If only the Cubs, Sox knew this is a baseball town
Optimism, that rascal, hides among the empty seats of White Sox park, or out there in Wrigley’s ivy. It lurks somewhere near the bottom of the standings, though in the case of the Sox it is more like the loungings or the loafings, not exactly upright in any case.
It is going to end, this season of dismay, for the Cubs, less obviously awful than the Sox, as we include both halves of the sour sandwich that is baseball around here.
The Sox need your prayers, it’s true, but save a few for the Cubbies, too, neither could do what they wanted to and now they’re … well, worse than we thought.
When did it all go wrong? In the case of the Cubs, it was when a perfectly competent and respected manager, David Ross, was dismissed for something shinier, up in Milwaukee of all places, not where anyone usually looks to trade up.
Enter Craig Counsell, excuses at the ready, unable to beat his old team, perfectly capable of having a worse season than the guy whose job he stole, eliminated from the postseason two weeks earlier.
Other than the delightful pitcher Shota Imanaga, and possibly the potential of center field hyphenate, Pete Crow-Armstrong, the Cubs are face cards in a used deck, familiar and faded at the same time.
But we are discussing optimism, always handy when the Cubs are the topic and if not to the level of chairman Tom Ricketts’ spring prediction of division dominance, there is always next year. The Cubs invented next year.
Said Counsell, the challenge is “daunting,” not an optimistic word, but he is still new to curses and such. A better word would be “anticipating.” In the large heart of Cubdom, dawn is always arriving, success is always expected. Failure may be inevitable and heartache might be inescapable but all is forgivable.
The specialness of the Cubs is that they are burdened by affection, while, alas, the White Sox struggle to step up from being uninvited guests, as disconnected as an in-law with a foot out the door.
The White Sox seem to want to be anywhere but where they are and even where they are is not an alibi for what they are. And what they are is the worst team in the history of modern baseball, “modern” meaning when they started putting numbers on the shirts.
Failure has many fathers, to twist an old bit of wisdom. In the case of the White Sox, there is a waiting room full of possibles.
The favorite Sox contender is octogenarian owner and serious stick-in-the-mud Jerry Reinsdorf, widely considered to be out of touch with modern baseball, and when I say “modern” I mean relying on a computer to tell you how deep to play your center fielder with a ghost runner on second base and a left-handed hitter on deck.
That’s the sort of thing we up-to-date thinkers dwell on when sorting through what once were hard earned instincts. Still, we do mourn the death of “inside baseball,” now a touch screen away from solutions and explanations.
Well, the probability of the release point and the exit velocity was factored by the chase rate and launch angle of the swing strike rate. And that’s why we didn’t walk their best hitter with first base open. See, how easy it is?
Tagging in to the Reinsdorf blame is Tony La Russa, the Hall of Fame manager who managed to gain fame elsewhere, a decade past his best when restored from being Reinsdorf’s “biggest regret.”
We all have at least one of those, I guess, but La Russa, who still hangs around after being deemed useless, like an old Teamster being allowed to play with toy trucks, damaged whatever promise the Sox showed by being as out of touch as Reinsdorf.
Subsequent to La Russa, others managed to sweep up the debris, their names lost to memory, like mismatched socks (no pun intended) in a laundry bag. Front office reordering solved nothing other than requiring a new letterhead.
And now the White Sox want a new stadium or a new city or a new adventure with fans in the stands when what they need is a new owner, new players and new optimism, easier said than found.