“Well, at least you’ll always have 2005,” an impartial viewer comforts me.
“I guess,” not that I was then conscious of baseball, or the White Sox, or competitive sports, or anything outside of grilled cheese and the dire need for society to finally implement a no-pants law. But yeah, it’s nice that this team has won something, anything, within the technical time frame of me being a fan.
I’m seated way up and away from home plate, section 508. It’s a fitting seat assignment for late August White Sox viewing. Nothing quite encapsulates cheering for this historically bad team like being isolated and sequestered away from actual players and fans of an actual professional baseball team.
The place has to be at least 3/4 Yankees fans, which shouldn’t be too surprising. The Yankees are always good for bringing out the crazed New York transplant, and their team is actually quite good this year (much unlike the horror of that nearly .500 team from just a year ago. Dear God can you imagine? Only winning every other game?). And if you are a White Sox fan, there’s not too much to see. Jonathan Cannon is a halfway decent rookie, so he’s the biggest draw, I guess. Unless you’re interested in sizing up newly acquired 24 year old Miguel Vargas, but that shouldn’t take more than one strikeout.
Still, it’s jarring. The place is at a standstill when Judge comes to the plate, gunning for his 300th career home run. And it explodes when Soto blasts a deep shot over the outfield wall, and again, and again.
For a team that so recently wanted to Change the Game, it seems like the Chicago White Sox have abandoned it. Not only does their style of play barely resemble baseball, it’s a completely joyless art. If their crosstown rivals are the “lovable losers” of the Chicago family, these White Sox are the weird, antisocial child. They don’t register, they don’t make an impact, and, even when they do, you kinda wish they didn’t.
Three years and a day before I sat in Upper Reserved to see Juan Soto blast three shots to the bleachers, the Sox played in a much more interesting game against the Yankees. Out in Iowa, the Sox got out to a relatively big lead in the middle of the game. Home runs from Southside stars like Abreu and Jimenez put them up comfortably.
But, if you’ve been watching this team for over a decade, you know nothing good lasts. You win the World Series and then miss the playoffs the next year. You have the division on the run in 2012 only to blow it to the Tigers in the last month. You employ Ronald Belisario for seemingly the expressed purpose of handing out blown leads. You get out to a hot start in the opening months of 2016 only to finish below .500. At 35th and Shields, you’ve seen good (or at least okay) baseball, you just know that it is fleeting and bound to disappoint.
So naturally the White Sox blow their lead and go down a run in the 8th. It feels like part of the rite of passage. Nothing good lasts forever, especially not in a White Sox uniform. But then they come up to bat. And Zavala walks. And the face of the franchise comes to the plate. And you think that maybe, just maybe he is gonna blast one out and send everyone home. And then he does.
For the first time in your life, the White Sox have stared down adversity and won on a national stage. They have the talent, so if they don’t blink, what can’t they accomplish?
And then, in the blink of an eye, they were back to normal. A quick postseason exit, underperformance, hemorrhaging of core players, and just like that here we are. A historically, embarrassingly, awful season. Tim Anderson and Jose Abreu aren’t even in the league anymore.
So, just three short years later, the White Sox thumped the Yankees team and once again made national headlines, but this time mostly in jest. Really New York? You’re pushing for a World Series title and you lose by ten to the Northwest Arkansas Naturals alumni program?
But among some White Sox fans, it seemed to inspire, for however briefly, a sense of confidence. Sure this team isn’t good, but maybe Pedro Grifol made them especially bad. They have more fight with Grady Sizemore. We can close out this season and with dignity.
And then, in the blink of an eye, they were back to normal. The offense anemic, the pitching just not quite good enough, and the soul of the organization feeling utterly vapid.
It’s been said before, and cannot be said enough, how bad this team is at hitting, pitching, fielding, the entire game. But the hope and yearning for good baseball in Bridgeport is perhaps overlooked by the media and, certainly, ownership. Even as I watch the Sox come not particularly close in their venture to win two games in a row, I can’t help but think “man, he’s going against a tough line up but that Cannon kid sure has an arm.”
