By Andrew Reilly
It’s fun and pleasantly optimistic to compare this year’s Sox squad to last year’s division winners, and in many ways the two cast the same shadow. A division populated with losers; a theoretically potent offense incapable of producing; weird stretches of winning games they should have lost while losing, badly, games they should have only lost in normal fashion.
And yet, all that pining for a magical non-spectacular team aside, the 2009 Sox actually share less with last year’s edition than they do with other boring, non-remarkable squads of the past decade. Imagine Alexei Ramirez in the Jose Valentin role, Carlos Quentin as Frank Thomas, Chris Getz as Willie Harris, and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as the plain old Los Angeles Angels.
Some will cry “No!” and insist this team has turned a corner, which would be a sentiment both cool and agreeable were it not for the fact that even with their recent run of good baseball, the Good Guys still sit one under .500 and a full four games behind the Tigers. They can do some good, these White Sox, but they can dig a pretty deep hole just as well, which brings to mind something one of my college professors taught me: the good ones can get out of trouble, but the great ones kept themselves out of it in the first place.
That said, there’s a very strong chance we are in the throes of the Sox’ best stretch of baseball this season, and as sad as that may seem, I say we embrace it fully. They’re winning, and with authority, and not even the most sunshine-disposed fan among us would suggest they’re going to keep running off sweeps and epic road wins at this pace. That losing record, despite the lameness it may suggest, still commands second place in the Central, and in the end the Sox’ job is not to win all the time, just to lose less often than four specific teams. And lose they do!
And win, sometimes, too!
And that is exactly why they are so hard to either get excited about or write off entirely: the White Sox are not really all that good, and maybe they are not all that bad, either. Maybe they just are and, all things considered, maybe that’s not such a terrible way to exist.
Week in Review: The first full sweep of the season and 5-1 road trip came at a high cost: we’ll miss you, Corky Miller.
Week in Preview: Seven straight home games against the worst and second-worst teams in the American League, in that order. If ever the Sox could gain ground, this is the time.
The Q Factor: Negligible, but his unscheduled medical leave should not be confused with “none,” as Carlos Quentin’s days off are the only known mathematical entities divisible by zero.
That’s Ozzie!: “We swung the bat.” – Guillen explains the secret to a fundamentally sound 11-2 shellacking of the Royals.
The Guillen Meter: They’ve started winning, which usually tends to take the edge off of the skipper a bit. The Guillen meter reads 5 for “momentarily complacent,” although expect serious trouble after Thursday’s four-error loss to the A’s, after which Guillen drops no less than ten expletives and one new, experimental superexpletive (the oft-rumored and highly unspeakable “e-word”) while denouncing reliever Octavio Dotel, third baseman Josh Fields, umpire Jerry Layne and FAA Chief of Staff Jana Weir Murphy.
Alumni News You Can Use: Rob Mackowiak, Carl Everett, Keith Foulke, Ryan Bukvich. Four former Sox, four current Newark Bears.
Hawkeroo’s Can-O-Corn Watch: Saturday’s game against Cleveland will be carried on Fox, meaning Friday and Sunday’s broadcasts will have to pack in 1.5 times the kind words about Grady Sizemore of a normal Sox-Indians telecast despite Sizemore’s current residence on the disabled list. Perhaps Harrelson will enlighten us as to the wonder of how Sizemore sustains injury the right way, the way Yaz or a young Norm Bass would. And how Sizemore looks good doing it.
Endorsement No-Brainer: Mark Buehrle for late 80s and early 90s Ford trucks. Quality is job one.
Cubs Snub: Fourth place. In your face. I had the pleasure of attending Sunday night’s disgrace against the Dodgers and found myself chuckling not just at the outcome, but also the pure hilarity of 40,000 Cub fans on their feet willing Alfonso Soriano to hit a home run with the bases empty and the Small Bears down 8-0. He didn’t, of course, but that brand of stupid optimism suggests a larger problem at work besides the early-innings shelling. It was as though they not only didn’t know how baseball works, but didn’t care, either. In some regards, I envied them; in most other regards, my feelings more closely resembled pity. Meanwhile on Michigan Avenue, the mechanism that made Chicago’s century clubbers so marketable has now made them nearly immovable. Oh, the sweet, delicious irony!
The White Sox Report: Read ’em all.
The Cub Factor: Know your enemy.
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Andrew Reilly is the managing editor of The 35th Street Review and a contributor to many fine publications.
Posted on June 1, 2009