As any sports fan knows, it’s hard to be on a bandwagon when there isn’t one. Such is the life for Chicago White Sox followers, one of whom writes this column. To say the Sox and I have a history is an understatement, and understating the White Sox is about the easiest thing in baseball these days.
It began when my parents drove 16 hours in July heat with the windows open (no AC), from Winnipeg to Chicago, and introduced their eight-year-old son to major-league baseball. Watching the White Sox and the New York Yankees, who beat on them the way everybody does now, became a life-long commitment of the heart. The exception was an 11-year sabbatical to cover the Montreal Expos, for print and electronic media outlets, in what will always be Canada’s most unique sports city.
Seeing Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra from binocular distance without binoculars was incidental. This was the home team’s park, and I was there to see the White Sox, about to become a fan of…wait for it, Walt Dropo. A first-baseman, Dropo smacked a two-run homer to tie the game, had six hits in three games against the Yankees, and impressed an impressionable eight-year-old enough to buy his own first-baseman’s mitt.
That launched a long relationship with the Sox. When they reached the World Series and crushed Los Angeles 11-0 in Game One, I hung on every pitch through the magic of television, which was magic then. I was convinced they’d win for the first time since the Black Sox Scandal (“Say It Ain’t So, Joe”), 40 years earlier, but the Dodgers won four of the next five games. It was 46 more seasons before the Sox returned to the World Series, and when they won it to end an 88-year drought — the second-longest in baseball — I was watching from an outdoor condo patio in California. I remember saying: “I never thought I’d see this happen.”
There were some personal highlights.
In the ’60s, I befriended a 19-year-old minor-league outfielder (I was 17) who later played for the White Sox. Walt Williams was a friend for years and on my next Chicago visit, I stayed with him and his wife on the south side. Daily treks to Comiskey Park — I was then a sports writer (think “press pass”) — included covering “my” first no-hitter and right-hander Joe Horlen’s only one.
In 1991, I introduced our family of five to “new” Comiskey Park, beside the old one, still awaiting the wrecking ball. Our eldest child’s favourite player was Sox third-baseman Robin Ventura. In 2016, my wife and I met Ventura (his request, not ours) on a street in Arizona, during spring training. He was the manager, and that led to more White Sox games in Chicago.
His team wasn’t yet good, and still isn’t. In fact, today’s White Sox have baseball’s worst record, five games “better” than the second-worst. They lose three-quarters of their games and they’re on pace for 120 losses, which only the ’62 Mets managed. In May, they were on a pace to be shut out 59 times — the record is 33.
One recent headline: “Your Sox smell.”
For teams that bad, there are no bandwagons.
