorn Brown’s call of the sacrifice fly by Harold Baines in the 9th inning that clinched the Sox 1983 division championship.
A big part of that comes from the fact that I listened to the Cubs games during the day and the White Sox at night. I was listening to Vince Lloyd, Lou Boudreau, Harry Carry, Jimmy Piersall, Thom Brennaman, Milo Hamilton and John Rooney teach me what to do and how to do it way before I ever took my first radio/TV class at Butler.
And if you are going to invest the kind of time I did in listening to baseball on radio, you’d rather have the games be exciting and the team you’re listening to winning.
So, I was a de facto White Sox fan.
That changed when the Cubs and Sox started playing exhibition games each summer that didn’t count, and then interleague games that did.
I had to choose, and the choice was easy.
And like politics and just about everything else, the suppressed rivalry became personal, and it got nasty.
The Civil War for the City of Chicago was on, and the Mason-Dixon Line was I-290, also known as the Eisenhower Expressway.
Since then, I really have hated the Sox. Understand, for me, it’s “sports hate” so I don’t really hate them or their fans, I just want them to lose every game they play. I don’t lay awake at night in December hoping they lose, but I hope they go 0-162.
I have never been closer to seeing that come true than this year.
No one in baseball circles had any delusion in February that this team could even be decent in 2024. All of the projections were that they would lose 100 games, maybe 110. The talent level was so low that there was no path possible for them to even be respectable.
Unfortunately for the Sox and their fans, it’s been way worse than anyone could ever have imagined.
They played three games in March and lost all three, then went 6-21 in April. They were 9-19 in both May and June, and those were their best months. The Sox won just three of their 25 games in July and started August 2-7.
They had a 14-game losing streak earlier this season, and two weeks ago topped Oakland to end a 21-game losing streak.
Here is some perspective on how bad this franchise is right now. As I am writing this, the Sox are 29-91—41 games behind Cleveland in the Central Division. They are 27 games behind the Tigers for fourth place.
The Sox are 21 wins behind the A’s for the worst record in the American League, and 15 wins behind the Marlins and Rockies for the worst record in all of baseball.
Let’s go deeper: if the Sox had won 14 straight instead of losing those 14 straight, they would still be the worst team in the majors.
Why?
It starts at the top.
They have an owner who wants to move his team — maybe right into the middle of downtown or maybe to Nashville, depending on how much money the city and the State of Illinois will give the Sox to build a new stadium.
We’ve heard very little from owner Jerry Reinsdorf this summer, and the mental picture that we get from him is one of a man sitting in the street in front of his house that is fully engulfed in flames, leaning back in a comfortable chair, left leg crossed over his right and puffing on his cigar with the orange flames reflecting off his glasses.
The manager clearly was underqualified for the job. The fan base knew what was coming and stayed home in droves. The ballpark was never fan-friendly and no one just goes to the White Sox games for fun to take in the aura and the atmosphere. That’s what you get on the other side of town.
The Sox changed general managers but hired a guy from within the organization to rebuild them. That’s like hiring a felon convicted of arson to work on the fire department.
Add all of that to a team that was talent-deficient and a bottom-five destination for free agents, and you get … this. This team of guys who should almost all be in Birmingham or Charlotte, who are trying hard, but aren’t ready for the big leagues.
That’s how you get to be 70 games under .500 with still a month-and-a-half of games to play.
As a Cubs fan, I take no joy in this. I have family members and very close friends who are Sox fans. I wouldn’t wish this summer on anyone; let alone people I love.
The solution: MLB has to step in and hasten the sale of the Sox to someone who wants to win and make money.
But there are too many owners in their own plush chairs in their own street with their own cigars and the flames illuminating their own glasses to think that could happen.
Sox fans, I am sorry.
