I have lived in St. Louis for the past 28 years and am known here as a die-hard Cardinal fan. But over the past couple of years, I have rediscovered the truth about myself: I have always been and always will be a die-hard White Sox fan first and foremost. The Cardinals are merely my "second-favorite" team.
The 2008 season is almost over, and White Sox fans are still hanging by a thread. We near the end of what for me personally has been the most excruciating season in my life. It has not been the most depressing season, not by a long shot. We still have it in our grasp to go to the post season with one day (officially) left in the season. Not only do we have a shot, but we still control our own destiny. Most years when I was growing up in Valparaiso, Indiana, the White Sox struggled to remain competitive and always fell short. In 2005, I was still a fairly inactive White Sox fan until mid-May when I suddenly noticed the team I was breast-fed on was running away with the AL Central division and that something truly special might be going on.
I moved to St. Louis in 1980, and there was no internet, no world-wide-web, no mlb.tv, literally no way to actively follow my team apart from the box scores in the daily paper. I didn't even have cable for the first part of the 80's so there were virtually no White Sox games for me to watch on TV, and the White Sox were never on a truly powerful radio station of the caliber of the mighty KMOX here in St. Louis. In 1985, into that vacuum stepped Vince Coleman and the St. Louis Cardinals, and I had a new team to root for. I still took notice of the White Sox whenever I could, but I just couldn't commit to the relationship.
Now, however, I can watch and listen to every game on-line, and I have connected on-line with other White Sox fans and found the motivation to get up to US Cellular Field a few times to take in games there. After intensely following the White Sox for a couple of years, I have come to realize that the Cardinals were never my #1 team, they were just keeping the seat warm. I actually feel more like a South Sider than a Gateway guy when it comes to baseball. The White Sox rev up their fans 5 minutes before first pitch in a way that makes Busch Stadium pregame festivities pale by comparison.
But in all my years of following the White Sox -- most of them in the distant past -- I can never remember a year like this one. I have taken to calling the 2008 AL Central the "Hot Potato Division". Nobody seems to want to win the thing. Cleveland and Detroit were expecting to fight each other for it, and both got off to such disappointing starts that they have not been in it for a long time. Most pundits thought the White Sox and Twins would be fighting to stay out of the cellar rather than fighting each other for first place. And yet they both have become like Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed in Rocky I: unable to put each other away and seemingly happy just to go the distance. The minute one team jumps ahead of the other one, the 2nd place team jumps back in front again. The White Sox once upon a time had a 6.5 game lead, back before the All-Star break, but that evaporated almost as quickly as it emerged. Since the All-Star break most leads have been of only a half-game. Occasionally there has been a 2.5 game lead, but the team that has it just can't stand prosperity.
The White Sox have also had one of the most comical, gut-wrenching first place runs I have ever witnessed. They have what has turned out to be a peculiar mix of personalities in the clubhouse, along with a manager who has exceeded even his own unusually high standards for controversy in a never-ending attempt to motivate his team. He has called his team out in the papers on numerous occasions, sparred with members of other teams, groused about his teams' second-class status in the city of Chicago (an aspect that was deeply ingrained in me growing up), and various other tactics almost always designed to take the heat off his players and put it on him. It worked well early on, but as the season has worn down to the end, these tactics don't seem to be working as well. We currently have a 4-man rotation that has been unstable, a bullpen consisting of precisely 2 reliable arms that cannot be used every day, and an offense that is sputtering.
And we have had to deal with those piranhas from the north, that evil team that plays in the most ungodly home field advantage in all of sports, where home team lucky bounces seem to happen right when they need them to, and where frankly the home team can fundamental you right to death. The White Sox are built for power. The Twins are built for speed. Power can have its dry spells. Bats go silent from time to time. Speed and good bat control are more constant. The White Sox are 7-2 against the Twins at US Cellular Field. The Twins are 8-1 against the White Sox in the Metrodome, or as I affectionately call it, "The World's largest garbage bag." The Twins are a collection of misfits plus two left-handed juggernauts who don't seem to care if a righty or a lefty is on the mound. We just visited the Metrodome with a 2.5 game lead, and everything that could possibly go wrong there did. We left smarting from a painful walk-off loss and a .5 game deficit with 3 games left on the schedule (4 for us, if you count a make-up game with Detroit that may be necessary) having to hope somehow that lowly Kansas City, the perennial doormat of the division could somehow go there and beat the Twins at least a couple of times, while we eek out a victory or two against the Indians at home in Chicago.
It seemed like a daunting task, but as fierce and pesky and annoying as the Twins are, they have so far been putty in the hands of the Royals, losing the first 2, one of which had their golden arm Francisco Liriano on the mound. In doing so, they have opened the door wide for us to retake the division lead at the most crucial time in the season: the finish line series.
And we have inexplicably refused to enter, giving up crooked numbers in the 5th inning two straight games against the Indians. Starters that have been fairly reliable over the entire season did not last long enough to make it an official game (and thus be in line for a victory), and in each game, the reliever brought in to stem the tide has thrown gasoline on the fire instead. In both games, the sputtering offense has come to life again, but fallen just short, while the bullpen takes any additional support runs and given them right back again. Tonight, a 4 run 8th reduced a 6-run deficit to a 2-run deficit, and by the time the bottom of the 9th rolled around, the deficit was back up to 6.
And so here we still sit, .5 game back going into the final day of the official season with still nothing resolved, looking back over a multitude of missed chances by both teams to run away with the division.
The White Sox live by the homer and die by the homer. They can't bunt or move runners over if their lives depend on it. And the pitching breaks down at the most inappropriate times. We are like whales. We fear for our lives, we seek to intimidate you by our size and strength and power. We move slowly, we have trouble executing a run-down and sometimes in running the bases properly. We are a mess. We panic all the time.
The Twins, by contrast, are a team that doesn't have much going for it. They can't overpower anyone. They can't pummel you to death. But they also do not panic, they are fearless, and they are relentless. They cannot be intimidated. They make plenty of mistakes, but no lead is safe with them. In the apt words of Bert Blyleven, color analyst for their TV broadcasts this past Thursday night, "They simply refuse to quit." Take a 5 run lead on them in the top of the 4th inning, and for the remaining 7 innings (starting with the bottom of the 4th), they will gnaw you to death. Piranhas are small, they are no match for whales or sharks, but they will pounce on any and all mistakes. They will make plenty of mistakes themselves, as they did in that 6-run 4th we had on Thursday, and you damn well better take advantage of them while you have them, because you know they will do the same. They have an infielder who one of these days will hurt himself sliding into first base, but against us every time he did it he was safe. He would have been safe by a mile if he had run through the base; I like to see such idiotic sliders actually pay for there mistakes by turning a hit into an out. Instead, he kicks up a lot of dirt, ignites the crowd, and leaves you shaking your head in disgust. It's really annoying.
And yet, as we see the Royals take the first 2 in the Metrodome, the Twins can certainly be bested, even at home. So while the Twins have to be laughing their asses off at the futility that is the White Sox, they also have to be kicking themselves for failing to capitalize on it. Brandon Duckworth goes tomorrow for KC instead of their ace Zach Grienke, but the White Sox have also been spared Cliff Lee. Where 10-4 Scott Baker goes for Minnesota, 14-12 Mark Buehrle goes for the White Sox. The latter seems to be the most reliable choice for a big-game pitcher, but even he has had his slumps this year.
And now in the final week of the season, one more thing added to the mix: the White Sox look like -- from the outside -- a team with a lot of internal turmoil, from the sulking switch-hitting left fielder grousing about riding the bench in Minnesota, to the flashy, temperamental shortstop who thinks he's the manager and can call out his teammates in public, to the mysterious pitcher who, since he joined the White Sox in 2006 has shown a lot of potential but somewhat disappointing follow-through and who was jawing with his catcher tonight in the midst of giving up 6 runs to the Indians ... the White Sox look like a team imploding from within at the worst possible moment.
It is hard to imagine either one of these teams going very far in the postseason. Ironically enough, either the Royals or the Indians are probably a lot more capable right now of representing the division in the postseason than the two teams who are still alive for the final spot in the American League.
But this has also been a very enjoyable and memorable season, which just adds to the agony, but which will come in another posting tomorrow or the next day.
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