By Roger Wallenstein

This has happened before. Maybe not quite like today, but the White Sox found themselves scrambling to find a radio outlet during the winter 47 years ago too, which is exactly what’s going on right now.
It appears that the Sox likely will be broadcast over the Cubs’ once-sacred airwaves of WGN after one season on WLS, whose parent company Cumulus Media has filed for bankruptcy, negating the last five years of its contract to carry Sox games.
While a stable of promising young players provide lots of optimism for the future, back in the winter of 1970-71 no self-respecting radio outlet had the least bit of interest in airing the exploits of the South Side team. The Sox were coming off their worst year in franchise history having lost 106 games, just the third and last time that Sox losses exceeded the century mark. Just a few more than 6,000 fans per game witnessed the carnage at Comiskey Park.

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Posted on February 9, 2018

By Roger Wallenstein

The hat never quite fit so it was a good thing that Oscar Gamble, who died Wednesday at 68, most often wore a batting helmet in his role as designated hitter for the 1977 South Side Hitmen.
Gamble’s ample, expertly coiffed Afro already has been prominently mentioned in the announcements of his passing, but it wasn’t the hair that Sox fans remember from that magical season. The guy could flat out hit.

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Posted on February 1, 2018

By Roger Wallenstein

Shortly after White Sox reliever Jerry Staley threw a game-ending double-play ground ball at Cleveland’s mammoth Municipal Stadium, preserving a 4-2 White Sox victory to clinch the 1959 American League pennant, the fun began in the White Sox clubhouse.
And for good reason. The Sox hadn’t won a pennant since the infamous 1919 season. Only home day games were telecast in those days, but WGN made an exception on that particular September 22. Signing off, the venerable Jack Brickhouse used his signature closure, “That’s it for a little while,” adding, “But what an ‘it.'”
Fire Commissioner Robert Quinn infamously set off the air raid sirens in celebration. Please remember: Nikita Khrushchev was the Russian tyrant in those days at the height of the Cold War. Vladimir Putin is Snow White in comparison. Sox fans might have understood the origin of the sirens, but Cub diehards and those uninterested mistakenly headed for their basement bunkers.
And there was Jungle Jim Rivera, by that time a 37-year-old reserve outfielder for the South Siders, cavorting in front of his teammates, a fedora atop his pate, in a one-man conga line. After chasing the Yankees for a decade, the Sox had finally come out on top.
Rivera died last week at age 96. He came to the Sox via a trade in 1952 and managed to hang around for 10 seasons, primarily because he hustled and was the epitome of intensity and effort. The over-used phrase, “He’s good in the clubhouse,” could have been invented for Jim Rivera.

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Posted on November 20, 2017

By Roger Wallenstein

The first year of The Rebuild
Is now in the past.
But it wasn’t so awful
The Sox didn’t finish last.

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Posted on October 2, 2017

By Roger Wallenstein

Had the White Sox been in a pennant race, the closing play of Friday night’s 7-6 victory over Kansas City would have assumed a prominent place in the team’s annals.
As it was, turning a struggle that easily could have gone into extra innings into a game-ending shocker illustrated the uniqueness and unpredictability of the game of baseball. And I missed it.

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Posted on September 25, 2017

By Roger Wallenstein

The pennant races have ended. The Dodgers, Cubs, Nationals, Astros, Red Sox and Indians have either clinched or are confidently in command of their respective divisions with two weeks to go in the 2017 baseball season.
There is just one more wild card playoff spot to be determined – between the Twins, 103-game losers just a year ago, and the Angels.
What with the NFL season underway and the Blackhawks skating to get in shape for the 2017-18 campaign, why would anyone continue to keep an eye on baseball?
Until they got beat 4-3 in Kansas City last Friday night, the Cleveland Indians certainly were in the national spotlight as they ran up 22 straight victories. But few noticed that the Tribe ran off two more wins over the weekend to make it 24 out of 25 to clinch the Central Division. Can they top the Astros for the league’s best record? Maybe so, but outside of Cleveland and Houston, who cares?

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Posted on September 18, 2017

By Roger Wallenstein

It was a record-setting week for the White Sox. Holy Cow! Hey Hey! You can put it on the board, yes!
Let’s hope a couple of years from now we’re celebrating for much different reasons, like a division championship or a pennant win. At the present time we’ll have to be diverted by the role the Sox played last week in helping the Cleveland Indians to four victories in their current 18-game winning streak.
For less tongue-in-cheek plaudits, how about Jose Abreu hitting for the cycle last Saturday, just the sixth player in White Sox history to do so?

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Posted on September 11, 2017

By Roger Wallenstein

He’s a rotund, cuddly teddy bear out there on the mound, the kind of guy who should have his own rocking chair in the dugout. Perhaps the bat boy should bring him slippers and a pipe between innings.
At age 44, Bartolo Colon just keeps on throwing strikes, like he did last Thursday as his Twins trimmed the White Sox 5-4 to complete a three-game sweep of the South Siders. Leaving after six innings of work with the scored tied at 3, Colon kept his team in the game despite giving up 10 hits, not an unusual occurrence for the 20-year veteran who clearly loves to pitch and compete.
Steve Stone reminded viewers time and again that Colon throws his fastball more than 80 percent of the time. Early in his career, the Dominican righthander’s heater was consistently in the mid-90s, and he reached 92 last week.
But that’s not the story. Pinpoint control is. Colon rarely walks anyone. He’s issued 10 passes in 55 innings for the Twins this season. Against the White Sox, he didn’t walk anyone. If a fastball under the hitter’s hands is called for, Colon is your man. If an opponent tends to swing at pitches in his eyes, Colon is more than willing to cooperate.
Colon appeared to be finished in 2009 when he was a member of the White Sox. Ineffectiveness and arm woes sent him to the DL, and he actually disappeared in July. Then-manager Ozzie Guillen confessed that he didn’t know the whereabouts of his pitcher. Colon was inactive the entire 2010 season before making a comeback with the Yankees in 2011 when he was 38.

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Posted on September 5, 2017

By Roger Wallenstein

Goal-setting wasn’t supposed to be part of this rebuilding season. Ricky Renteria’s vague notion of playing “clean” baseball is about as close to a stated goal as anything we’ve heard, but judging from all of the unclean games we’ve witnessed, Ricky’s fellows have fallen short of their skipper’s objective.
Winning ugly would be a welcome respite because losing ugly is exactly that.
But with a homestand last week that saw the White Sox take three of five from the Twins before winning a three-game series against the embattled Tigers, there is one convoluted goal for this team: Not losing 100 games. And it just might be reachable.

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Posted on August 28, 2017

By Roger Wallenstein

It’s just baseball, but I take these weekly communications fairly seriously. Over the course of seven seasons, regardless of whether I’m here in Chicago, California, in Seattle visiting grandkids, or in Northern Wisconsin enjoying the north woods, I have managed to string together enough information, facts, history and stories pertaining to our White Sox in order to entertain whoever chooses to read these words.
This week is different. The insidious, gnawing thoughts in the back of my mind as I write this, and as I tune into Sox games, stir an uneasiness which was foreign to me just seven days ago.
These feelings have little to do with baseball. Instead I’ve been asking myself, “Should I feel guilty if I become wrapped up watching a ballgame after a band of despicable people chant ‘Jews will not replace us’ half a continent away? How can I ignore what happened in Virginia in order to see if the White Sox can win a road game?”
The fact is I can’t.

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Posted on August 21, 2017