EXTRA: Sorry Cubs fans, Sox won’t lose 100 games! Only 183 days til ‘14

Will Paulie be back?

There’s only one bit of significance to the Chicago White Sox’ 6-5 victory Saturday night against the Kansas City Royals – they won’t lose 100 games.

There’s only one more ballgame to be played in 2013 – Sunday afternoon at U.S. Cellular Field. The White Sox needed to lose both Saturday AND Sunday to achieve the “century” mark in defeats!

NOT THAT LOSING 98 or 99 games is all that much better. It’s still a pathetic season – and the total Chicago baseball loss tally for 2013 is now 193. The Cubs got beat 6-2 Saturday by the St. Louis Cardinals.

A season's end is noteworthy

And as we approach the final day of the 2013 regular season, I can’t help but wonder how the 1959 observations of St. Louis Cardinals-turned-Cincinnati Reds pitcher Jim Brosnan apply.

Brosnan is the pitcher-turned-author who wrote a diary of that season, and in his own words wrote that, “On the last day of the season baseball is a game that professionals really do play; it no longer seems like work to them. It is virtually impossible for a ballplayer to convince himself that he will never play the game again. On the last day of the season baseball, truly, is in his blood.”

Will Sunday be the day that 38-year-old Paul Konerko (a 15-year White Sox player) thinks in his mind that he can go on forever? And will he still feel the same way a month from now – which is when he says he’ll make up his mind as to whether or not he should keep playing baseball professionally for a living?


Will they really repeat?

AND WHILE SOME of us will move on to Chicago Blackhawks hockey or to following the every hiccup emanating from the Chicago Bears, some of us will snatch little tidbits of beisbol played in the winter leagues of Latin America while counting down the days until the “Next year” that we always wait for.

Come Monday, it will be only 183 more days ‘til Opening Day, at U.S. Cellular Field, versus the Minnesota Twins! With the Cubs starting their home games two days later, against the Ryne Sandberg-led Philadelphia Phillies.

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EXTRA: 2013 truly historic, in a depressing way, for our baseball fans

We can now forget about 1948 and the incredibly awful professional baseball that was played on both sides of Chicago that season.

The reason Robin is still employed in Chicago

For the record books will officially record 2013 as being even worse.

WITH THE CHICAGO White Sox being defeated Friday 6-1 by the Kansas City Royals and the Chicago Cubs going down to a 7-0 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, the two teams now have 192 losses combined.

The two teams back in 1948 had 191 losses. So with two games remaining for each club, this is now the worst combined record we fans of Chicago baseball have had to be subjected to.

Not that losing is unique to Chicago baseball. Both ball clubs have put versions of themselves throughout the past century-plus of play that were dreadful and disgusting and thoroughly besmirched our city’s reputation with their awful play.

But there usually is something of a split. One ball club is usually a bit better than the other. We don’t get subjected to the combined crud all at once.

ALTHOUGH IN THE case of White Sox fans who went into this season thinking there might be a slight chance their favorite ball club could somehow improve on last season’s performance (they almost won a division title), the disgust level is more intense.

Then again, White Sox fans usually get more disgusted than their Cubs fans counterparts – who this year seem more disgusted with the fact that Old Style-brand beer won’t be sold at the ballpark anymore than the godawful play of the Cubs.

Keep this fact in mind. I’m sure some Cubs fans are going to take some perverse pleasure in the fact that the White Sox have a chance to actually lose 100 games this season (if they lose both Saturday AND Sunday to the Royals).

But despite how badly the White Sox played this year, it wasn’t until a couple of days ago that it became definite that the Cubs would have a better record.

We all feel this way these days

THE CUBS ARE a team that could wind up losing 96 games this year – which stinks just as badly as the Delta House collective grade point average in the film "Animal House."

In fact, just as how the Delta GPA was the lowest in Faber College history (think actor John Vernon’s “Dean Wormer” character in a rant), Chicago baseball’s loss total was the worst in Second City baseball history.

Somehow, I suspect many Chicago baseball fans are going to have the same reaction as Delta pledge Flounder when they recall this season! If they recall it at all – it is officially the worst combined effort in my nearly half-century of life.

Soon to be among unemployed?

So now, we’ll spend this weekend seeing if the White Sox actually hit the 100-loss mark (which would be one game better than the Cubs’ 101-loss record of 2012).

NOT THAT I’M taking much pleasure in that fact. Losing stinks, no matter what form it takes!

There’s also the fate of the management. The White Sox let it be known Friday that manager Robin Ventura will be retained to fulfill the final year of his contract in 2014. It seems that near division title of ’12 balances out the disgust of this season. Next year will determine whether Ventura ever gets a managerial post with another team when the day comes that he is finished with the White Sox.

And as for the Cubs, my gut says that manager Dale Sveum is gone come Monday.

He’ll get the blame for the stink of two Cubs seasons that no one in their right mind should have expected anything from. Except that Cubs fans are delusional enough to think that Joe Girardi would ever contemplate leaving a New York Yankees managerial post to be a part of the Cubs.

TEAMS THAT LOSE 101 and (possibly) 95 games are dreadful. And that may be the ultimate commentary about the 2013 version of the Chicago White Sox and however many games they wind up losing – they played themselves down to Chicago Cubs-level baseball.

Ugh!!?!

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Am I alone in thinking that Alexi Ramirez’ lost home run in the sixth inning of Friday night’s loss to Kansas City is somehow symbolic of how disgusting the 2013 season was for the fans at U.S. Cellular Field? I still can’t contemplate the catch Alex Gordon made of that home run, or the sound of White Sox broadcaster Ken “Hawk” Harrelson having to “take back” his home run call after he had put the run on the board!

Black Monday? So in character for Chicago baseball on both sides of town

Call it incredibly frustrating. But learning that the Chicago White Sox managed to pull off an 11-0 blowout of the Cleveland Indians Monday night was possibly even more annoying than any of the losses in the 2-10 stretch (2-5 during the last week of home games) the ballclub did in recent weeks that took them out of the pennant race.

'Comeback player' the best Sox can hope for?



Wouldn’t you know it that once it no longer matters, the White Sox would regain their hitting stroke.

I SAY ‘NO longer matters’ because it doesn’t. The Detroit Tigers were at the point where all they needed was one more win this season on their part, and they would clinch an American League division title and a spot in the playoffs.

They got that victory Monday night, beating the Kansas City Royals 6-3. It’s over. The White Sox who held onto first place for so much of the 2012 season (even though so many people were convinced this would be a historically awful ballclub) are now mathematically eliminated from contention.

History will record them as a second place ballclub in 2012, and one whose players get to watch the playoffs on television instead of from the dugout, while slugger Adam Dunn gets to wonder if his 40-plus home runs this season are good enough to win him Comeback Player of the Year honors.

But it wasn’t just the White Sox who managed to accomplish something on Monday.

LET’S HEAR IT for the Chicago Cubs, who on the same day that the White Sox were knocked out of contention managed to achieve their own “goal” for the season – they lost their 100^th ballgame.

Diamond in dung-heap of Cubs' '12 season?

And they managed to do it to the one team that may be worse than the baby bears – the Houston Astros already had 106 losses going into their final three games of the season being played at Wrigley Field.

So no contender for the Sox, all those losses for the Cubs, and a whole lot of misery for those of us with any interest in watching a contender on the playing field.

Although I suppose none of this should be surprising.

AFTER THE AWFUL season the White Sox managed to put out during 2011, there were many people who were convinced that it would happen again – which is what drove down the season ticket sales that made the White Sox all-the-more reliant on walkups to the ticket window.

And anytime that happens, you become reliant on quirks such as weather and timing. So many things can drive down attendance – which is why the White Sox fell just short of the 2 million mark in tickets sold (1,965,505, for those who have an anal-retentive attention to detail) this season.

Which is about 1 million short of what the Chicago Cubs are likely to draw by the time their home games are complete come Wednesday.

Which makes me wonder if Theo Epstein is still gleeful about his professional prospects of revitalizing this Cubs franchise. He knew he didn’t have a contender, but I doubt he realized he had a historically-awful ballclub.

THAT’S WHAT 100 losses means, although I’m sure those in Cubbie fandom will take their solace in the fact that they won’t have to put up with White Sox gloating over having a playoff-bound ballclub.

In fact, about the only happy person in White Sox-land these days is general manager Ken Williams (whom some reports say will be “bumped up” to another administrative post so that long-time deputy Rick Hahn can be general manager).

Nice 'digs' for one-time utility outfielder



Crain’s Chicago Business used its website to report that the ballclub gave Williams a $2.15 million loan so he could buy a century-old luxury home in the Gold Coast neighborhood. It seems Kenny is confident he’s still employed – even if his ballclub did flop in the end.

Although the real story these days may well be at Wrigley Field, where the Astros are playing their final ballgames as a National League team. In a touch of irony, Houston played their first games in the National League back in 1962 against the Cubs – whose “College of Coaches”-led ball clubs were as bad as this year’s version.

IN A RESTRUCTURING of the leagues, Houston is moving to the American League, where officials hope they will become a vicious rival of the Dallas-Fort Worth-area team, the Texas Rangers.

I don’t know about that happening. But it does remind me of that moment nearly 4 decades ago when Ron Santo joined the White Sox following a career with the Cubs in the National League.

On Opening Day, he was greeted by the Comiskey Park faithful with a banner reading, “Welcome to the major leagues.”

So as an American League fan, I say “Welcome!” to the Astros, who may well be the one ballclub that had wackier scoreboard antics at the Astrodome than those of the old Comiskey Park.

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