10/27/05 The White Sox Win the World Series - Part 2

This post begins here.

After that series at Wrigley, the White Sox flew out to Southern California for their only 4 games in Anaheim for the season. I had to go. There was no question in my mind. I had to go. So I went to the first game with Poker Jason. On the car ride in, we began talking about the surprise of the pitching rotation – The 8-0 Jon Garland. He was up against rookie Ervin Santana who was 0-1 with, what seemed like an ERA of 190 or something. (It was actually closer to 12.00, but at that point, who’s counting). I also mentioned that the White Sox were the only team that hadn’t been shut out yet all season. Only one team in history had accomplished that for an entire season. I think it was the 1927 Yankees, but I’m not certain. After analyzing these facts, our conversation went something like this. “You know, just our luck, we’re probably going to see Garland’s first loss, Santana’s first career win. And if we really want to be pessimists, maybe the White Sox will be shut out.” Well, guess what? All three of those happened. This scrappy group of guys that had looked so good on TV just didn’t look at that impressive live.

They won the next two games against the Angels 2-1 and 4-2. So I decided to go the finale. This time, I was joined by Hollywood Marc, who I hadn’t really seen much since college. It was the White Sox, however, that kept us in touch after I moved to California. We opted to buy tickets at the gate and got ourselves really nice seats that looked directly down the 3rd base line. Once again, the White Sox lost of a close game, 3-2. Great, I’m now 0-2 when I go to games. I’ve seen 2 of their 15 losses. That sucks. Maybe I shouldn't go see them play anymore.

In the 9th inning, Marc and I snuck down close to the White Sox dugout to see some of our heroes in black. After the game, Joe Crede popped his head out of the dugout. He looked really sad. Not sad in the “I just went 0-3 and am hitting .234 on the season” sad. But sad like, “I was supposed to meet some friends and they ditched me” sad. Everybody else had already gone into the locker room. It was just Joe Crede by himself. At that moment I decided that I couldn’t feel bad for him. I’m tired of sympathizing with players who can’t play. If he was going to continue to hit under .250 and kill their rallies with his horrible swing, they might just have to get rid of him. He became my personal punching bag for the remainder of the regular season.

--- To be continued ---