Chicago White Sox: Best Team In Baseball And Nobody Seems To Care

[matcom]

<snip>

CHICAGO -- The Chicago White Sox have the best record in baseball, and their best chance in years of ending an 88-year drought of World Series championships. But here in one of America's great sports towns, hardly anyone seems to care.

The team has tried almost everything to lure fans, including half-price tickets on Mondays, $1 hot dogs, and roving bands of cheerleaders who give free tickets to anyone who happens to be wearing a White Sox hat or jersey. Still, the Sox are averaging only 23,000 fans a game -- a tad more than half the capacity of their South Side home, U.S. Cellular Field. When the Sox recently faced another first-place team, the Los Angeles Angels, only about 20,000 showed up, despite delightful weather and a 2-for-1 ticket special.


"I've always said that the PR department should just hand out tickets to the upper deck -- they'd at least get the money for parking," Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle says. Despite his 7-1 won-loss record, the 6-foot-2-inch lefthander says he rarely gets recognized around town.

Brothers Kevin and Don Smith were among only four groups of tailgaters in a half-empty parking lot outside the ballpark before a recent game. "I can call friends on the day of a game, cook some burgers, have a couple of beers and then sit in an excellent seat," said Kevin Smith, 42 years old, wearing a crumpled Sox cap while tending a grill sizzling with blackened chicken wings.

"I love baseball, and I love the Sox. It kills me that they don't get the attention they deserve," said Bill Roach, 50, of St. Charles, Ill. As he spoke, he was exiting a Sox win over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on the city's north side -- and Wrigley, with a seating capacity of 39,538, was packed as usual.

At the heart of the Sox's troubled wooing of Chicago lies a conundrum worthy of Yogi Berra: They haven't been good enough to win, and they haven't been bad enough to tap into baseball's romance with hapless losers.

The White Sox won their last World Series in 1917. Even before the Boston Red Sox exorcised their 86-year curse last year, the White Sox had the American League's longest drought. In the National League, the Cubs haven't won a series since 1908.

Sox outfielder "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and seven of his teammates were banned from baseball for allegedly taking payoffs to deliberately lose the 1919 World Series. The team didn't win another American League pennant until 1959. When they did, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley ordered the fire commissioner to sound the city's civil-defense siren system, sending thousands into the streets. "Sox fans thought, 'Geez, we've finally won the pennant and now the Russians are invading,' " says Don Smith, 56, one of the brothers at the recent Sox game. (The Sox lost the '59 Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4 games to 2.)

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB111880013698659936-IVjfYNplal4n5ysaYGHcaqGm4,00.html

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. I think they should just move to Vegas.

No one in Chicago would notice, that's for sure.

[Zuni]

2. yeah, what is the deal

you see a lot of cubs fans, but never White Sox fans

[SaveElmer]

3. Because everyone knows they will choke!!!

ANd be looking up at the Twins at the end of the yer ;-)

[WeRQ4U]

4. Damn Straight

The slide usually starts right about now. They only wish they could have shaken the twins with this fast start. I predict the collapse to begin with them being swept this week. It will be so refreshing. Seeing the annual White Sox implosion is second only to seeing the annual Twins Championship celebration.

Maybe America still hates them for throwing the series. ;-)

[bertha katzenengel]

5. Sorry, man, I can't care. I know they're hot, but they're going to run

into my team in the playoffs. The Halo Buzz Saw is coming your way. O8)