October’s End

Orange October The Chicago White Sox played in the postseason for the second straight season this year, something they have never achieved before in 120 years of baseball. The Sox won the “Field of Dreams” game on national TV in August, giving baseball fans everywhere (OK, except maybe New York) and generations of movie fans […]

Field of Fire

The White Sox needed this one. For about 102 years the White Sox have needed this one. The Sox got a two-run home run from All-Star shortstop Tim Anderson in the bottom of the ninth inning to defeat the New York Yankees 9-8 in the “Field of Dreams” game in Dyersville, Iowa Thursday night, a […]

The Return

November 2, 2020 The Dead Don’t Die We have always wanted to meet Mario Andretti because he was, is, and likely always shall be, the coolest dude on wheels. Andretti can drive any car, anywhere, at any time. He can ride a bike, play poker, and swim with dolphins. Mario Andretti doesn’t really even drive. […]

We’re Back (At Last)

We’re Back White Sox 4, All You Assholes Who Don’t Like The White Sox, 3 September 17, 2020 Two thousand eight. The world has changed a bit since then. Two thousand eight was the last time the Chicago White Sox made the playoffs and now they’re finally back, braving into the postseason based upon a […]

South Side Soaked

April 3, 2017 Opening Soak The Chicago White Sox opened the 2017 season by not opening it at all. The Sox, Tigers and more than 30,000 wet but well-fed and generously beveragized fans spent about three hours dodging rain drops at Guaranteed Rate Field, but all we got to see was the pregame introductions which […]

A-Hunting We Did Go

It was a cold, gray Saturday afternoon on the South Side, not a good day for a ballgame, and that was just as well because the White Sox were in New York. The game was being shown on the TVs scattered about the picnic area beneath the outfield of U.S. Cellular Field as Sox fans […]

White Sox Opening Day: Snowflakes, Fistfights and Fault Lines

The Chicago White Sox opened the 2016 season by winning three-of-four in Oakland due to great pitching, timely hitting, smart defense and a suspect opponent. The Sox then came home to Chicago’s South Side and were greeted by a winter blast which they only made worse with a woeful performance. The Sox looked cold in […]

Yogi

September 23, 2015 Yogi Yogi Berra was not a baseball player.  He was an American treasure. Lawrence Peter Berra grew up in St. Louis, served in World War II, played on some of the best baseball teams of all time in the 1940s, 50s and 60s and was not just a Hall of Famer but […]

Beauty Is In The Eye Of Those Who Don’t Care About Ugly Baseball Jerseys

  The 1970s returned to Chicago’s South Side on Thursday night, only this time, the disastrous decade was a bit kinder to the White Sox. The Sox topped the Seattle Mariners 4-2 on “70s Night” at U.S. Cellular Field, an event that featured great 1970s rock music, lamentable 70s disco music, Afro wigs, 70s trivia, […]

Baseball’s Weirdest Game

April 29, 2015 The Weirdest Day You could hear a pin drop. You could hear faraway laughter. Or whispers. You could hear the echo of a baseball smacking into a glove, off a bat or against an empty seat. It was baseball in a vacuum, in the Twilight Zone, in the land that fans forgot. […]

Minnie, Ernie and the Best and Saddest of Chicago Winters

It has been the best of winters and the worst of winters for Chicago baseball. The White Sox and Cubs spent the early part of the offseason stealing headlines from the Bears, Bulls and Blackhawks and competing with one another in the “Winter World Series” as both retooled their rosters and fueled talk of the […]

Thanks, Paulie

Goodbye, Paulie. The final weekend of baseball’s regular season saw the last game of a legendary American Leaguer who was tough in the clutch, a perennial All-Star, a favorite among fans and peers and a World Champion. We’re speaking, of course, about White Sox slugger Paul Konerko. That Konerko’s farewell season played out in the […]

Veeck – As In Wreck

Book Review: Veeck – As In Wreck Bill Veeck would have turned 100 this year and assuredly would have had a lot to say. Veeck is remembered for owning the Milwaukee Brewers, Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox at various points from the 1940s to the 1970s and his autobiography, Veeck – […]

White Sox Opening Day: Bloody Marys, Banana Splits and Unexpected Blasts

March 31, 2014 The Chicago White Sox opened the 2014 season by beating the Minnesota Twins, 5-3, at U.S. Cellular Field on Monday in a game played under sunny skies but a cloudy outlook. The Sox got power from two primary sources, one expected and one that was quite a surprise. Chris Sale delivered the […]

Big Frank – Hall of Famer

Frank Thomas, probably the greatest player in Chicago White Sox history, is headed to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, a validation of his talent, work ethic, durability and character. Thomas hit .301 over his 19-year career, the first 16 of which he spent on Chicago’s South Side.  He won two American League […]

Mr. Wrigley’s Ball Club, Chicago & the Cubs During the Jazz Age

The Cubs used to be good.  Seriously.  You just have to reach really far back. It was a time before the Internet, Twitter, TV and World War II.  It was the Jazz Age, when America was putting the First World War – “The Great War” – behind it, drinking gin despite Prohibition, enjoying new things […]

Should Joe Torre Already Be in the Hall of Fame?

October 22, 2013 Joe Torre will be eligible for baseball’s Hall of Fame as a manager next year and it is the widespread assumption he will be voted in easily, if not unanimously.  A look at Torre’s resume backs this up: he won six pennants and four World Series and his 2,326 victories are fifth […]

Monday Night in Chicago

Nearly 100 years ago the South Side of Chicago was home to one of the greatest shames in baseball history when eight members of the 1919 White Sox were accused of taking money from gamblers and handing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Shame and controversy – and a battalion of reporters – returned […]

Wally Pipp 100

Wally Pipp 100 One hundred years ago, June 29, 1913, Wally Pipp played his first major league game. We all know, or think we know, how his career ended. Not nearly enough is written about what occurred in-between. Born in Chicago, Pipp graduated from high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan and made his big league […]

Lee Elia’s Rant: 30 Bleepin’ Years Later

WARNING: ADULT CONTENT BELOW (SERIOUSLY) For those who are not familiar with the history of Chicago baseball it will likely come as a surprise to learn that there was a time when Wrigley Field was not so cool, fun, and controversial. Thirty years ago Wrigley was considered by most to be a baseball cemetery.  The […]

Ebbets Field 100

The move of the NBA’s Nets this season has allowed fans and journalists to speak a magical word that had disappeared from the lexicon of major sports leagues for more than 50 years: “Brooklyn.” Brooklyn is probably New York City’s most beloved and, possibly, provincial borough and the relocation of the New Jersey Nets to […]

Rose & Reggie: 40 Years Later

Rose & Reggie: 40 Years Later Reggie Jackson and Pete Rose are two of baseball’s all-time iconic figures, having put together nearly unparalleled careers in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Jackson and Rose played on piles of All-Star teams, won multiple World Series, earned millions on and off the field and were often loved and […]

White Sox Opening Day: 39 Degrees and Billion-Dollar Burgers

The Chicago White Sox opened the 2013 season on Monday by beating the Kansas City Royals, 1-0, at U. S. Cellular Field in front of an announced crowd of 39,000 people. In other words, there were one thousand people in the ballpark for every degree in the air. The high temperature in Chicago for the […]

Damn (For All Time) Yankees

There are trailers running on the Internet for the upcoming Tom Cruise movie “Oblivion.”  Cruise plays a tough guy named Jack Harper which is quite a departure from Cruise’s previous film in which he played a tough guy named Jack Reacher. “Oblivion” is set in the dystopian future in which very little is left of […]

White Sox Sweep Yankees (Yes, Really)

August 22, 2012 South Side Sweep Last weekend in Kansas City the Chicago White Sox were error-prone, timid, unlucky, and uncomfortable to watch.  It was sort of like witnessing Henry Kissinger do karaoke for a Jay-Z song.  But not as funny. The Sox were swept away by the Royals on the road, making Bruce Chen […]

First Pitch

July 3, 2012 In October, 1995 the musical farce Zombies From The Beyond opened to critical praise and joyous audiences off-Broadway in New York City. Zombies is the fantastically silly story of a Rubenesque alien named Zombina who has come from the deep reaches of space to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to steal men to be slave […]

White Sox Rising

May 31, 2012 When the Chicago White Sox swept the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field two weeks ago it was fun but, really, can’t an old person with a fly swatter beat the Cubs? The Sox, however, were apparently emboldened by that three-game ear-gouge of their crosstown rivals because now the Pale Hose are taking […]

All For Paul

May 27, 2012 Jimi Hendrix, Albert Einstein, Prince Planet, Julie Christie, Harper Lee and Joan of Arc.  What do they all have in common?  They’re about half as cool as Paul Konerko. Konerko, the venerable Chicago White Sox first baseman, is swinging the bat like a honey badger hocked up on Cherry Coke trapped inside […]

Crosstown Crosshairs

  May 20, 2012 Sox, Cubs,  NATO   The whole world is watching.  And now it knows how bad the Cubs really are. And how good the White Sox could be. If they keep playing the Cubs. On a hot spring weekend in Chicago when world leaders and angry protesters came to town for the […]

Remembering An Angel

  May 4, 2012 Fifty years ago a skinny left-hander with a sneaky smile made history.  And started a party. On May 5, 1962 Robert “Bo” Belinsky threw a no-hitter for the Los Angeles Angels in a 2-0 victory over the Baltimore Orioles and became Hollywood’s star attraction for a summer and one of baseball’s […]

Humble Phil, Powerful Paul

April 26, 2012 Philip Humber will always be associated with perfection. He just won’t always pitch that way. One start after throwing a perfect game against the Seattle Mariners, the White Sox right-hander plummeted back to reality Thursday night at Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field, surrendering nine earned runs in a 10-3 loss to the Boston […]

Chicago White Sox Opening Day: Irish Nachos and the Baroque Batter’s Box

April 13, 2012 Not everyone loves baseball but all people, (except, perhaps, Angelina Jolie) love food and while our national pastime isn’t always played at the highest level at Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field, there is always copious amounts of unique and satisfying sustenance. Luckily, on Opening Day on Friday, the White Sox were as enticing […]

2012 Chicago White Sox: Ozzie’s Out, Robin’s In, Are We Ready?

The Chicago White Sox had a prodigious payroll and high hopes in 2011 but crashed and burned quickly as some of their best, or at least highest paid, players had miserable campaigns.  The Sox finished 79-83, which was good for third place in the American League Central, 16 games behind the division champion Detroit Tigers […]

Gaylord Perry: Moon Man

This year is the 40th anniversary of the last time human beings set foot on the moon.  Why haven’t we been back since?  Maybe we should blame Gaylord Perry. One of baseball’s great urban legends is that Perry, a Hall of Fame pitcher from 1962 to 1983, once said a man would walk on the […]

Here Come the Miami White Sox

Mark Buehrle has long been the best pitcher in the National League and that distinction will likely grow more evident now that he’s actually going to be pitching in the National League. After 12 seasons, 161 victories, four All-Star games, three gold gloves, one no-hitter, a perfect game, a World Series victory and the coolest […]

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