By Roger Wallenstein

It was a short week ago that the White Sox limped home after being swept in Kansas City with the mighty Yankees lying in wait. Even the lousy Mariners who would follow the Yanks in had won eight in a row and 10 of 11. It looked like the collapse everyone seemed to be waiting for was at hand.
Sorry, that’s not this team, this season. Pay attention.
This team, this season is Chris Sale striking out 13 to complete the sweep of the Yankees.
This team, this season, is Tyler Flowers (!) leading the Sox to a sweep of the Mariners. (Nate Jones got the vulture win out of the bullpen, running his record to 7-0.)
It’s a shame the Cubs are still outdrawing the Sox, ’cause the mystique is all on the South Side this year.

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Posted on August 27, 2012

By Roger Wallenstein

Golfing legend Ben Hogan once said, “The most important shot in golf is the next one.”
When it comes to playing the Kansas City Royals, especially at Kauffman Stadium, our White Sox could use a dose of Hogan’s wisdom. It matters not what happened yesterday, or last month, or a year ago. Don’t tell me about jinxes or curses. Hitting and catching the ball, effective pitching and a dose of intelligent baserunning determine whether the Sox can beat the Royals, or any other opponent for that matter.
Yet prior to Friday night’s 4-2 loss at Kauffman – even with Chris Sale poised to take the mound – Chuck Garfien, Bill Melton and Frank Thomas were already setting the stage on Comcast’s pre-game show by highlighting the problems that the Royals have caused the Sox this season. At that time, Kansas City held a 5-4 advantage over the South Siders, disappointing but far from disastrous.

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Posted on August 20, 2012

When the season started it seemed as if John Danks – he of the huge new contract and implicit designation as staff ace – would be one of the major keys down the stretch if this team (implausibly) found itself in contention.
Instead, it’s baby brother Jordan – at 26, he’s 17 months the younger – who, at least for a week, proved pivotal while John was riding out the season on the DL.

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Posted on August 13, 2012

He pitched 18 seasons in the big leagues, winning 211 games of which 189 came in a White Sox uniform. A 20-game winner both in 1956 and 1957, much of the time Billy Pierce finished what he started.
“When they gave us the ball, they expected us to pitch nine innings,” Pierce said last week when I called him. “[If] we had a bad day, then somebody would come in in relief. Very rarely did they have someone [come in] for the eighth or ninth inning. Usually you finished.”
He did just that to the tune of 193 complete games in his career, including three straight years (1956-58) when he led the American League.
Tonight the Sox are simply encouraged that Chris Sale will start – let alone finish – against the Kansas City Royals. The kid is being treated with kid gloves, having last pitched 10 days ago. On that occasion he wasn’t as sharp as usual, yielding five runs to the Texas Rangers. However, Sale did get into the seventh inning to earn his 12th win.
I’m no anthropologist, but I do know that 55 years ago when Billy Pierce was pitching, the human anatomy wasn’t much different than today. Homo sapiens sure weren’t ambulating on all fours. Yet the approach to pitching has radically changed.

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Posted on August 6, 2012

By Roger Wallenstein

Sorry, folks, but I just can’t get too excited about the arrival of Francisco Liriano.
I also wouldn’t have popped any corks had the White Sox obtained the services of Zach Greinke, who pitched well yesterday but lost his debut with the Angels.
If anyone accuses me of refusing to cop to the frenzy of the Trade Deadline, I plead guilty. That’s because more often than not, these late-season acquisitions appear promising but fail to bear fruit.

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Posted on July 30, 2012

By Roger Wallenstein

I need to accept a chunk of the responsibility for the Sox’s five-game slide last week.
Being out of town in California for a few days, I figured my absence would be a good thing. I’d be away from the TV, separated from the drama of the (former) division leaders.
I tend to fear the worst when it comes to close games. I’m not necessarily a negative person, but having watched this team for a long time, there have been more heartbreaks than elixirs. My thinking was that the Sox would have a better chance in Boston and Detroit without me screwing things up.
Years ago this would have been easy. Leave town and you’re out of range of the play-by-play of the games on radio and television. (You understand where this is going.)

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Posted on July 23, 2012

By Roger Wallenstein

He may not have realized it at the time, but my brother John created the model for the Excel spreadsheet almost 30 years before Microsoft unveiled it. All because of the White Sox.
The season was 1959, and because “it just needed to be done,” Brother John began keeping day-to-day statistics – both hitting and pitching – for the eventual American League champions. For all 154 games, he began in the upper left hand corner of a clean sheet of notebook paper with Aparicio and Arias, ending with Torgeson and Wynn. IBM engineers may have begun experimenting with a copying machine, but it took them another ten years to market one. So John spent a part of each day re-creating his spreadsheet. Ask him today to recite the entire ’59 roster, especially after a couple glasses of wine, and he’ll give it to you in alphabetical order.

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Posted on July 16, 2012

By Roger Wallenstein

What seemed improbable at best just three months ago appears at the very least doable today. As Jake Peavy said after beating Toronto on Friday night, “This thing is just getting going. We got a big two-and-a-half months left and I think we are all in this clubhouse looking forward to that.”
If history is a guide, there is good reason to look ahead with optimism.
Consider the last five times – 1983, 1993, 2000, 2005, and 2008 – that the White Sox won the Central Division to reach the playoffs; all those teams proved that their success prior to the All-Star game was no fluke.

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Posted on July 9, 2012

By Roger Wallenstein

There they were yesterday. On my TV screen sitting in a golf cart. Looking, I thought, straight at me. Unsmiling. Stoic.
Whitey and Yogi. The enemy. The smug champions of pinstripes who played in what Sox broadcaster Bob Elson labeled, “The Main Arena.” I didn’t think I’d be affected, lo, these many decades later, but seeing Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra present for yet another of the Yankee Old Timers’ Days, my psyche went into mourning. All those heart-breaking, late-innings defeats 55 years ago. They still hurt.

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Posted on July 2, 2012

By Roger Wallenstein

A little more than two weeks ago my phone rang with a 602 area code on the caller ID, which I recognized as Phoenix. But the number was unfamiliar. After ascertaining that this wasn’t a solicitation or wrong number, the caller said, “I hear you know a lot of White Sox trivia.”
Being a humble and modest fellow who’s been watching the Sox for more than 60 years, I ventured that I knew a few things about the franchise.
“Well, if you know so much, who was the Sox batboy in 1972?” the caller blurted. I countered that I knew the 1954 batboy for the Cubs since he was my future brother-in-law, but, no, I was stumped. “No clue,” I said.
“Well, you’re talking to him,” was the response.

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Posted on June 25, 2012