Letters to the Editor
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At last
"Look out, Cleveland. The storm is coming through.
And it's running right up on you.
Look out, Houston. There'll be thunder on the hill.
Bye, bye, baby, don't ya lie so still." -- Robbie Robertson
This was the season of eight-game winning streaks. Three early put the Sox at the head of the class. Two late staved off the Reaper and closed out the Championship.
It's been said: "Who cares about the White Sox, a team with no (good) history?"
Well. We do. Who are we? I won't speak for anyone else, but it was almost a blood oath passed on in our family.
My father was a child whose parents divorced when he was very young. After being put up with relatives, he was sent to a home for orphans, while his parents were still very much alive.
As the first All-Star Game, scheduled for the White Sox's Comiskey Park, the Palace of Baseball, approached in 1933, Sophie Tucker, "the Last of the Red Hot Mamas," came to his youth home. One child was selected from each age group to attend the game as the singer's guests. My dad was the 9-year-old.
Ever onward, he was a White Sox man. There were other reasons, too. He was a John dos Passos Socialist, and early supporter of civil rights, and he never let us forget that the swells were on the North Side, the People on the South. (Oversimplified, yes, but bear with me.) Our Park was the center of Negro League baseball. We had Doby and Minoso and Carrasquel while Wrigley's crew was essentially colorless. As one who grew up in a sheltered suburb, I found common ground at Comiskey for the first time with the black folks and Latinos who sat with us. We shared our joys and (mostly) pain with all who were at our park.
I was too young to be there, but I heard all the stories of Billy Pierce vs. Whitey Ford on a Friday night in the late '50s, 50,000 rocking the rafters. When the often No. 2 team in the AL (oh, what if there were playoffs then?) finally took the pennant in '59, I was at Game 1, albeit in utero. (I was born that December.)
My first game at the park was against the Orioles in '65. I remember being introduced to "Ma" McCuddy, at the watering hole across the street, where Ruth famously sent out for hot dogs during a game. She showed me the huge bat that was a gift from Ruth and sat over the back bar. We were in her beer garden, rain or shine, every opening day.
In our northern suburb, I was a pariah as a Sox fan. Taught me a lot about how to be an outsider with dignity. Had my heart crushed with the collapse in '67, followed by the move next year from Channel 9 to UHF, and a huge losing streak to start the year.
A watershed season was 1972, when my prodigal son brother returned from a life underground, got himself together at community college, and Dick Allen tried to carry the whole club on his back past the mighty A's. My dad, brother and I rolled to about 45 games that magical summer -- the old man would come home from work with a "Let's roll the drums!" and, bam, we were on the Edens Expressway headed South. We often sat in the $3 reserved grandstand next to the press box and organist Nancy Faust.
They faded that year, and many others. The '77 Southside Hitmen were special. It was that season -- on the day of the doubleheader when, in Game 1, they would pass the Royals by a half-game and in Game 2 see the Royals win and eventually leave them in the rear-view mirror -- when I reconnected with my best friend from first grade. Yesterday, he called me. "I've been thinking about you a lot, man," he said.
Same thing here, brother. Same thing here.
We had the indignity of our yard being half Astro-Turf, half grass in the Allyn years. We had Veeck return (with no cash and no real business owning the club again); we had a couple of almost-moves; Winning Ugly (and losing to Balto uglier) in '83; a fine club that came up short in '93; the strike in '94 when they had the best record in the AL; the White Flag trade; the 2000 overachievers; the 2003-4 fades.
It's fitting this club is filled with outcasts who many doubted. Buehrle doesn't throw hard enough; Contreras can't take the big stage; Garland is too laid back; El Duque is 100 years old; Freddy Garcia will never be an ace; Konerko was the Dodger sure thing who wasn't (for them); Uribe's too flashy and swings from his ass; Crede was dealt or demoted 100 times in the press; Podsednik, for Lee?, you must be joking; Rowand was too slow for center; Dye had never reached his potential and was always hurt; Pierzynski a Clubhouse Cancer; Jenks a fat goof who liked his beer; Neal Cotts the "other guy" in one of the most savaged trades ever, Billy Koch-for-Keith Foulke.
Ozzie Guillen was crazy, and he got all his old buddies to coach. Kenny Williams was painted nationally as a mark in "Moneyball." Etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Who knows when this will really sink in. I've heard from people I hadn't heard from since childhood. My boyhood pals' mom (basically, my Second Mom) called to say, "I remember when you took me to that game a few years ago, Chris. It meant so much to me."
Dad, the irascible crank, damaged romantic, mistaken as a misanthrope when what he was really doing was covering a too gentle heart, taught me to love baseball and jazz, two of the finest things that America has given the world.
One the way to Game 1 of the World Series, that Prodigal Son brother and I went to the graveyard and told Dad and Mom that we were headed to the park. Sounds sappy, but damned if they weren't with us.