Here are just a few stats from the Chicago White Sox’s record-breaking season. They were ranked last in the majors in scoring (3.1 runs per game), batting average (.221), on-base percentage (.278) and slugging (.340). Their pitchers also have the highest team earned-run average in the American League (4.68), ranking just above the National League’s Miami Marlins (4.73) and Colorado Rockies (5.47) for the worst in the majors.
I love these recent remarks by deflecting White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf: “Everyone in this organization is extremely unhappy with the results of this season, that goes without saying. This year has been very painful for all, especially our fans.”
As a 70-plus-year White Sox fan, my only response is: How dare you?
After the Sox lost 101 games last year and became the worst MLB team in the modern era this year, Reinsdorf’s frugal (no, cheap), non-data-driven mismanagement and interference have brought us to where we are. Maybe he is just pouting about Chicago fans’ poor reception of his buddy manager choice Tony La Russa. We loyal Sox fans are far more bewildered by his recent classic statement: “We did not arrive here overnight, and solutions won’t happen overnight either.” Newsflash: No solutions will happen with Reinsdorf’s continued failed leadership.
The passing of Chicago Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz and the assumption of new family leadership by son Rocky in 2007 is the only model for a White Sox recovery. This simple example, from the hapless Blackhawks of the 1980s and 1990s to annual Stanley Cup favorites under the now-late Rocky Wirtz’s ownership for almost a decade, might provide us a window of hope for the White Sox.
On the White Sox’s opening day this year, I heard a cacophony of endless chants of “Sell the team.” In the final home stand against the Angels to an almost full stadium of fans and others hoping to witness the history of this all-time embarrassing season, we could hear the same “Sell the team” chorus now some 160-plus games later.
We White Sox fans deserve better from any owner of our team. Our only plea might just be, “Rocky, please give us a little divine intervention.”
— Dennis Terdy, Glen Ellyn
Some Sox stars didn’t give all
On the post-game show after the Chicago White Sox won one of the games in the last home stand versus the California Angels, analyst and former Sox manager Ozzie Guillen felt that the Sox could win the final three games of their season. Tying the modern-day loss record for the MLB, OK. Breaking it, not OK.
I wonder how many fans shared Guillen’s desire to see the Sox win out the rest of the season. I know I did. I felt the momentum and cherished the hope. The players had enough pride to go for it and take three from the surging Detroit Tigers. But did all of them?
At times like this, it’s time for the big boys to show up. Most of them did. But where was Luis Robert Jr. in the late innings? And Garrett Crochet, going only four scoreless innings?
I was amazed to see Dominic Fletcher, a good right fielder, muffing a catch in center field he was there to make and giving up a triple. And then not getting back to the wall to prevent a double thereafter, while Robert was nursing sore ribs? I think Robert has all winter to nurse his soreness.
The record was on the line. The game was still in hand. And then Crochet.
I forget. Was it his decision or management‘s decision to limit his playing time to four innings every outing? If Crochet wasn’t out there to put himself on the line for the team and try to go at least seven scoreless innings, then he shouldn’t have been out there at all.
I think that hurts the most. More than the team having the worst season in modern baseball history, it was the fact that some of the stars, the big boys, weren’t putting it all on the line and trying to win for the team.
My heart goes out to the White Sox players — all the veterans and young guys who came to play every day.
I think the old saying still rings true. “It’s not about winning or losing. It’s all about how you play the game.”
— Joe Artabasy, Glencoe
Reinsdorf as bad as Bill Wirtz
The White Sox’s season is thankfully over. The Sox should change stadium sponsorship from Guaranteed Rate Field to Waste Management Dump. Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is to Chicago baseball what William “Dollar Bill” Wirtz was to Chicago hockey.
— Joel W. Ostrander, Oak Park
Possible names for stadium
As a longtime White Sox fan who grew up in Queens and watched the Mets struggle through their first season in 1962, all I can say is: Mets player Ed Kranepool died for our sins. It’s too bad Ed wasn’t alive to witness the Sox’s feat, but since the curse of Marvelous Marv Throneberry has finally been lifted, the ghost of Comiskey Park is searching for a new name for its field of dreams, one that befits its guaranteed rate of annual losses.
The Nolo Grounds sounds catchy, but Pray Stadium is a double entendre that just can’t be beat.
As those on the South Side are wont to say, wait till next beer.
— Dennis Rohatyn, San Diego, California
Marketing promo for 2025
Now that the historic 2024 season is over, it is time to think about 2025.
The Sox marketing team should own up to this bad year and use it in its 2025 marketing campaign. Based on the Sox’s 2024 record of 41 wins and 121 losses, the Sox could offer ticket pricing based on their win and loss totals. A 10-pack of upper deck tickets could be offered for $121, while a 10-pack of box seat tickets could be offered for $410. The marketing slogan should be, “We stunk last year,” and the spokesperson should be Pepe Le Pew.
Another marketing slogan based on their 1983 season could be “1983 winning ugly, 2024 losing uglier.”
— Cary Riske, Grayslake
A caveat for stadium plans
I’d love to see new stadiums. Who wouldn’t? So let the Bears and the Sox make their pitches, justifying public investment by forecasting economic impact to the communities of a magnitude that makes sense for the taxpayers.
Then let’s add a simple caveat that if those lofty projections do not come through, the teams will make up the difference and make the taxpayers whole.
— Michael Strauss, Inverness
‘Clear and free’ argument
Several letters writers have invoked the phrase “forever open, clear, and free” in arguing against the building of a new Bears stadium on Chicago’s lakefront. While this is a worthwhile sentiment for dealing with our 30 miles of lakefront, it is important to remember that this language has legal significance only for the land along Grant Park downtown.
Lois Wille, who won two Pulitzer Prizes and was in charge of the Tribune’s editorial page in the 1980s, published in 1991 a wonderful book, “Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago’s Lakefront,” which described how Montgomery Ward in the late 19th and early 20th centuries used this language in his Michigan Avenue property easement to prevent Marshall Field from building his natural history museum in Grant Park. Ward took his case to the Illinois Supreme Court. That is why our museum campus is located on the lakefront but south of Roosevelt Road.
— Richard Badger, Chicago
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