By Andrew Reilly
We’ve come to that time of the season, the time that separates the Die Hards from the Johnny Come Four Years Ago And Probably Left By Nows: the time for pathetic, self-directed spite.
Lest anyone discredit the Sox’ inexplicable wins this past week or think getting rid of Jim Thome and Jose Contreras was the answer, think again. Thome, in his old, slow, one-dimensional manner, was too representative of the past ten years of White Sox baseball to ever be expendable, and Contreras’ struggles were really nothing new. But the exit of those two is not what went on to (and will again) fuel the Sox’ dismantling of hated teams. No, the Sox’ best hope is to forget about the season and think about how to ruin a superior, more glamorous team’s day. Double-substitutions against the Twins? Yes. Laughing at the destroyed arm of Jason Varitek? Absolutely. Ruining the Cubs in their home urinal? Oh, baby!

Beachwood Baseball: The Cub Factor

But what we’re really left with now is the angry, bitter part of the year in which the crotchety among us start comparing 2009 to other disappointing years in recent memory. Are we staring down another 2003, in which the Sox were just a few good wins away from the post-season? Or is this 2006 again, where the Twins will backdoor their way into October, but with 80 wins becoming the new 90 wins?

Read More

Posted on September 8, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
Let’s get one thing straight: the Sox, mathematically, are not out of it. The Tigers are bad enough to collapse, the Twins are probably not for real and the Sox, as we have seen, are capable of some weird baseball outcomes.
That said, the literal crushing the Sox received from the big kids this week should have shown us once and for all that it’s over. They won’t go 0-for-the rest of the season, but there are probably no more significant games left. It might sound negative to write them off in August, but can any among us really see this team making some kind of push towards glory? Of course not.

Read More

Posted on August 31, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
You could almost swear the Sox don’t really want to take the division. You know in your heart they do, but you have to wonder sometimes if maybe Sox players see the likely Death At The Hands Of The Yankees outcome of a theoretical ALDS as not being worth the so-called effort required to get there. How else to explain the reluctance to win easy games, or the general folding under the pressure of playing the absolute nobodies who come to town these days?
There is still some encouragement to be found in the competition, some solace in the fact that while the Sox haven’t gained any ground for a month, they haven’t lost any either. But that line of thinking is dangerous: what we’re rooting for is not for the Sox to win, just for them not to lose. Our collective devotion risks spiraling into a weird, Hawk Harrelsonian abyss of counterlogic and anti-cheering, and any season predicated on the idea of “as long as they can be less bad” is surely doomed.

Read More

Posted on August 24, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
Preseason football is underway, and not a moment too soon. Not that I’m an especially avid Bears fan, but every second of airtime, every inch of newsprint and every pixel of internet real estate that once set its crosshairs on White Sox baseball can now be focused on more pressing concerns like what some other team in some other sport might achieve. To anyone still invested in the 2009 White Sox, this is a good thing: if they tank the season, no one will notice; if they pull off the “miracle” rally to the playoffs, we can all celebrate their grindiness and general ability to never give up or whichever cliche folks latch on to this time around.

Read More

Posted on August 17, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
Why can’t the Sox beat bad teams?
Are they no match for the inherent craziness and allowable recklessness of a club with nothing to lose?
Do they suffer from some form of El Duque Syndrome, needing the most insane, high-pressure circumstances to surround them before they can channel their inner excellence?
Are they really that scared of the people of Cleveland, perhaps fearing a thrashing of the Indians would drive the good people of the Sixth City to do to the Chicago River what they did to the Cuyahoga?

Read More

Posted on August 9, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
Talk about an uncharacteristic maneuver.
Even if the Jake Peavy deal had already been explored, it always seemed like such a non-event, one of those could’ve-been-sweet things right up there with the Maggs-for-Nomar trade and the phantom acquisition of Alex Rodriguez. Of course we just sort of assumed Peavy would never go along with playing for the White Sox anyway, but that stemmed less from what any of knew about Peavy and more from what we know about the White Sox. Because the White Sox, as you may be aware, do not make splashy moves.
Surprise moves, yes.
Risky moves, absolutely.
High upside shots in the dark, without question.
But the Peavy deal suddenly makes the Sox look like a real organization, one which a legitimately good pitcher looked at and said “I will hand over my power in this situation to be a part of what’s going on over there.” Five years ago we were hearing how Randy Johnson didn’t think the Sox could ever win anything and Kenny Williams himself calling the club a 50-cent operation in a dollar-demanding world. Now we have a marquee player (and not one past his prime this time, either!) and a legitimate shot at . . . something. Peavy doesn’t bring a guarantee of anything, but he absolutely brings the possibility of so much more.

Read More

Posted on August 3, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
It’s tempting to use events like Mark Buehrle’s perfect game as a foundation for projecting how the rest of the season might go, an especially stupid proposition considering just how much of an aberration the event really is; you might as well say Jim Thome’s seven-RBI outings show a team that’s finally turned the corner. But what Buehrle’s tremendous achievement does give us is a guarantee of some degree of fond remembrance of the 2009 season.
Even if they keep losing so badly to the teams they’re supposed to beat, the perfect game was still awesome.

Read More

Posted on July 27, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
There are two ways to look at the upcoming weeks and the Sox’ merciless schedule.
The obvious school of thought says it’s all over, that the season effectively ended with the savage beating the Orioles handed down today. Not that losing to the O’s means much in the scheme of things, but that the Sox’ opportunities to fatten up on mediocre teams have all passed, the Good Guys left with nothing to show for it but a slightly narrowed distance between themselves and the Kittens and a Minnesota team filling more and more of the rear-view mirror with each passing day. It’s as though these previous 91 games were a good time and all, but the Sox have to go home now and let the grown-ups get down to the business of playing serious, meaningful baseball.

Read More

Posted on July 20, 2009

By Andrew Reilly
I had the good fortune of attending the Leinster GAA Senior Hurling Final in Dublin last week, and for anyone not interested in learning the expectedly archaic rules and traditions associated with such an intricately-titled sporting event, the condensed version goes like this: soccer played with baseball bats.
And it was awesome, but not just for the reasons you’d expect (although let’s make one thing clear: dudes running at each other with wooden sticks is pretty amusing). The game was exciting and all, what with Kilkenny besting Dublin 2-18 to 0-18 (Up the Dubs!, as Dublin fans like to say), but as with most sports that happen outside of America the real entertainment was in the stands. Giant flags, painted faces, section-to-section call-and-response sing-alongs, prominently-placed signs strictly prohibiting air horns and flares (flares!) inside the stadium; the whole affair was less sports and more county-level rallies, the good people of Dublin County (Up the Dubs!) rallying their troops against the invading horde from the countryside and whatnot.

Read More

Posted on July 14, 2009

Editor’s Note: On the occasion of this summer’s final Crosstown Classic series, The Cub Factor’s Marty Gangler and The White Sox Report’s Andrew Reilly switched places.
By Marty Gangler
I would put myself on the side of “whatever” when it comes to the Crosstown “Classic,” as most times it never proves anything. And people who put stock in it need to re-evaluate their priorities. And it proves out in the overall record, which is like 36-35 or something like that. So no team has truly been better than the other. So this week as I watched really fun bad baseball being played I thought to myself, Why did I ever get wrapped up in the crosstown series? When did it ever matter? And then it dawned on me. My level of “caring” was directly proportional with the number of Sox fans I worked with.
And it’s not all about the number, per se. All it takes is one guy. The last time I cared about a Sox/Cubs tilt was at a job I had three years ago. There was that one frothy rabid Sox fan who made my skin crawl. I mean, he used to tuck in his Sox jerseys and had numerous made with his own name on the back. Yeah, this guy was the table saw in a room full of tools.

Read More

Posted on June 29, 2009