The White Sox are bad. Very, very bad.
Bad at playing baseball. Bad at talking about baseball. Bad at talking about the bad baseball that they play. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
But it wasn't always this way! Most of us probably can't recall it now, but on very rare occasions over the last 100+ years, the White Sox have been good. (Or at least, not quite so bone-achingly awful.) As a change of pace from my usual snark, I decided to write about some favorite moments from my all-or-part-of five decades as a White Sox fan.
1. 2005 World Series title
This is pretty obvious, and probably ranks number one on a highlight list for any White Sox fan older than 21 or so. Every day it grows a little more distant, but let's not forget what a rush it was! Scotty Pods! El Duque! To think, we wouldn't know Pedro Grifol's name for another 18 years...
2. The time I crashed my friend's car on the last day of high school
This was a deeply humiliating incident in which I volunteered to drive my friend David Kwan's Toyota Tacoma through our high school parking lot while my fellow seniors sat in the truck bed and threw water balloons at underclassmen. Unfortunately, I got distracted by the water balloons and rear-ended another car driven by a different friend of mine. I spent all summer working to pay off the damage. However, this was still more fun than the 2008 White Sox division championship season, in which their best hitter broke his hand three weeks before the playoffs started.
3. TIE: Both polyps I've had on my colon
This might be cheating, but how can I choose between the two small growths I've had on my colon? Thanks to them, I've had four colonoscopies before the age of 40 -- all of which were more pleasant than an average season following the Chicago White Sox.
4. Mark Buehrle's perfect game
This was a truly unforgettable day. Hawk's call was iconic. I have crystal clear memories of watching a pixelated MLB.TV stream on my parent's desktop computer while I was home from college. The White Sox finished 79-83.
5. The 1994 MLB Strike
Some feel the '94 strike, caused in large part by Jerry Reinsdorf, cost the White Sox their best chance at a title in 80 years. The way I see it, White Sox fans were saved from some inevitably worse fate. This is Reinsdorf we're talking about. Who knows what might have happened? The team bus goes over a cliff so he can collect insurance money? Frank Thomas abruptly retires to join the Chicago Bulls? We can't rule anything out.
See? Try not to get too low, Sox fans. We have plenty of fond memories to look on.
And surely we will have many moments of similar fun in the future. (I tried my best to make that not sound like a threat)
