Posts Tagged ‘chicago white sox’

History awaits as Chicago White Sox might finish with worst MLB season ever

Posted: April 21, 2024 by John Ruberry in baseball, Sports
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Blogger at a White Sox game

By John Ruberry

History is unfolding on Chicago’s South Side.

Three weeks into the 2024 Major League Baseball season, the Chicago White Sox are 3-18, a .143 winning percentage. If they continue at this pace, at the end of the 162-game season, they will finish far worse than the benchmark of modern baseball futility, the 1962 New York Mets season.

In their first National League campaign, those Mets ended up at 40-120, a .250 winning percentage. Or if you prefer, a .750 losing percentage. In 2003, the Detroit Tigers set the American League record for the most losses at 119. They started off that dreadful season at 3-22. 

More recently, the 2022 Cincinnati Reds matched the Tigers’ 25-game start, but sort-of rallied to conclude the season at 62-100.

But the Sox are probably in ’62 Mets and ’03 Tigers territory. Because this year’s South Siders aren’t just losing often, they are bottom feeders in most MLB team statistics. According to Yahoo Sports, the White Sox are 26th in WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched), 26th in earned run average, 30th in runs scored, 30th in batting average, 30th in home runs, and 30th in slugging percentage. For those who don’t follow baseball, there are 30 MLB teams.

The White Sox have nine batters hitting under .200. The South Siders’ pitchers have been equally ineffective. Last week, CBS Sports last week called the Sox “depressingly bad,” but singled out starting pitcher Garret Crochet as a bright spot with his 3.57 ERA. But on Friday night, Crochet was yanked in the 4th inning after surrendering seven runs. His ERA is now 5.61.

The best hitter for the White Sox has been third baseman Yoan Moncada, who leads the Sox batters with a .282 average. But after 11 games, Moncada was placed on the 60-day disabled list with a left adductor strain. He may not return this season.

Last week on X, user Jim Passon summed up the South Siders’ start. “White Sox this season: Lose 4 in-a-row win 1. Lose 5 in-a-row, win 1, Lose 6 in-a-row, win 1.”

Since that X post, the White Sox traveled to Philadelphia to lose three more, including Friday night’s Crochet loss. In the first two games of that series, the Phillies carried no-hitters into the seventh and the eighth innings. So far, the White Sox–and remember, they have played only 21 games–have been shut out seven times.

During the postgame show after Sunday’s loss, former White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen summed up the team’s season: “Overall, a lotta, lotta bad stuff.” 

Indeed.   

In 2023, under first year manager Pedro Grifol, the White Sox lost 101 games. While in 2021, under Hall of Fame skipper Tony LaRussa, the Sox won 93 games and topped the AL Central Division. Most analysts figured another 101 loss-or-so season was in order for the South Siders this season. Since the 2023 trade deadline–and into this year–the Sox have traded pitchers Lance Lynn, Joe Kelly, Aaron Bummer, and Dylan Cease for prospects.

Shortstop Tim Anderson, the 2019 American League batting champion, was not offered a contract after the ’23 season. Ironically, the Florida Marlins, who have MLB’s second worst record so far this season, signed him.

The worst American League start ever was 0-21, the 1988 Baltimore Orioles earned that dishonor. Larry Sheets was an outfielder for those O’s. His son, Gavin Sheets, also an outfielder, plays for this year’s White Sox team. Father and son have a lot to talk about.

The White Sox, although the 2024 season is still young, have a very good chance to surpass the Mets’ 1962 record for the worst modern era MLB season of the modern era.

It might be a bit late for the White Sox to add a marketing slogan for the ’24 campaign, but seriously, my idea might sell some tickets and gain some television viewers.

“History awaits, see your 2024 Chicago White Sox.”

The legendary Casey Stengel was the manager of the ’62 Mets, he called his team “the Amazin’ Mets.” Yes, they were. And that team’s first baseman, Marvelous Marv Throneberry, made a living off of that team’s notoriety.

Let’s not overlook the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who suffered thru a 20-134 .130 percentage National League season. 

History awaits the White Sox.

Finally, in a case of wretched timing, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is asking for state and municipal funding to build a new stadium for his team. The Bears have their hand out for a new stadium too. The toothless Monsters of the Midway have finished with the worst record in the NFL the past two seasons. Both teams play in taxpayer funded stadiums that are relatively new; in fact, the bonds for both facilities are not been paid off yet.

It’s a bit like a kid who smashes the car his parents bought for him asking for a new automobile as the vehicle he wrecked is being towed away.

UPDATE April 22:

There was another shutout loss for the White Sox tonight, their eighth. The Minnesota Twins topped the South Siders 7-0.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

If the White Sox move to Nashville, I might already be there to welcome them–with updates

Posted: August 27, 2023 by John Ruberry in baseball, crime, News/opinion
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By John Ruberry

For the second straight post at Da Tech Guy, I’m writing about crime in Chicago.

Outside of the Oakland Athletics, who are on pace to lose over 110 games and may be headed to Las Vegas next season, no MLB team has had a worse season than the Chicago White Sox. 

Predicted to finish around the .500 mark–which is where they finished up, exactly, in 2022–the South Siders never recovered from an April 10-game losing streak. 

The Sox on are pace to lose 100 game this year, which is how many they lost in 2018. That season, the White Sox unloaded several veteran players, kicking off a rebuild project with the goal of bringing the World Series championship back to the South Side for the first time since 2005. That rebuild brought the Sox to the playoffs in 2020 and 2021, but they won only two playoff games–losing five.

Another teardown occurred this July, the White Sox are in rebuild mode again.

August has been even worse for the Sox. Longtime team owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, known to be loyal to a fault with the front office staff of the White Sox and the Chicago Bulls–Reinsdorf owns that team too–uncharacteristically fired the top two men in the White Sox front office, Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams. A couple of days later, news broke that the White Sox, a charter member of the American League, might move out of its current stadium, the state-owned Guaranteed Rate Field, its home since 1991, to elsewhere in Chicago, or perhaps to the suburbs or even Nashville. The Sox have six years left on their lease at Guaranteed Rate Field. 

On Friday night, in a game where the Sox were punished 12-4 against those otherwise awful Athletics, a female fan in the left field bleachers was shot in the abdomen, another woman was grazed by a bullet. 

A move to the suburbs–perhaps joining the Chicago Bears in Arlington Heights–or to Tennessee, probably is more attractive now more than ever for Reinsdorf.

The woman who was shot Friday night is in fair condition, the fan who was grazed by the bullet declined medical care.

According to the quite reliable CWB Chicago, police officials are exploring the possibility that the bullet that wounded the woman may have been fired from a mile away. A gunshot detection system detected gunfire a mile southeast of Guaranteed Rate Field–in the Bronzeville neighborhood. The White Sox and the CPD, in several statements, have said that the shooting was not part of any altercation inside the ballpark.

If CWB Chicago is correct, the Sox and the city of Chicago still have a big problem. And there is an historic precedent that bodes poorly for professional baseball on Chicago’s South Side.

The rise in criminality since 2020 has been the dominant news story in Chicago, despite subtle attempts by the mainstream media to minimize it. Headlines routinely speak of people “injured” in shootings, rather than using the correct verb, which is “wounded.” The first Chicago Police Department statement on the Guaranteed Rate gunshots spoke of a “shooting incident,” rather than a “shooting.”

Another MLB “shooting incident,” actually a homicide, took place during batting practice before a July 4 doubleheader between the host New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds–in the Coogan’s Bluff area of upper Manhattan in 1950. The post World War II decline of New York was underway, although the city was years away from bottoming out. The way NYC’s fictional doppelganger, Gotham City, was portrayed in the Joker movie is a pretty accurate portrayal of what New York was destined to become.

A teenager, in a twisted way to celebrate the Fourth of July, fired a gun from the roof of an apartment building a half-mile away from the Polo Grounds. A fan sitting in the upper deck, Bernard “Barney” Doyle, was instantly killed by the stray bullet. A horrifying photograph of Doyle slumped over, dead of course, was on the front page of the New York Daily News the next day. That pic probably gave New Yorkers nightmares for years.

The Giants struggled at the gate in the 1950s. Despite winning the World Series in 1954, only 1.1 million fans crossed the Polo Grounds turnstiles that season. In their last two seasons at the Polo Grounds, only the pathetic Washington Senator’s had worse attendance. City Journal’s Clark Whelton, writing about the Doyle killing in 2018, claims the crime was “quickly forgotten.” I’m not so sure. But Whelton did add of the team’s owner, Horace Stoneham, that he was “said to have brooded for years about Doyle’s strange demise and the run-down buildings on Coogan’s Bluff.”

In 1958, the Giants and Dodgers abandoned New York for California. When they arrived, there were plenty of Giants and Dodgers fans who had moved out to the Golden State before them.

As our day jobs wind down, Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I are eyeing our exit from crime-ridden, crumbling, corrupt, and tax-greedy Illinois. Tennesse is at the top of our list for our next, and likely last, home. Both of us watched Joker for the first time this month. We compared Gotham City to today’s Chicago.

Why should we stay here?

Wouldn’t it be great if we, as Tennessee residents, were there to welcome the White Sox to Nashville?

UPDATE August 28, 2023, 7:15pm EDT:

Thank you to Dan Proft of WIND-AM Chicago. He, along with Amy Jacobson, co-host Chicago’s Morning Answer–a show I Iisten to, either over the air, or by way of the podcast, nearly every weekday–for mentioning this post on the air today. Look for Proft’s take around the 9 minute mark.

Also, here’s an update, and I have a strong feeling there will be more than one for this blog entry. Chicago’s interim police superintendant, Fred Waller, in a press conference this afternoon, discussed what his public affairs callously called a “a shooting incident” on Friday night. It was a shooting. “We’re dispelling a lot of things,” Waller said. As for where the bullets originated, he added that “coming from outside [Guaranteed Rate Field] is something we’ve almost completely dispelled.”

Still, fans who have bought tickets to a Sox game, or are considering doing so, probably have a lot on their minds now, to say the least.

UPDATE August 29, 2023 4:20pm EDT:

This story keeps getting stranger. There was online chatter that one of the women who was shot had sneaked the gun inside Guaranteed Rate Field beneath her belly rolls. I mean, what kind of people make up stuff like that?

Well, they may not have to do so.

Here’s what longtime Chicago sports reporter, Peggy Kusinski just tweeted:

“As I reported on @ESPN1000 just now… the shooting at Guaranteed Rate Field during a #WhiteSox game was indeed an accidental discharge by one of the women “grazed” by the bullet. She reportedly snuck the gun in past metal detectors hiding it in the folds of her belly fat.”

ESPN 1000 AM is the White Sox flagship radio station. It’s a credible source and Kusinski is a solid journalist.

If true, this news is a black mark for the White Sox fan base. What type of person brings a handgun to a baseball game? On the other hand, after the game, in a heavily hyped promotion, Vanilla Ice was to be the headliner of a “90s Night” concert. Were the women there for the Sox-Athletics game or for the postgame show? The White Sox cancelled the gig due to what they called “technical difficulties.” They lied. Shame on the White Sox. Police officers wanted to keep stadium lights on to look for evidence.

And how does a gun detection system miss a firearm hidden in belly rolls?

And what about the Chicago Police Department? Interim superintendent Waller said in a Monday press conference, “At one point in time it was requested as a precaution” to cancel the game. But the game played on. Who made that call to continue? The White Sox? The police? Mayor Brandon Johnson? The women who were shot are said to be teachers. Johnson is a product of the Chicago Teachers Union, for whom he was a longtime organizer, and Johnson is a former CPS teacher. Johnson’s political career is a creation of the CTU.

Without a doubt, I’ll have at least one more update.

Update August 29, 2023, 9:15pm EDT:

Second City Cop is hinting about the “graze wound” woman, that the injury may have been a power burn, is a Chicago Public Schools teacher.

UPDATE: A CPS teacher had the gun?

UPDATE: A CPS teacher with a suburban home address?

John Ruberry, a lifetime Chicago White Sox fan, blogs five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

Dynasty 1996 Short Season 16 team, Draft League AL West The Story so Far…

Posted: May 12, 2023 by datechguy in baseball, dynasty baseball, gaming, online gaming
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You’ve now gotten a glimpse of the AL east in my Dynasty 16 team short season (80 games once a week) league. Lets continue with a look at the AL West. (Current as of 5/11/23 Noon EST)

WestWLPCTGB
Toronto95.643——
Minnesota106.625____
Seattle 85.6151/2
Chicago67.4622 1/2

Toronto: 9-5 1st place (tie)

The good news : Ellis Burkes is tearing it up with a .393 avg 4 HR and 15 RBI’s He is in the AL Top three in Avg, Slugging, OBS, HR & RBI. Pat Mears has been a pleasant surprise hitting .302 with a pair of triples while Brian McRae has scored 12 runs with only 14 hits. Meanwhile Troy Percival has been lights out 5-5 in save chances and their Team ERA of 3.24 is tops in the AL and 2nd in the Majors.

The Bad News: No team has swung and missed more than Toronto with 136K’s in 14 games and Cecil Fielder (8K .174 avg) and Ed Sprague (17K’s .184) have only one HR between them in 51 AB. With the glove their .976 fielding is 2nd to last in the AL only Cleveland has done worse with the normally sure handed Mike Lansing with 4 errors in 14 games

Didn’t see that coming: Toronto Relievers Kent Bottenfield, Mike Jackson, Tory Percival and Jim Poole combined have appeared in 14 games, pitched 20 1/3 innings and have yet to give up an earned run

Medical Report: Rusty Greer was hurt early in the season and won’t be back for this homestand and isn’t expect back until the team hits LA although there is an outside chance he makes the last game in Minnesota, The prognosis on John Valentin who went down during the Seattle series is much better as he’s expected to be able to make the the Atlanta Series before the team hits the road for six.

Coming Attractions: Toronto has two more against Cleveland and hosts Atlanta for a pair before going on a six game road trip ending in LA but starting with a critical four games at Minnesota.

Minnesota: 10-6 1st place (tie)

The good news : Their +23 run differential is the AL’s best fueled by Johnny Damon whose .451 avg and 1.237 OPS both lead the majors Chuck Knoblauch .354 1 HR 11 RBI, and Mark Whiten .295 2HR 12 RBI are big reasons for it. Ben McDonald 3-0 with a 1.73 leads the league.

The Bad News: Brad Radke 5.21 ERA and no decisions in three starts. Javy Lopez has disappointed with the bat .191 1 HR 8 RBI and the glove he and Brian Johnson have a combined 25 stolen bases and 4 errors between them with only 5 caught. Whiten is wowing with the bat but already has 2 errors in the outfield and Jason Giambi .220 1 HR 7 RBI .270 OBP, and Garret Anderson .182 0 HR 1 RBI 1 R scored have underperformed.

Didn’t see that coming: Pedro Martinez 2-1 3.94 ERA

Medical Report: They feel fine

Coming Attractions: Minnesota’s home stand continues with Florida in for 2 and a huge 4 game series with Toronto interrupted briefly for a pair in St. Louis before they come back home for 3 vs the Yanks

Seattle: 8-5 .615 3rd place 1/2 GB

The good news : Albert Belle has been a monster at the bat hitting ,339 with 6 HR and 13 RBI. A-Rod only has 3 HR but has driven in 10. Jeff Cirillo his hitting .333 and has an OBP over .400

The Bad News: Dan Naulty has a 1.08 ERA but with an 0-2 record with only a 50% save rate (1 in 2 chances) Ken Griffey Jr. .214 1 HR 5 RBI

Didn’t see that coming: Randy Johnson in the bullpen 1-0 1.29 ERA 3 saves in 4 chances

Medical Report: Daren Oliver who was hurt in his 2nd start will be available for the final game of their series with Boston but with a record of 0-1 and an ERA of 10.29 the question is, will he come back to the rotation?

Coming Attractions: Seattle faces Boston and Pittsburgh on their current homestand before traveling for 4 against the White sox in Chicago and a pair in Houston before they see home again.

Chicago : 6-7 .313 4th place 2 1/2 GB

The good news : Marty Cordova has been a pleasant surprise with his .351 avg he and Steve Finley both have six doubles tied for 3rd in the AL Frank Thomas line is .300 4 HR 10 RBI with a 1.004 OBS. Alex Fernandez is making other teams earn their way on as his 1.57 walks per nine innings demonstrates. Steve Finley already has 2 outfield assists and Robin Ventura and Omar Visquel have only one error in 113 chances and the White Sox are tied for the fewest runs given up in the majors.

The Bad News: Unfortunately while giving up the fewest runs Chicago is also dead last in the AL in hits, batting avg (.242) and OBP. .311. White teams don’t score runs on Chicago they sure can run against them as Mike Macfarlane has caught only 1 of 11 runners trying to steal 0.91.

Didn’t see that coming: Mark McGuire .132 0 HR 2 RBI BUT .353 OBP 13 walks (3rd in league)

Medical Report: Every is healthy just not contributing much

Coming Attractions: Chicago has a nine game homestand with the Yanks coming in for 3 Cincy for two and then four huge games vs Seattle before hitting the road.

UPDATE: Had Baltimore coming attractions for Chicago, fixed.

Like Disco Demolition, the Bud Light Dylan Mulvaney debacle is a black swan moment for the elites

Posted: April 23, 2023 by John Ruberry in baseball, business, culture, entertainment, media, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

A societal seismic shift, a black swan moment, occurred for the American elite, our “betters,” on April 1. Yep, April Fools Day, but the joke was on the elites. It was April 1 when on his–yes his–Instragram page, the transgendered influencer, Dylan Muvlaney, announced his sponsorhip deal with Bud Light, a beer brewed by Anheuser-Busch that is, or was, favored mainly by macho types.

The backlash was immediate. A boycott of the brew–with conservative celebrities leading the charge began–and Anheuser-Busch has since lost $5 billion in value.

Receiving the blame for this debacle is Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, who went on a leave of absence last week.

It’s likely that Bud Light triggered a tripwire, likely, to use Bill Maher’s words, Americans are angry because “they’ve had an agenda shoved down their throat.” Like the dimwitted sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, many elites, particularly in the media, believe transgendered women are women. Most Americans disagree. 

And most Americans, unless they are woke, aren’t dopes. They know that males have an inherent physical advantage over women in most sports. If they decide to think about it–they know that the annual physical for Rachel Levine, the Biden administration’s assistant secretary for health who is transgendered, consists of a prostate exam. They are aware that after “gender-affirming” surgeries, some trans people want to switch back.

These same people are horrified of reports that some school officials, without knowledge of their parents, are encouraging minors to “transition.”

And these same folks are fed up with being called a bigot or some sort of “phobe” when they raise their objections to the transgender ideological movement.

And they are sick of transgendered women appearing in clothing ads wearing garments designed for females. 

Unlike Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, most Americans are able define what a woman is. And they know that men cannot give birth to babies.

As for the elites, many of whom like Heinerscheid have an Ivy League education, they’re the types of folks who don’t interact with smelly people who drink Bud Light. These smug know-it-alls are stupefied that the Mulvaney sponsorship has damaged the brand. 

The elites live in their bubble, which makes them quite vulnerable to a black swan moment.

What has happened to Bud Light takes me back to 1979 and the Disco Demolition stunt that was part of a Chicago White Sox Teen Night promotion during a twi-night doubleheader with the Detroit Tigers. Oh, “Disco Sucks” wasn’t just a Chicago thing, I saw my first “Disco Sucks” T-shirt a year earlier on sale on the boardwalk at Ocean City, Maryland.

I was a 17-year-old when Steve Dahl, a morning disc jockey for rock station WLUP-FM, began humorously “blowing up” disco records during his show. He’d play some crappy–aren’t they all?–disco tune for thirty-seconds or so, and then blow them up, not for real, but with sound effects. Dahl also took his act on the road, including a mock “takeover” of a suburban disco club, and the same thing happened at each event. Crowd control was an issue–too many people in too small of a space.

Surely, Mike Veeck, the son of White Sox owner Bill Veeck, thought that Comiskey Park, the home of the White Sox, could comfortably host Dahl and his minions, known as the Insane Coho Lips. The ballpark had a capacity of 45,000. 

But the doubleheader sold out and there were an estimated thirty thousand others outside Comiskey Park clamoring to get in. Teens who deposited disco records at the turnstiles were admitted for 98 cents, which was dirt cheap even in 1979. 

Dahl, in faux military garb, as you’ll see in the YouTube clip, exploded the records in spectacular fashion as the Insane Coho Lips chanted “disco sucks” following the conclusion of the first game of the doubleheader, a White Sox defeat. Immediately afterwards, about 7,000 of the rockers stormed the field and a riot broke out, one that included destroying the batting cage and igniting the crate from where the records were exploded. It was rock and roll’s first saturnalia. Police in riot gear promptly ended Disco Demolition 90 minutes later, and because the field was deemed by the umpires as unsafe for play, the second game was forfeited to the Tigers.

I watched the game at home on television with my parents and my brother. I hated disco and loved rock and roll, so I looked on with mixed emotions because I was also a Sox fan. I didn’t object when my brother pointed at me and said, “Hey, mom and dad, there are thousands of them on the TV, who are just like your son, tearing up the field.” Hey, don’t forget, I was 17 at the time.

Retro historians, often people who were born years after Disco Demolition, have tried to turn that night into a racist or anti-gay thing. Wrong. The people I knew who listened to disco were shallow and vapid–just like the music. It was love at first sight for them.

Here’s the disco black swan moment. 

The Disco Demolition coverage from the media, particularly the national media, was one of shock. Even more so than now, the elite media was based in New York, and they were the people who hung out at disco’s hallowed temple, Studio 54 in Manhattan. They lived in their ’70s bubble, one that didn’t include people who loved rock music and wore “Disco Sucks” T-shirts.

Up until Steve Dahl blew up those records, disco was seemingly everywhere–on TV shows, in commercials, and in the movies, most notably, with John Travolta dancing in Saturday Night Fever. Rock acts, including the Rolling Stones, the Kinks (sadly, one of my favorite bands), and Rod Stewart, recorded songs with a disco beat.

But post-Disco Demolition Night, the media, as well as the advertising and marketing “experts,” realized, after the totality of the riot, that more people hated disco than liked it. Disco didn’t die that night–even a freight train experiencing engine problems can’t be stopped on a dime, but disco went into a fatal tailspin. A month after Disco Demolition, Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, a disco album, was released. It enjoyed brisk sales and a lot of airplay. But Jacko’s next album, Thriller, was more of an R&B album, it even included the King of Pop’s only hard rock song, “Beat It,” which was graced by guitar work from Eddie Van Halen.

Rockers had stopped cutting disco tracks well before Thriller was released.

A couple of weeks before Off the Wall arrived in record stores, principal photography began on a movie starring the Village People, Discoland . . . Where the Music Never Stops. Sensing trouble because of the anti-disco backlash, the film’s producer, Allan Carr, changed the name of his project to Can’t Stop the Music. It’s remembered as a legendary Hollywood box office bomb.

As the saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes.” One of supporting actors in Can’t Stop the Music was Bruce Jenner, who now goes by Caitlyn. 

By the early 1980s, the expression “As dead as disco” was common. 

Transgenderism isn’t going away. Over my life I’ve known a few men who have gone thru procedures that allows them, sort of, to live as women. Fine, it’s their life. If, as an adult, men and women want to transform themselves into something different, well, no one should stop them. The same goes for people who want to obliterate their faces with tattoos.

On the other hand, don’t shove your choice down our throats and demand us to celebrate you.

In the advertising and marketing world, using transgendered spokespeople to promote mainstream products just might be as dead as disco.

No one wants to be the next Alissa Heinerscheid. Her job was to sell Bud Light, not to drive people to avoid it.

There was never a Can’t Stop the Music sequel.

Marketing people must not be good at math. One percent of the population identifies as transgendered. Which means of course means 99 percent doesn’t.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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