September is a month when contending baseball teams play games that matter.
The Chicago White Sox are also playing games that matter — not for a playoff berth, but for the record books.
With no hope for a championship this year and the foreseeable future, the most fans can hope for is to partake in history, even if it’s the wrong kind.
After all, years from now, when World Series champions are forgotten, the 2024 Sox will be etched in the collective sports memory, along with the 1962 New York Mets.
This week, Sox fans trekked to Guaranteed Rate Field to see the team set records for futility. They included Ryan Schur and Mary Licciardi of Des Plaines.
Ryan Schur and Mary Licciardi of Des Plaines said they have been to practically every game at Guaranteed Rate Field, and there have still been highlights, even in a dismal season.
Steve Zalusky/szalusky@dailyherald.com
“It’s not a history that I would like to be a part of,” Schur said before Tuesday’s game against the Angels. “(But) since a record is going to be broken, it might as well be a big one, not necessarily the best one, but nonetheless a record to watch in history.”
They have attended nearly every home game this season. Even in a season like this one, there have been highlights.
“We were here when they beat the Yankees. Nobody thought that would happen,” Licciardi said, referring to the 12-2 drubbing of the Bronx Bombers in June. “So we saw that part of history, too.”
“And we saw (the Yankees’ Aaron) Judge’s 300th home run here,” Schur added.
Naperville’s Nicky Lopez swings at a pitch during Tuesday’s White Sox game against the Angels, which the White Sox won 3-2, staving off infamy for at least one more night.
Steve Zalusky/szalusky@dailyherald.com
“We lost a hundred games last year. I was hoping for better,” John Ciesla, a Villa Park resident and lifelong Sox fan who grew up in Bridgeport, said of this season.
John’s son, Eugene Ciesla, said he attended the game last month when Andrew Vaughn was robbed of a game-winning home run on a leaping catch over the Sox bullpen fence by Texas’ Travis Jankowski. That one was especially painful.
“I had come with a couple Cubs fans too, so I was really hoping to kind of stick it to them that day,” he said.
On a damp, drizzly Tuesday, Sox fans came to see history. It was dog day at the park. Insert your own joke.
Tom Trescott, who grew up in Hinsdale, said the season for him has been “horrible,” and he remembers seeing what had been the all-time worst Sox team in 1970 that lost 106 games. He said he thought this team might break that mark.
“I didn’t know they would shatter it,” he lamented.
Some fans, like James Connelly of Arlington Heights, are taking the team’s misfortunes philosophically.
“Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you go up,” he said. “Hope runs eternal.”
James Connelly of Arlington Heights enjoyed Tuesday’s White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field. He waxed hopeful about the home team’s fortunes following their potential record-setting 2024 season.
Steve Zalusky/szalusky@dailyherald.com
If the fans were looking for a loss Tuesday, they faced an uphill battle, because taking the mound for the Sox was Jonathan Cannon, the team’s stopper.
But as the game progressed, all signs began to point toward defeat — although Cannon pitched shutout ball, the Sox couldn’t back him up with runs.
The fans’ frustrations began to show. Several chanted the refrain, “Sell the team!” Some fans covered their heads with paper bags and one donned a clown mask, while another sported a Mets hat. At one point, fans brandished a banner with “SELL THE TEAM” in large black letters. And when Luis Robert Jr. struck out, someone yelled in Spanish, “Open your eyes!”
Then in the eighth inning, the incredible happened. Late inning comebacks have eluded the Sox all season, but not Tuesday. The team’s bats, aided by an Angels defensive gaffe, woke up to give the Sox a 3-2 win.
You could say the Sox found a new way to disappoint fans by not breaking the loss record. But not everyone was unhappy with the outcome. Addison Sox fan Steve Mosny said when reliever Justin Anderson induced the final out, “It was a relief. It’s nice to see the Sox win.”
In the clubhouse Tuesday, players faced the media and questions about the record. As professionals coming to the “office” every day, they have a different perspective on the games than the fans who have followed the team year after year, decade after decade.
But one White Sox player who grew up in the suburbs, Naperville native Nicky Lopez, said, “It’s obviously a little tougher, just because I know so many fans that come out. My dad has some friends here. So, it is tough being a hometown kid, but also it doesn’t change the fact that I’m living out my dream playing for a hometown team.”