In a way, it almost figured that the end would happen on the road. Something about this year's White Sox just didn't cry out that they should end the single most miserable spell in their history this side of the Black Sox scandal before their home people.
Maybe it was the distinct lack of humor. Nobody likes to lose, nobody likes when losing becomes as routine as breakfast coffee, but there have been chronically losing teams who managed to laugh-even like Figaro that they might not weep ... or kill.
The 1988 Orioles survived their American League-record season-opening 21-game losing streak with gallows humor. This year's White Sox didn't dare adopt gallows anything while tying that streak, perhaps out of fear that their own odious owner might take them up on it, build a gallows, and send a different team member to it each postgame.
My God, when these Blight Sox finally found better angels upon whom to call and beat the Athletics 5-1 Tuesday night, the funniest thing about it was that nobody could find a beer to drink in the postgame clubhouse celebration — because the entire supply had been poured over each other once they came off the field.
No White Sox player, coach, clubhouse worker, or front office denizen expected that kind of losing streak, of course. Not even with owner Jerry Reinsdorf executing his longtime leadership tandem of Ken Williams and Rick Hahn. Not even when Reinsdorf looked no further than his own hapless assistant GM Chris Getz to succeed the pair — fast. Not even with White Sox fans, what's left of them, take pages from the book of A's fans and hoist "Sell the Team" banners at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Not even the most shameless tankers of the past decade went into seasons expecting double-digit losing streaks at all, never mind record tyers or record threateners. But these White Sox might yet overthrow the 1962 Mets and their 40-120 season for record-setting futility. 38-124, anyone? No one's saying that's impossible yet.
Said now-former White Sox manager Pedro Grifol, whose seat may resemble a stovetop burner, "Everybody knows what it is. It's 21 in a row. It sucks. It's not fun. It's painful. It hurts. You name it. However you want to describe it."
Said 1988 Orioles manager Frank Robinson, installed after Cal Ripken, Sr. skippered them to the first six straight losses, "Nobody likes to be the joke of the league, but we accept it" — after showing a visiting reporter a button he kept in a desk drawer saying, "It's been lovely, but I have to scream now."
Said White Sox left fielder Corey Julks, "Don't dwell on the losses. Try to learn from them and get better each day."
Said Hall of Fame shortstop Cal Ripken, to a reporter new on the Oriole beat when that 1988 streak hit the big Two-Oh, "Join the hostages."
Perhaps proving once more that no good deed goes unpunished, the White Sox lost to the A's the night after the infamous losing streak ended, and Grifol was given the execution nearly every White Sox observer thought he'd get — swiftly enough after the streak might end. Succeeding him on an interim basis: Grady Sizemore, the club's jack-of-all-trades major league coach, and once upon a time a Cleveland matinee idol.
Few star players this century were as ill-fated as the Pacific Northwesterner who played like a Hall of Famer-to-be his first few seasons but ran into a swarm of injury bugs including seven surgeries to put paid to that idea. At the same time, Sizemore became such a heartthrob — then-Jacobs Field was packed with female fans many of whom wore T-shirts with marriage proposals to him — that a subset of those women formed a formal fan club known as Grady's Ladies.
The good news is, Sizemore is in splendid health today, and nobody's in a hurry to see him turn the team around from joke to juggernaut. They believe in many things in Chicago, but magic acts aren't among them. Nobody expects Sizemore to finish the season with anything more or less than his marble. (Singular.)
"He's got a strong understanding of the game, how to play the game," Getz said of him when announcing his mission for the rest of this lost and buried season. "He's very authentic and honest with his communication ability. And so we felt that Grady would be the right fit for getting us to the end of September and building this environment that's more effective for our players. Grady is a very strong, steady voice that we look forward to having as the manager to finish up this season."
The Blight Sox thanked their popular new interim manager with another pair of consecutive losses, this time to the uptown Cubs. The Cubs only outscored the Sox by three runs over the two games. Sizemore saw things to encourage, which could be taken as a) a brave and bold bid to find the glass a quarter full; or, b) acting upon the advice of his analyst, if he has one.
"It was an amazing effort," Sizemore said of his charges after the first of the two losses, but it could apply to both. "It was amazing to see those guys fight like that and the energy. They just kept battling and putting together good at-bats and picking each other up. I'm happy for them. I'm happy for these guys the way they played, the effort. I keep saying that but it was fun to watch. I was proud to be on that top step just watching those guys compete."
A guy with baseball brains to spare who can endure seven surgeries in five years without looking for the nearest escape hatch to the nearest booby hatch is a guy who can handle getting these White Sox through a remaining season in which they'd kinda sorta like not to end up passing the 1962 Mets for season-long futility.
The interim manager might even have a chance to so what some have thought impossible thus far this year. Those Original Mets sucked ... with style. And laughs. Sizemore might not make these White Sox more stylish in self-immolation, but he might actually get them to laugh — even to prevent them from thoughts of sticking their heads into the nearest ovens.
With a 1-7 record in August thus far, the Blight Sox would have to win twelve more games to elude liberating those 1962 Mets from the top of the bottom-crawling heap. If Sizemore can get that much out of them, he might make other teams cast an eye upon him as a manager without an interim tag attached. He might make it without saying, "It's been lovely, but I have to scream now."
He might even compel the South Side to begin believing in magic again. Which is what they'd consider it if the White Sox end up pulling up just short of those Original Mets.
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