While Max Stassi will play his first season for the White Sox in 2024, it'll be his second consecutive baseball season spent in Chicago. The hope is that this one will be considerably lighter, no matter how well he hits or defends.
Stassi missed all of the 2023 season after his wife, Gaby, went into labor 18 weeks early last March. The plan was for her to finish up her human resources job in Chicago before the entire family moved to Northern California, but they instead spent months at an unnamed hospital in Chicago as their son, Jackson, was born at 25 weeks, weighing one pound, eight ounces.
Stassi shared his story of his family's harrowing/rewarding year with The Athletic's Sam Blum, and it's very much worth reading, especially for guys. It wasn't until I started the expectant-father journey that I learned of all the ways pregnancies can go wrong, because men tend to be on a need-to-know basis for something so personal.
Here's one unimaginable detail that Gaby Stassi shared, for instance:
They were told of three possible outcomes. That the baby would arrive in the next 48 hours, which was the most likely. That he would be born in the next five days. Or that he could come anywhere from one to 18 weeks later. The longer he took, the better.
But, most importantly, they were told to hang on until midnight. As long as he was born after 12 a.m., lifesaving efforts could be made. Gaby lay on her hospital bed, not moving. Fearful that even the slightest twist or turn would induce labor.
Gaby was eventually moved upstairs from the delivery unit to a different hospital room. As the Angels prepared for Opening Day, Max spent every other night of that period at the hospital, save for a quick Arizona trip made in an attempt to restart his rehab. Gaby’s mother was there the nights Max wasn’t.
Gaby was told she could get up and walk around. She chose not to.
There was so much uncertainty. Would the lack of amniotic fluid cause injuries and deformities at birth? Would he have health complications? She could have no way of knowing. Any baby born under 26 weeks faces potentially fatal complications. All she knew was that every tick of the clock gave him a better shot.
“It was more the anxiety that’s hard,” Gaby said. “You just don’t want to do a sudden movement that triggers anything. I just didn’t move.”
She stayed there for four weeks, until Jackson finally arrived.
The Stassis were able to complete their move to Northern California, just in time for Max to be traded to the White Sox, but at least they'll be familiar with the child care options in either location.
Spare Parts
The White Sox's promotional schedule should be way more enjoyable than the rest of the schedule. It's a reminder of how well the rest of their merch would sell if they ever had a team that gained fans.
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Travis Sawchik's article about the mistakes the White Sox made with Comiskey Park will reopen wounds, but as ballparks get smaller in order to maximize the money per ticket, perhaps the lack of truly cheap seats will revive the possibility of more intimate upper decks.
The White Sox officially announced the hiring of Jin Wong, and based on all the details they listed about the contracts Wong negotiated in Kansas City, either the Sox don't detect their fan base's Royals fatigue, or they don't care.
The White Sox haven't added any MLB-caliber outfielders to plug the hole in right field, but journeyman Rafael Ortega provides a left-hande complement to Brett Phillips, which is as good an idea as anything else they have going on. That sounds like positive spin, but nope.
