Until Mike Maroth went 9-21 for the 119-loss 2003 Detroit Tigers, Brian Kingman had been the last 20-game loser in the big leagues. He wore an 8-20 record -- albeit with a respectable 3.83 ERA -- for a 1980 Oakland A's that actually finished above .500 at 83-79, and he came to embrace his role in baseball history, fretting over midseason threats to the extent that he might've created the only voodoo dolls that wished success on his rivals.
At this point, in fact, it's hard for him even to imagine life without his "crown." It's become part of his identity. Which is a very scary thought.
"As long as I've been married, I've been The Last 20-Game Loser," he says. "My kids are 18 and 20, so their whole lives, I've been The Last 20-Game Loser. So at this point, even they don't want anybody else to do it.
"My wife just brought home some books on casting spells. So I'm thinking, either she thinks I'm that crazy, or else she's that crazy now."
So when I saw that MLB.com, The Athletic and the Wall Street Journal all had stories about the surviving 1962 Mets' reactions to the White Sox plummeting toward -- and probably past -- their 40-120 season that had been the benchmark for modern baseball ignominy, I'd anticipated similar self-deprecation.
There are strains of it. Knowing the ugly-duckling 1962 Mets became a swan that won the World Series in 1969 is a neat little worst-to-first storyline, and it's stayed truly worst for more than 60 years. But there are heavier themes of pity:
"It might happen,” said Craig Anderson, another ’62 Mets pitcher who finished his career with a 19-game losing streak. “We understand it might happen. But no, we would not want them to do that."
And:
“It’s shattering when it’s happening to you,” [Jay] Hook said, his matter-of-fact tone over the phone belying that choice of adjective, “and I’m sure the White Sox are feeling that right now. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. You don’t like to go through life thinking you were part of the worst team of whatever you did.”
Or the stone-cold absence of:
What the White Sox do have is one more month of games to try to avoid infamy. There is a small group of men mostly in their 80s and 90s who will be following along. Some of them are rooting for the White Sox to avert their fate.
Others won’t exactly cry if the White Sox lose for the 121st time.
“That’s not a record that you’re proud of,” Kranepool said. “They can have it.”
Some solace for the White Sox: If they break the record, a minimum of 60 players will share in the dishonor, as Jacob Amaya's debut on Friday night broke new ground. The 1962 Mets only deployed 45 players, so the average individual player carried a greater burden.
Spare Parts
I get what Chris Getz is trying to say to Paul Sullivan here ...
“The important thing is not to allow it to affect your thinking and your decisions. You don’t want to cave to those pressures just to quiet the noise. You want to do what’s best for the organization. We’re committed to doing what’s right from the long-term point of view, not just a Band-Aid approach or to cut corners. It may lead to success, but it certainly won’t be sustainable, that’s for sure.”
... but the thing about building the roster that's on track to lose the most games in modern MLB history is literally anybody could do it. You and I could do it, regardless of how few industry phone numbers are in our contacts. My 2-year-old son could do it, mostly because he's illiterate and possesses no concept of calendars or deadlines. There's a glaring absence of status here.
The proposal for a new White Sox ballpark in The 78 has lay dormant since the spring, when the Illinois legislative session closed without any public funding proposals. Gov. JB Pritzker and other legislative leaders didn't leave much of an opening for the kind of financial support that Jerry Reinsdorf craves, but the Sox are biding their time by enlisting Roger Bossard to shape a diamond with hopes of tantalizing.
Eloy Jiménez is expressing refreshment by going from the worst team in baseball to one of the best, but his performance is not yet showing it. He's hitting in terms of .299 average, but he's only drawn one walk and is without a homer, so he's still performing within the bounds of the range he showed with the White Sox.
The Royals have received the biggest boost from their trade deadline acquisitions in no small part to Paul DeJong, who is hitting .284/.355/.597 with six homers in 22 games, including a game-tying two-run shot in the ninth inning off Josh Hader on Friday.
Declan Cronin has been a DIY success story, as he honed his sinker-slider combo while working at Tread Athletics as a White Sox minor leaguer. He's vying for a rare major league achievement by going an entire full relief season without allowing a homer, although the pedestrian-at-best 4.65 ERA makes him more of an Aaron Bummer-type breakout.
With the 40th anniversary celebration of the 1984 Tigers team approaching, Chet Lemon's family has revealed the health battle he's been fighting, as 13 strokes have left him largely unable to speak. It's a story that's both brutal and remarkable, because while his vocabulary has been reduced to "dee dough," the support he's received from his family brings so much depth to those syllables.
