Endemic to our world today, as White Sox fans it’s hitting us right between the eyes
The White Sox were defeated on Tuesday in Cleveland’s home opener, in embarrassing fashion: 1-0, lost in a punchless bottom of the ninth that saw the highest-leverage reliever in the bullpen give up a single and three walks to hand the game to the Guardians. The club has lost six straight, has fallen to 2-8, is just one loss from 2024’s record-bad start, and is playing .200 ball — that’s a 32-130 team, pard.
And yet, all the relentless underachieving and losing is not the worst aspect of White Sox fandom today.
We live in a country now ruled by idiots. Worse, those idiots are crass, headstrong, and without empathy. This past week could well mark the beginning of the grandest self-own in human history, the dissolution of empire based on personal grudges, “winning,” and performative politicking with no vision and certainly no intelligence. Meetings of the minds leading us over the cliff need speak no words, for the empty suits are part of the biggest and most embarrassing fraternity haze ever performed. And the paddle of this THANK YOU SIR MAY I HAVE ANOTHER administration will strike us all, sooner than later.
We are living in the era of aggressive arrogance from the mediocre.
Tragically — although in the face of the world crashing, this is “just sports” thus side-eye or wry tragedy — such arrogance made landfall early on the shores of our White Sox fandom.
The early crash of the rebuild gave us a taste. Ken Williams was “shocked” over Manny Machado jumping right out of White Sox hands and taking a better offer to play in San Diego — and the GM expressed not just shock but obtuseness, insisting that the rules of math don’t apply on the South Side and that indeed HIS offer to Manny was the better. GM Rick Hahn’s thin-skinned accusation of fans “wanting the rebuild to fail” live, on stage, in front of fans turned the tide against him as much as any 100-loss summer or surprise .500 campaign. Jerry Reinsdorf’s insistence on repairing a “wrong” done Tony La Russa a decade after his sell-by date, and doubling down the decision even with the knowledge that his manager’s drinking was enough of a problem to draw a second DUI helped do same.
We’ve seen rebuilds crumble or windows of contention shut over bad breaks and unfortunate injuries, and when that happens as fans we’re inclined to be angry. But that sort of rage is as much old man shouting at cloud as it is rage directed at the suite class running the team.
No, our White Sox world now is not just the losing or the misfortune that may extend the trend — it’s the arrogance insisting you get down on your knees and eat it.
That arrogance is worse than ever on the South Side, and only part of that connects to the relentless losing we are now, at three years of triple-digit loss seasons and counting, far too accustomed to.
As much badness is attached to Reinsdorf, and as much as he has practiced aggressive arrogance since, well, since he bought the team and then spent precious celebratory airtime after winning a division two years in to dunk on his … former broadcasters? And Jerry is hardly the face of the team today, now just rattling chains in the hallways of “Rate Field,” a perpetual Christmas Carol in July.
No, the face of the White Sox, and most apt practitioner of the aggressive arrogance of the mediocre, is GM Chris Getz. He’s been barely qualified for any of the positions handed to him by the team. Dating back to running the farm system, Getz opted to let Omar Vizquel, villainous manager in our low minors and once by virtue of his borderline Hall resume a future MLB skipper, off the hook for his malfeasance toward one of the most defenseless members of the org. Rather than say nothing, or rather than offer a VERY QUALIFIED no comment that says without saying, Getz wrapped up a bouquet for Vizquel, commending him and making it seem like the White Sox were holding him from future fortunes as opposed to shielding him from jail time. You were his boss, not his press agent, Chris.
Almost a year ago, in comments I initially gave Getz a pass on (you just don’t often see 100 career-innings pitchers blindside his bosses with trade or contract demands), Getz was flummoxed by Garrett Crochet sticking a spoke in the wheel of a deadline deal away from what became a 121-loss team. If Getz hadn’t already burned away all goodwill with incompetence (yes, you had a hand in Pedro Grifol’s hiring, Chris, you worked with the guy in K.C. and thus had the eyewitness tiebreaking vote!) and loss after loss after loss, the GM might even have come across as sympathetic, getting picked on by his burgeoning star’s cut-rate agent and all.
And it’s been Getz, not Hahn, not Reinsdorf, who has had a hand in bringing our current “closer” to the club, and is the direct reason the guy’s been on the roster the last two seasons. Getz is not only utterly deaf to a significant percentage of the fan base’s feelings about having an alleged domestic and child abuser and demonstrably horrific teammate in his prior two MLB stops, the GM has doubled down on his decision and manufactured imaginary support: “Everything I’ve seen from him has been good” or “We’re aware of the concerns but he’s been a model teammate.” In Getz’s world, there’s no need to provide a shred of proof to back his bluster, like here’s how he’s mentored Player X or he’s never missed a mandated therapy session or he battled back from dangerous surgery on his own dime to pitch for only us or let me show you how his baseball IQ is off the charts or even you know he told me he doesn’t even know who Kanye West is so how could he have picked that walk-in music.
The mediocre, the aggressively arrogant mediocre, don’t owe you a thing. Buy your ticket, grab some of the sweet slop in a helmet we’re slinging this year — and shut up.
It’s the very aggressiveness that so offends. Getz offhandedly throws together a second straight abominable roster, with no explanation, strategy or apology — and expects you to thank him for it.
And if you don’t, well, this freak circus on the South Side that’s now stitched forever to the worst three-year stretch in team history, authored the worst baseball season of the expansion era, papered over shootings in the ballpark and abusers in the clubhouse, seems content to shove your face down into that steaming pile sitting in front of you.