If the Hollywood of Hawk Harrelson's time zone wrote the script to his final game, he would've been able a call one more White Sox winner, punctuating the broadcast with his world-renowned catch phrases with organic and orgasmic gusto.
But scripts are more realistic these days. Protagonists don't always get what they deserve, and there's question about how much they deserve in the first place.
We got gritty realism. Harrelson's last game was not a high-fiving thrill ride, but instead another quiet loss to add to the hundreds he's presided over the last decade. Carlos Rodon fell behind 3-0 before the Sox came to bat, he fell behind 5-0 as he left the mound, and a fielder's choice put one more run on his tab to close it out.
The Sox' only answer was a single run in the fifth inning, when Welington Castillo doubled with one out, and Tim Anderson shot a ground-rule double to right with two outs. Adam Engel tapped out to David Bote to end the frame, and the Sox didn't threaten again.
The Cubs outhit the Sox 15-4. Rodon didn't walk anybody and threw nearly two-thirds of his 66 pitches for strikes, but that only amounted to nine hits over 2⅓ innings. Three of those hits were extra-base hits by lefties. Anthony Rizzo slugged an RBI double in the first, Kyle Schwarber took him deep in the second, and Schwarber chased him from the game in the third. Rodon wasn't happy about being pulled, and Rick Renteria had to follow him into the clubhouse to settle it.
Kyle Hendricks, conversely, cruised over his 7⅔ innings, allowing just four hits while thrown 73 of 103 pitches for strikes. He got a lot of unremarkable contact, and he and Jorge De La Rosa combined to retire 13 of the last 14 batters they faced.
With the Sox giving him nothing to call -- OK, Thyago Vieira's goofy balk on an attempted pickoff at second gave him a little -- the last three innings of Harrelson's broadcast were somber. A.J. Pierzynski's presence during the first half of the game kept the conversation convivial, but after the seventh-inning stretch, Harrelson's word-to-sniffle rate approached 1-to-1.
He couldn't get much out after the game either. Standing to acknowledge the salutes from fans, players and team personnel, emotion limited his output to "man." He was able to regroup after the commercial break to deliver one more message:
Record: 61-94 | Box score
