We’re now in the baseball offseason. And while I have hockey to keep me company while we wait for pitchers and catchers to report to spring training, I wanted to briefly remember what could have been: another Phillies deep run. I remember the magic run we made in 2022 to erase years of sports shows showing Ryan Howard’s gruesome Achilles tear in 2011. Howard’s injury was my first initiation into the emotional devastation Philadelphia sports can bring me; his injury almost immediately erased the joy I felt from watching the Phillies win in 2008. I then had to endure a nearly decade-long rebuild featuring the joys of middling players like Freddy Galvis and Maikel Franco, players that I thought were good in the halycon days of my childhood. And then we got Bryce Harper in 2019 and slowly but surely over the next few years improved. I’m proud of the success I’ve seen (and the many reasons to troll Braves fans) but I very much would like another trophy to see, please and thank you.
Now the above paragraph is me being conciliatory. The next paragraph is not that.
It would have been REALLY nice if we had made it PAST THE FIRST ROUND. Would’ve been even nicer if we extended our first-half success TO THE SECOND HALF. Would have been even nicer if we hadn’t been blown out by the Athletics, who don’t even have a stadium and the Yankees, who saved their choking for Game 5 of the World Series and also DIDNT HAVE A POST ALL STAR BREAK SLUMP. ALL OF OUR RIVALS WERE EITHER ELIMINATED IN THE PLAYOFFS OR DIDN’T MAKE IT OR WERE VERY BEATABLE BUT NO OUR OFFENSE JUST HAD TO SHUT DOWN AND WASTE AMAZING PERFORMANCES FROM OUR ACES. YOU DISAPPOINTED MY MOM. MY MOM WHO WATCHED ERIC LINDROS (I am seriously not kidding, one of these days I’ll write about the Legion of Doom one of these days) AND WATCHED YOU WASTE ZACK WHEELER’S PERFORMANCE IN GAME ONE. HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO HIM??? WE BETTER START SIGNING MORE PEOPLE SOON ISTG I DO NOT WANT US RUNNING IT BACK. JUST LOOK AT THE NEW YORK RANGERS AND HOW RUNNING IT BACK HAS AFFECTED THEM. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Even in the deepest pits of my Philadelphia sports-induced agony, I can hold solace in this one truth: at least they’re not the White Sox. Yes, the team that had such a bright future just a few years ago, even making it to the playoffs in 2021, has had consecutive 100-loss seasons in 2023 and 2024 (101 losses in 2023 and 121 in 2024). Somehow tying the Philadelphia Kansas City Oakland Athletics, a team that managed to anger everyone in leaving Oakland for a potential move to Las Vegas (that is, if their stadium deal in Vegas gets approved) in incompetence is a feat I did not see coming in this year. And that team lost more games than the White Sox LAST year. Now there have been many good videos as to why the White Sox have set the single-season franchise record in losses, as well as an Athletic article that exposed how the White Sox barely had analytics departments and was a boys club for Jerry Reinsdorf that rivals Don Sweeney’s Bruins or Stan Bowman’s Chicago Blackhawks—how do you think they covered up video coach’s Brad Aldritch’s sexual assault of a hockey player for so long?—.
And yes, the losses were funny. When you can put one of their fielding gaffes against the Fightins to Yakety Sax, that becomes a team that will reach great heights of ignominy. I mean, Kevin Brown had the call of the year when he called a White Sox outfield collision against the Orioles that led to runs scoring as “The White Sox have gone full White Sox.” (Some advice for life (and possibly for baseball): never go full White Sox. ) And the losing just got worse; from a 21-game losing streak that tied the 1988 Baltimore Orioles for the longest losing streak in the American League to baseball analysts and announcers comparing this team to the 1962 Mets and the 1899 Cleveland Spiders (also the 2003 Detroit Tigers, who are in the same division as the White Sox, but they lost a paltry 119 games). At least the Mets and Spiders had reasons to lose so many—the Mets were a first-year expansion team and the Spiders were torn apart by the organization moving many of their best players to St. Louis—. The White Sox have nothing to blame but their incompetent ownership.
On the same day that the Phillies clinched a playoff bye into the division series, I was watching a different record clincher on the extremely overpriced MLB.tv streaming service (seriously MLB has to slash the prices of their streaming service). The Tigers, amid an August to September hot streak, were playing the White Sox to clinch an unforeseen playoff berth. The White Sox were playing for a more ignominious goal, which was to not set the modern (since 1901) single-loss record. They had held this humiliating achievement off by winning against the Angels (which led to the team setting their single-season loss record with 97 games).
But the Tigers were not at the same level as middling to horrendous. The Tigers took the first lead with a two-run fifth inning. While the White Sox did get a run back in the top of the sixth, the Tigers added two more runs in the bottom of the seventh courtesy of a Matt Vierling double and Fraser Ellard scoring on a wild pitch to win 4-1. I texted my shift partner at my library job at school (shout out Bryn Mawr Libraries!!) that I would be a few minutes late just to witness this hilarious achievement, which is funnily enough the most the White Sox have achieved since the 2005 World Series win that only their fanbase remembers. Speaking of the fanbase, I could hear White Sox fans chanting “Sell the Team” at previous games; perhaps Jerry will. But that is a more hopeful outlook; given his decision to remain the White Sox owner as long as he lives, White Sox nation will have to prepare for more incompetence.
I guess the lesson here with the 2024 White Sox is how bad ownership, namely ownership surrounding oneself with yes men, as well as a refusal to adapt to the changes of the game, leads to such tire fires as the White Sox. As I’m planning to write about the upcoming MLB season, in particular, the Philadelphia Kansas City Oakland Athletics’ move to Sacramento as well as the Rays playing in the Yankees spring training field due to Tropicana Fields’ drubbing by Hurricane Milton, I am taking the White Sox as a hilarious yet meaningful lesson into incompetent ownership. Stay tuned for more of my thoughts on this.
Also, thank you for sticking with me. I had to take time and finish my undergraduate degree and will be back to publishing on here somewhat frequently, as I am still in the job hunt at the moment. Oh, and I also will be starting at Drexel next fall to pursue my MILIS (Masters In Library Science) (#NewDragon) so there’s that. Here’s to more articles on sports, books, and whatever else interests me!!!